Al's Pizza has closed its Riverside location on Margaret Street after 23 years serving the Jacksonville neighborhood, ending a run that made the pizzeria one of 5 Points' longest-standing dining fixtures. The shop shut its doors on Tuesday, leaving another gap on a stretch of Margaret Street that has lost several restaurants over the past year.
According to WJXT News4JAX, Al's Pizza announced the closure of its Riverside location in a Facebook post in which the company expressed gratitude to its customers, friends and team members. The post added that Al's Pizza will miss serving the community, per the same announcement. The Riverside location had operated in the neighborhood for 23 years, making it one of the area's more established food-service tenants.
The pizza chain traces back to 1988, when founder Al Mansur opened the original Al's Pizza at Beach Boulevard and San Pablo Road after spending roughly a decade working in pizzerias in New York and New Jersey, according to Jacksonville Magazine. Mansur has since built a broader Northeast Florida hospitality portfolio that includes Flying Iguana Taqueria & Tequila Bar, COOP 303, and Mezza Luna Ristorante, as reported by the Jacksonville Daily Record.
A Pattern of Closures Under the Same Ownership
The Riverside shutdown is not the first retreat from Jacksonville's urban core for Mansur this year. In May 2025, he closed Iguana on Park, a Latin fusion restaurant located about two miles from the Riverside Al's Pizza in South Avondale, citing evolving economic challenges and rising operational costs, per the Jacksonville Daily Record. That Avondale venue had operated for less than four years after opening in August 2021.
Al's Pizza still operates other locations near Neptune Beach, Baymeadows, San Pablo and Ponte Vedra, per WJXT News4JAX, suggesting the closure reflects a narrowing of the brand's urban core footprint rather than a full retreat. The company has shown a willingness to re-concept or relocate legacy stores before: in 2017, Al's Pizza relocated a 25-year-old Atlantic Beach location to Neptune Beach and rebranded it as Al's Craft Pizza Co., a wood-fired concept, according to The Jaxson.
5 Points Loses Another Legacy Anchor
The Margaret Street closure lands squarely within a broader contraction along Riverside's 5 Points corridor. Nearby dining spots Prospect Five Points and Clarke Bros. Subs both closed in June 2026, according to the Jacksonville Daily Record, with Prospect Five Points citing a difficult business year and an approaching slow season. Just steps from Al's Pizza, Mossfire Grill permanently closed in November 2025 after 27 years in operation, as Hoodline previously reported, underscoring how the same short stretch of Margaret Street has now lost multiple multi-decade establishments in less than a year.
Five Points Merchant Association representative Casey Roth characterized the district's wave of restaurant closures as commercial “churn” rather than neighborhood decline, even as area business owners cited an unsupportive economic climate for small enterprises, according to News4JAX. Surrounding shop owners have separately pointed to severe margin squeezes facing independent operators in the district.
Rising Costs Squeeze Independent Restaurants
Restaurant owners across Florida have increasingly pointed to rising labor costs as a persistent operational burden. Florida's statewide minimum wage is set to rise to $15.00 per hour, with the tipped worker cash wage climbing to $11.98 per hour, on September 30, 2026, under a 2020 constitutional amendment that required annual $1 hourly increases leading up to this year's floor, as Hoodline has reported.
The pressure on Riverside's dining scene has taken other forms as well. Italian restaurant Ale Pie House exited the area after its St. Johns Avenue lease expired, relocating across the river to Orange Park in May 2026 while keeping its menu identical, Hoodline reported in an earlier story on the move. The strain has not been confined to Riverside, either: downtown Jacksonville anchor Bellwether closed in March 2026, and Intuition Ale Works shuttered its East Bay Street taproom in April 2026, both citing soft weekday foot traffic and elevated food costs, according to Hoodline's prior coverage of the downtown dining struggles.
Taken together, the closures paint a picture of a Jacksonville restaurant landscape under sustained financial strain, from historic urban core corridors to downtown's office-adjacent dining strip. Al's Pizza's Riverside location joins that list after 23 years on Margaret Street, even as the broader company keeps its suburban and coastal locations running in Neptune Beach, Baymeadows, San Pablo and Ponte Vedra.
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