Boo's Dog Bar closes this month in Sarasota's Rosemary District

A Sarasota establishment hailed as one of the country’s top 10 dog bars is closing. Boo’s Ice House & Dog Bar, in the Rosemary District, will shutter after Jan. 12, when it will celebrate National Dress Up Your Dog Day.

“We’ve had so many amazing events, but we need to be successful every day,” Boo’s owners say in a statement on Facebook. “In order for us to be viable, we would need to make some significant changes and investments, and unfortunately, we do not have sufficient capital or expertise.”

Boo's Ice House & Dog Bar had been open a little more than a year and a half.

The restaurant and bar with play spaces for dogs opened in May 2023 off 10th Street in a building constructed in the late 1940s for storing ice and facilitating deliveries.

Mindy Kauffman and her husband, Bobby Boivin, founded the establishment, which they named for their rescue dog, Boo. It contains 5,000 square feet of gated indoor and outdoor play space for dogs; a full-service restaurant serving gourmet burgers and pizza; and a fully stocked bar.

After the couple purchased the property at 1314 10th Street for $1.35 million in April 2020, they navigated through supply chain issues, Hurricane Ian and zoning as they readied for business.

All the preparation paid off. A little more than a year after it opened, USA Today deemed Boo’s Ice House & Dog Bar the 10th best dog bar in the nation in July 2024 based on a panel of experts as well as readers.

“We have hit upon something wonderful for our community, and are deeply saddened that we are not able to sustain Boo's long enough to see it flourish into what it could have become,” the owners say in a statement.

"Ultimately, the storms really did us in," the owners say in an email to the Business Observer. "We had sufficient operating capital to carry us through our second year, and things were looking quite good coming through the summer and into fall. But when Hurricane Helene and Milton hit, we sustained a lot of damages to our building, lost almost a month of business, a bunch of private bookings, our Howl-o-ween bash, two sub-tenants, and all our business momentum. Sales since then have been way down. So we really just burned through our capital and had to make the decision to close before we really had a chance."

The decision to stop operating was not one that they took lightly.

“We are terribly sad to announce that we have made the decision to close Boo's Ice House & Dog Bar,” the owners say in a statement. “We have been honored to be part of this community of friends and neighbors, and we will miss all of you, even the barking, the slobber, and the hair!”

This story was updated to include more information from the owners about the decision to close.