People go to restaurants, so why can’t dogs? Council member proposes lifting Chicago's canine ban

A City Council member from Lincoln Park wants to throw a financial bone to Chicago restaurants fighting for survival by allowing them to serve patrons who bring in their dogs — without fear of being fined.

Ald. Timmy Knudsen (43rd) said he drafted the ordinance at the behest of a Clark Street cafe owner whose eat-in French bakery was tied up for hours by “back-to-back” city inspections triggered by a patron complaint about the presence of dogs in the eatery.

Right now, Chicago restaurants are prohibited from serving patrons accompanied by dogs — either indoors or outdoors — unless that customer has a service dog.

Although the ban is widely ignored and sporadically enforced, usually in response to a complaint, restaurant owners allow dogs at their own risk and sometimes face the consequences.

That’s what happened to Sophie Evanoff, owner of Vanille Patisserie, 2108 N. Clark, who found out about the ban the hard way when "someone called the health department on us twice." That was followed by two rounds of inspections, each lasting two to three hours.

“By the time we had the second complaint, it was the day before Valentine’s Day, so we’re super-busy like crazy. ... It was just terrible timing and very frustrating for us,” Evanoff said.

After the second inspection blitz, Evanoff put up a sign that read, “No Dogs.” Regular customers stopped coming in to get their morning coffee and croissant.

“I realized, I’m losing coffees in the morning, and we’re a small business, so that adds up. We need those coffees. ... So I said, 'Why is the city dictating what I can do?’ “ Evanoff said. “I don’t have open food. Everything’s packaged and covered. It didn’t make sense. We’ve never had an unruly dog. They’re all on leashes. It’s not like they’re running free. What does it matter if it’s a service dog or not?”

Knudsen agreed. He said the regulations he drafted with the city’s Department of Public Health will be a boon to restaurants struggling to survive amid rising food and labor costs.

“Any pitch right now these small businesses can make to different populations is so helpful, because they’re on tight margins,” Knudsen said. “If Chicago can just have restaurants say, 'We’re dog-friendly’ and not get in trouble for that, it would bring a lot of clarity that could also boost business in a lot of restaurants that want those customers.”

The ordinance, slated for introduction at Thursday’s City Council meeting, is tailor-made to resolve the health department’s food safety concerns.

Restaurant owners who post signs declaring themselves dog-friendly would be free to welcome patrons and their leashed dogs inside or outside their establishments without fear of inspection or fine.

Dogs would be limited to one per table. They could only be provided with water — not food or table scraps — either by their owners or by restaurant employees.

Areas where food is prepared would be off limits. Tables, chairs, fixtures and floors would have to be made of hard surfaces that can be washed and sanitized.

If a restaurant employee has contact with a dog or with a surface touched by a dog, the employee “shall immediately wash their hands before continuing any food service work,” the ordinance states.

Any dog not “kept on a leash at all times" or kept "under control by its owner shall be immediately removed.” Restaurant owners could refuse to serve owners who fail to keep their dogs on a leash or “exercise reasonable control” over their pets, or have dogs that behave “in a manner that compromises or threatens to compromise the health, safety or enjoyment” of other customers.

The way the ordinance is written, there would be nothing preventing a restaurant with 30 tables from having 30 dogs on the premises at one time. Knudsen said he opted not to establish an arbitrary limit on the number of dogs allowed inside because a limit would be even tougher to enforce than the ban on table scraps.

“If we were to include the weight of a dog or the exact number of dogs, it just puts another burden on the restaurant owner. And most of the businesses who want this — they’re not big operations,” he said. “Sophie [Evanoff] is always in back baking. She’s got her two people up front. They don’t want to have [so many] rules that they feel like they’re babysitting dogs.”

Illinois Restaurant Association President Sam Toia said Knudsen’s ordinance “may have to be tweaked a little bit,” perhaps to include some limit on the number of dogs allowed inside. But Toia welcomed the potential boon to restaurant business.

“It’s rough out here for the brick-and-mortars right now. ... I always say that, before the pandemic, the restaurant industry was an industry of nickels and dimes. Now, it’s an industry of pennies and nickels,” Toia said. “You can look up and down a lot of our commercial corridors — from 79th Street to 53rd Street to Clark Street to Lincoln Avenue in Lincoln Park — and you can see a lot of empty storefronts.”