One of the few silver linings of the pandemic was that more New Yorkers got the opportunity to dine alfresco. As the city began reimagining its use of public space to allow for social distancing, New Yorkers were able to dine outside in record numbers, in nearly every corner of the city, wholly changing much of the city’s landscape.
Five years later, as the weather improves, diners are getting their first look at the city’s now-permanent approach to outdoor dining. Visually, it’s a far cry from what the program looked like throughout the pandemic, when outdoor dining structures — albeit some haphazard and rickety — dotted almost every block. The more obvious change is in sheer volume — about 80% fewer cafes, bars and restaurants will offer outdoor seating this year; the city has approved just 2,450 establishments to operate on roadways or sidewalks throughout the city, down from more than 12,000 at the height of the pandemic.
Supporters of outdoor dining say the opportunity for additional space is still worth it, and the program has sparked a cottage industry of dining shed providers. But others say the program is plagued by red tape in the form of a tedious, lengthy and expensive application process, leaving out many small businesses that otherwise might want to take part.
“We were taking a step forward, and I think we took two steps back in its regulation and just made it harder, more exclusionary and more expensive,” said Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, one of the main and early supporters of outdoor dining.
Andrew Rigie, executive director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance, doesn’t see it that way, though he agrees there’s significant room for improvement. Among the positive changes he sees: the pandemic version of the program had few rules, leading to outdoor dining sheds being left up year-round despite their lack of use, becoming an eyesore in some cases, accumulating trash and vermin. And neighbors complained of noise late into the night.
“I think there’s still a lot of confusion in the transition, I think there are certain cost barriers to small businesses,” Rigie said. “But one of the benefits is that thousands of restaurants across the five boroughs that were never allowed to have outdoor dining before the pandemic now can.”
How things started
Before the pandemic, outdoor dining in the city was allowed almost exclusively within Manhattan and only on sidewalks. The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, the lead agency at the time, charged sidewalk cafes south of 96th Street $40 per square foot, while the rest of the city paid $30. The cost of 10 additional seats outside a Midtown restaurant, for example, would have been about $6,000, assuming 15 per square foot per person.
Then in June 2020, as the city began to slowly reopen amid Covid, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the Open Restaurants program. It allowed establishments in all corners of the city to self-certify their eligibility for curbside or sidewalk dining. There were few restrictions and minimal costs. Restaurants only had to pay for their own tables and chairs, with no permits required.
“When Covid hit, our future was not promised. We were devastated. And then when the city started giving us the green light to open slowly and have outdoor dining, we were thrilled,” said Althea Codamon, managing owner at Aita at 132 Greene Ave. in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, which has secured permits for roadway and sidewalk seating under the new program. “It was like a mode of survival for us.”
Open Restaurants not only saved nearly 100,000 jobs, but it wholly reimagined an industry that’s long been the lifeblood of the city’s economy, said Reynoso, who as a then-council members co-sponsored the program’s original bill with then-City Council Speaker Corey Johnson. The bill passed the City Council a month later and allowed outdoor dining to continue through 2021.
“It allowed for a sense of normalcy and accomplished so many things, keeping these businesses open while allowing us to interact socially in a safe setting,” Reynoso recently told Crain’s. “The program was wildly successful by any objective means.
Not everyone cheered the program. Neighbors complained some of the cafes were drawing rats, and diners were too loud. As a result, two years later, then-Councilwoman Marjorie Velázquez introduced legislation to create the version of the permanent outdoor dining program that exists today — Dining Out NYC. It included a number of modifications and was passed by the 51-person City Council and signed into law by Mayor Eric Adams in 2023. (Velázquez lost her seat on the City Council in 2023 and now works for the Adams administration as executive director for tenant protection. City Hall declined to make her available for an interview.)
But some critics of the legislation, including Reynoso, say the new program is too restrictive and lacks the accessibility that made Open Restaurants so successful.
Program updates
Restaurants participating in the program have a few options when they apply: roadway or sidewalk seating, or both.
Sidewalk seating is allowed year-round, while roadway, or curbside, dining is allowed only eight months of the year, from April through November, meaning restaurants have to pack up and store their outdoor cafes during the winter. The previous program allowed curbside dining year-round.
