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The city’s nearly $ 27 billion restaurant industry almost came to a halt in the spring. Now New York has one of the countries the strictest capacity limits, 25%, for indoor meals. The combination of harsh restrictions and harsh winters forces restaurant owners to make the difficult calculation of how much to spend to make outdoor seating warm enough to attract customers without going bankrupt.
For some, outdoor heating can be overpriced overall, leaving a gloomy winter ahead.
Jeremy Wladis, president of the Restaurant Group, which operates Good Enough to Eat, Harvest Kitchen, and other New York City restaurants, saw a spooky glimpse of the months ahead over a few rainy, cold October days.
“Our sales have fallen like a rock,” he said. “And we haven’t been able to pay our bills before. A good day is when you hit 50% of your pre-Covid sales. On a day like this, you make five or 10% of your sales.
Wladis purchased a number of electric heaters earlier this fall. They haven’t worked out very well for him, so he recently ordered another set of infrared electric heaters that he says will be better and is in the process of returning the first set.
He still doubts the difference they will make.
“On a 35 degree day, if you’re lucky, you warm it up to 45 to 50 degrees. I don’t think a lot of people are going to eat” under those conditions, he says. “And when it’s really cold, there’s no shooting.”
Juliet and Justine Masters, who operate The Edge Harlem, a restaurant that serves Jamaican, English and American dishes, are still in the process of deciding to install outdoor radiators. They only have a handful of tables set up outside their restaurant and wonder if they will be able to recoup the investment in such a small space.
“Any situation that we resolve in order to get more seats available for our customers is going to be costly,” said Justine. “We’re just trying to strike a balance.
Some restaurateurs who were hoping to make the seats work outdoors find that this may not be the case.
“It’s almost impossible,” he says.
To use the heaters he bought, he would have to pay for a service to collect and return them every day. – an option that can be too expensive. Restaurants can also use natural gas to heat outdoor spaces, but need multiple cycles of city approval to install these types of heaters.
Massoud plans to return the radiators to propane. But he said it didn’t make sense to replace them with electric ones. “These heaters require an exorbitant amount of energy,” he said.
Massoud calculated that to keep his outdoor space comfortable, he would have to spend $ 16,000 on electric heaters and $ 16,000 on new electrical panels. Then there is the actual electric bill, which would be “through the roof”.
To justify this kind of investment, he says, he would need about 384 clients per week during the winter.
The question, he said, then becomes “are there [enough] New Yorkers going to sit over there in the elements? ”
For now, he’s betting no. “I haven’t yet found a way to justify the costs and make it logical based on how many days we can use it and make it comfortable,” he said. He is always exploring the options.
Some restaurateurs are asking the city to double its 25% ceiling on indoor meals. But others don’t want to trust it as the pandemic rages on, and spikes in cases could mean a return to a total ban.
“I don’t want to shift our business model to indoor dining, and then it won’t go 50%,” said Lauren Lynch, co-owner of Harlem Public Restaurant and Bar.
Plus, Lynch said, she is worried about what might happen if the city relaxes restrictions too much.
“I don’t want to go back to the point where we hear ambulances going all day,” she said. “It was traumatic.”
A better solution, Lynch said, would be to lower rent or increase government support, like the paycheck protection programs that helped bail out businesses this spring. Without this kind of financial support, restaurants will “hang on for as long as they can,” she says. “But they are going to go bankrupt.”
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