Salon suites are 30.7% of Texas cosmetology establishment licenses — and over half in some counties

21,866 of 71,250 Texas cosmetology establishment licenses are the Mini Establishment class

A "Mini Establishment" is TDLR's license class for "a room or suite (leased or rented) inside of a barbering or cosmetology establishment" — enclosed with walls, separate from common areas, and "operated independently from the gallery-establishment." In plain terms: the salon-suite model, where individual practitioners run their own licensed business inside a host location.

Statewide, that model now accounts for 30.7% of all establishment licenses on the roster. The geography is dramatic: in Collin County it's 55.2% — more than half of every licensed establishment in the county — while in Hidalgo County it's just 4.2%.

Source: Texas Department of Licensing & Regulation (TDLR), "TDLR - All Licenses" open dataset, dataset 7358-krk7. TDLR last regenerated the dataset on 2026-04-12; we retrieved our snapshot on 2026-07-01. County populations: U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2024 County Population Estimates (co-est2024-alldata.csv) (retrieved 2026-07-01).

Query logic:we downloaded every row whose license type is one of TDLR's cosmetology establishment classes (Full Service Establishment, Mini Establishment, Manicurist/Esthetician Establishment, Esthetician Establishment, Manicurist Establishment, Eyelash Extension Establishment, Mobile Establishment), kept the 71,250 rows with a parseable Texas business address (of 71,402 downloaded; 34 out-of-state and 118unparseable-address rows excluded), and computed all expiry figures against the dataset's own generation date. "Nail-specialty" means the Manicurist Establishment and Manicurist/Esthetician Establishment license classes. County analyses use TDLR business_county reconciled to Census county names; rows with blank or OUT OF STATE county are excluded from county tables (but included in statewide totals).

Limitations:

• TDLR last regenerated this dataset on 2026-04-12; all "expired as of" figures are computed against that date, not the retrieval date (2026-07-01). A license shown as expired may have been renewed after the file was generated.
• The dataset has no license-status field, no issue dates, and no disciplinary or inspection data. Nothing here measures cleanliness, inspection results, or safety.
• An expired license on the roster does not mean the business is operating: it may have closed, relocated, or renewed after the file date. Texas allows late renewal (with higher fees) for up to three years after expiration.
• Nail-specialty counts cover the Manicurist Establishment and Manicurist/Esthetician Establishment license classes only. Full Service Establishments may also offer nail services, so these figures undercount where nail services are available.
• Counts are of licenses on the roster, not confirmed open businesses.

Every figure on this page is computed by scripts/research/analyze-tdlr.mjs from the committed snapshot data/research/tdlr-establishments-2026-07-01.json.gz— the analysis is re-runnable end to end. Cite as: "SafePedicures analysis of TDLR licensing data, 2026-07-01" with a link to this page.