Another change was the addition of what many critics consider to be prohibitive fees. There is a $1,050 charge to fill out an application for either a sidewalk or roadway structure — $2,100 for both — another fee ranging between $100 and $800 to have a public hearing held on the application, a security deposit of either $1,500 for a sidewalk structure or $2,500 for roadway, and then, once approved, the actual contract amount, also known as the revocable consent annual fee, which is to be paid each year during the contract’s four-year term. That number is calculated based on the location and size of the sidewalk or roadway cafe, according to information from the city.
The annual fee can cost $5 per square foot for a roadway structure and $6 per square foot for sidewalk in neighborhoods in the outer boroughs. In busier neighborhoods, such as the West Village and those surrounding Central Park, the fees are higher, costing $25 per square foot for a roadway structure and $31 per square foot for a sidewalk structure.
At Cafe Luxembourg, a French eatery at 200 W. 70th St. on the Upper West Side, the contract fee for a curbside dining structure costs $10,880 each year, according to information from the city comptroller’s office. All in, a restaurateur in Manhattan could be forced to cough up more than $30,000.
Steven Abramowitz, one of the owners of Cafe Luxembourg, said the cost is worth it. He and his business partners, Lynn Wagenknecht and Judi Wong, who together also own Cafe Cluny and the Odeon, have applied for permits at all three of their restaurants.
“When it’s done well, it really adds and enhances the New York City experience,” Abramowitz said. “It’s very exciting.”
It’s unclear how much revenue the city is expected to bring in each year from the program, but at the height of the pandemic, outdoor dining resulted in $373 million of total annual wages, and generated $9.6 million in annual income tax, according to a recent analysis from City Comptroller Brad Lander.
Another Manhattan establishment, C&B Cafe at 178 E. 7th St. in the East Village, lauded the program for giving the restaurant additional space in which to operate.
Owner Ali Sahin told Crain’s that the addition of his 14-seat roadway dining structure brings in 20% more business than his establishment was serving before. He no longer has any seats inside at all.
“The people in the neighborhood seem to enjoy it,” he said. “It creates a great vibe, and of course I’m able to serve more people that way too.”
New B2B offerings
A cottage industry of new and redefined businesses are capitalizing on outdoor dining and the fact that one element of it is allowed only part of the year.
Construction and design firms such as Soho Sheds, Outdoor Dining Group, ModStreet and Fantastica offer to take on every aspect of the process for restaurant owners, from applying for the permit, building the Department of Transportation-compliant structure, setting it up, taking it down and then, most crucially, storing it during the four months when it’s not in use. Of course, those all create additional costs for restaurant owners, on top of the city fees.
Bradley Robinson, president of Soho Sheds, which started in 2023, said he and his business partners got the idea for the company as they followed the legislation to create the permanent outdoor dining program as it made its way through the City Council to become law.
The company customizes the structures for its clients, including offering bespoke finishes.
Robinson acknowledged that all the costs associated with taking part in the program can get pricey for small businesses.
“The fees, because of the seasonality, make it tough for us and for the restaurants,” he said. “The program was designed for everybody, but that’s not the reality.”
Sahin of C&B Cafe said he intends to make the structure himself because he was quoted $50,000 by one such company, although he’s heard numbers go as high as $150,000. He’s also hopeful his landlord will let him use the empty yard adjacent to the building to store the shed, otherwise he’ll have to rebuild it every year.
“We’re in New York. Space is one of the most expensive things,” he said. “And if you don’t have space to store those things, it becomes a problem.”
For Sunday in Brooklyn, a new American restaurant in Williamsburg, handing everything over to a company to handle the entire outdoor dining process was an easy choice.
“It’s a very expensive process, [but] it’s been pretty seamless,” said Marcella Smith, director of operations at Sunday Hospitality, which owns the restaurant at 348 Wythe Ave. “We are lucky that we are a larger restaurant group that can afford it. I can’t imagine a single owner or smaller mom-and-pop situation being able to afford the fees that we paid throughout this process.”
Smith declined to provide the actual cost of the restaurant’s two roadway structures and one sidewalk cafe but said the original pandemic-era program, which allowed Sunday in Brooklyn to have outdoor dining all year long, helped bring in an extra quarter of a million dollars annually. But she noted that amount was for a full-year program, whereas the restaurant’s curbside seating now won’t be operable in the winter.
Although there will certainly be growing pains as the program gets off the ground and finds its footing, there is promise that outdoor dining will be a big winner for restaurants and customers alike.
“It gives us a vibrant streetscape that people are excited about,” the Hospitality Alliance’s Rigie said.
