Dining Out NYC: Open Plans’ Program Analysis

Introduction

Despite all the benefits that New York’s temporary outdoor dining program brought to the city, the new, permanent program faces a perilous future. A combination of opaque bureaucracy, misguided city regulations, car-centered decisions in the City Council, and a small but vocal opposition has caused significant problems within Dining Out NYC. This has severely restricted the ability of most businesses to participate in the official program.

Over the past five months, Open Plans conducted door-to-door outreach to dozens of restaurants—both those who applied to the new program and those who did not—and conducted a comprehensive survey to document owners’ experience of the permanent program and come up with solutions to fix it.

Key Findings

The Program is Failing to Launch

• Less than a week before the program’s start, less than 2% of applicants (just 47 out of 4,000) had received their licenses—and only 21 are for roadway dining. 

• Processing crawls along at a snail's pace, with just 547 businesses receiving conditional approvals for roadway dining. That's a dramatic drop from the 6,000-8,000 outdoor setups we saw at the height of the temporary program.

• The vast majority of currently approved Dining Out NYC roadway cafe licensees are located in Manhattan (59%) or Brooklyn (34%); just 6% are located in Queens, 1% in the Bronx, and none in Staten Island. During the pandemic-era program, participation was spread much more equally across the city.

Challenges Identified by Restaurant Owners 

• The seasonal program and accompanying costs associated with new structures, labor to put them up and take them down, and storage in the off season

• Total expenses incurred from fees, including listed and hidden fees

• Unclear guidance on New York State Liquor Authority (SLA) regulations

• High cost was the top reason that applicants chose not to apply for the permanent program, followed by arbitrary enforcement

• Storage was an issue for nearly all of those not applying this year; none of the respondents who have applied for roadway dining had finalized plans for storage for the off-season

• Multiple respondents who did not apply this cycle told us they had to fire staff after closing down their outdoor dining operations and experienced a loss of sales

What Restaurant Owners Are Saying, In Their Own Words 

• Applicant: "People are bummed about not having structures anymore... People felt safe in them. People are faulting us for it since we are following the rules, [but the] rules feel arbitrary."

• Non-applicant: "Give me a way to ask for more space. Right now we fit 22 people, and the outside space only lets me fit 10 people. That's too little for $500! No one else next to me is doing anything outside."

• Applicant: "[The process] is very long and cumbersome, having to figure out ordering materials and storing them someplace before we get approval is a nightmare. We have no basement…the lead time for the barriers is 3-4 weeks. Once they arrive I have no place to store them, the program starts 4/1 but there's no way we'll have all the materials to build in time for that since we were approved just the other day."

Recommendations 

Reforms Requiring Legislation

1. Create a Year-Round Option

2. Allow Participants with Smaller Store Frontage an Option to Utilize Adjacent Frontage

3. Allow for Local Feedback—but Remove Community Board and Council Member Vetoes

Reforms Requiring Agency Action

1. Provide More Transparency About Fees

2. Improve the Application Process

3. Reform the Process for Obtaining a Curbside Liquor License

4. Eliminate the Liquor Liability Requirement

5. Allow More Flexibility in Design Requirements

More information about these recommendations and our door-to-door outreach available in the full report.
 

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