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The pandemic has pushed consumers out of dining rooms and onto sidewalks, parking lots and open streets. Now the pressure is coming from restaurateurs to keep their outdoor dining structures, tents and sheds forever.
In July, the San Francisco board of directors voted in favor of establishing permanent restaurant and parks. Atlanta and Philadelphia are among the cities that weigh similar measures. New York City is working out the technical details for more sustainable outdoor dining rules after Mayor Bill de Blasio made his Open Restaurants program permanent a year ago.
It’s not just the big cities that are thinking about change, either. The city of Fairfax, Calif., In August conducted an open investigation to residents, visitors and businesses to determine whether it should allow restaurants to operate their food parks permanently. Of the 987 respondents, 91% said they were in favor of the measure.
David Ruiz opened the Stillwater restaurant with his wife in June 2020 in Fairfax. The location had a back patio, but when Fairfax began approving parklet structures, Stillwater built one across the street which is about a third of the restaurant’s total capacity.
“It’s a game changer for sure,” he said. “We can probably accommodate 30 to 100 people each day.”
Veselka, a staple in the Ukrainian village of Manhattan, built an outdoor structure that added around 50 seats to its capacity.
“It really helped my results,” said co-owner Jason Birchard. “Without those 11 tables, a total of 50 seats, he definitely earned his sustenance.”
The additional sales of these tables resulted in less pressure for Veselka to return to its 24-hour service ahead of the pandemic, even as the city relaxed restaurant curfew laws. Staff issues and rowdy late-night crowds would have made these hours difficult to resume.
Still, while making alfresco dining a permanent fixture is popular with restaurants, there are some naysayers. Some restaurants have filed complaints about noisy outside customers and the loss of parking spaces.
“There was a lot of resistance in the beginning about parking,” said Pietro Gianni, co-owner of Storico Fresco and Forza Storico restaurants in Atlanta. “I would rather have four parklets in front of my building, with people sitting down and you can see the restaurant, than four Yukons or a wall of SUVs.”
In New York, de Blasio defended the loss of around 8,550 parking spaces by attributing the program to saving 100,000 restaurant jobs. The city had around 3 million spaces available on its streets, as of 2019.
“It’s small, but it’s a problem nonetheless that needs to be addressed,” said Andrew Rigie, executive director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance, which lobbies on behalf of the restaurants. “As many say, a parking spot is for a car, and usually they are temporary, compared to the number of seats that can be placed in a parking spot and the number of jobs that creates.”
Opponents also complain about the safety of catering facilities. A sanitary truck driving through Manhattan on Wednesday accidentally picked up a street side food court with one person inside, dragging them down the street.
Sanitation is another problem.
“You see rats coming out of sheds all the time,” Cue Up NYC member Stuart Waldman told CNBC’s Kate Rogers in August. Cue Up NYC, or the Coalition United for Equitable Urban Policy, is an alliance of neighborhood organizations that oppose the city’s outdoor dining program.
Even as cities try to resolve these issues, restaurants may find that customers are not as eager to sit outside year round. This past winter, many braved the chilly temperatures rather than dining indoors, leading operators to invest in propane heaters and other features to warm guests up. Veselka, for example, has somewhat closed its exterior structures.
This year, many restaurateurs plan to maintain their street side dining facilities throughout the winter, although they may change their plans as demand dictates. Covid-19 vaccines have made many consumers feel comfortable dining indoors again, although a new variant or another wave of cases could change their minds again.
“I believe that some people will never go back to the dining rooms,” Gianni said.
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