Eating on the Streets: A New Pandemic Lifestyle

Exploring how COVID-19 has transformed the New York City dining experience.

The Basics

As the COVID-19 pandemic shut down restaurants across the United States and the world, owners evaluated their options. Many cities incorporated the opportunity for outdoor dining in their phased reopening plans. Restaurants had to make a choice: close for good, close temporarily until they could reopen for dining, or continue with takeout only orders. Cities phased reopening plans helped guide these decisions.

Focusing on New York City (NYC) specifically, the city that never sleeps was all of a sudden shutdown. From Broadway to Museums to the thousands of restaurants on the city streets, everything was closed and eerily quiet.

NYC government put out a phased reopening plan, called "New York Forward". New York Forward was a resource that could be used to find information about COVID-19 cases, testing sites, and advisory boards, but here the focus is on the phased reopening plan outlined in the resource. These phases detail what industries are allowed to be open and to what capacity.

In NYC, restaurants were looked at as an industry, as food consumption in indoor communal spaces, a restaurant, is considered an activity that can put people at risk of contracting COVID-19. Take-out and delivery were available from restaurants in Phase one of the reopening plan, but this still created a huge deficit in income for restaurants that were just trying to get by until dining in was allowed again.

NYC Outdoor Dining Regulations

NYC entered Phase two of New York Forward on June 22nd, 2020, allowing restaurants to open up outdoor seating.

This allowance excited many NYC residents with summer in full swing, they would be able to dine in, safely, at many of their favorite restaurants around the city. Phase two opening up outdoor dining came with many guidelines restaurants had to meet before inviting customers to dine in. This guidance was split into three categories: people, places, and processes.

  • The "people" category includes rules on physical distancing, dictating the path of movement through spaces (creating a specific path to and from the restaurant's bathroom inside), clearly distinguishing different spots to wait for take-out food versus waiting to be seated, and many more specifics.
  • The "places" category details rules for protective equipment, best practices in the kitchen, and cleaning and hygiene
  • The "processes" category discusses the ways restaurants should implement screening, testing, and tracking procedures in case of a positive COVID-19 test result from an employee or customer.

Restaurants must follow these guidelines in order to open outdoor seating. The use of the restaurant's private spaces for outdoor dining does not need approval from the city (ex. parking lots, courtyards). Under Phase Two of New York's reopening plan, NYC restaurants are allowed to use public outdoor areas for dining and must apply for approval through NYC Department of Transportation (DOT)'s Open Restaurants Program. This program is only for restaurants seeking permission to place outdoor seating in front of their establishment on the sidewalk or roadway.

How to become an "Open Restaurant"

There are two ways outlined for expanding outdoor dining: sidewalk or roadway closures.

  • Individual restaurants can apply to use sidewalks in front of their storefront.
  • Individual restaurants can apply to use a section of the road in front of their storefront.
  • Groups of three or more restaurants on the same block can apply as a group to close down the block to traffic on that street, allowing them to use the whole road for seating. This is deemed "Open Streets".

  • This diagram shows the components and different potential layouts of "Open Streets: Restaurants"
  • The blue sections are the potential for sidewalk seating, clearing showing tables spaced 6 feet apart and the tables do not take up the whole sidewalk.
  • The purple sections show the setup for roadway seating, showing that lanes of traffic can be closed, but there still needs to be a 15 foot emergency lane for cars to pass through.

An example of how this can be implemented for specific restaurants is shown here:

Visuals

The chart below gives a live updated overview of the open restaurants in NYC. Detailing every restaurant in the pane on the right, you can scroll through all the Open Restaurants, use the left-hand pane to search for restaurants, or just explore the interactive map. It also shows the counts of how many restaurants are open, how many serve alcohol, and counts for the different seating types. Click into the graphic to interact with it:

Let's explore the 10,000+ open restaurants.

The map below shows all locations approved through the Open Restaurants program to have any type of outdoor dining, whether that is sidewalk, roadway, or both. When interacting with the data, selecting a datapoint will give specific details about that restaurant, including the restaurant name, the type of seating it is approved for, the exact address, and the area of the outdoor dining space. Click into the map to navigate around the city and look at all the different restaurants:

This next map shows all locations that are approved for sidewalk seating:

Next, we can look at restaurants that are approved for roadway seating. The majority of these restaurants were also approved for sidewalk seating, but not all of them:

Next, we can look more into the Open Streets part of the Open Restaurants program. Below you can see the sections of streets that are blocked off to traffic

On the Streets

Let's look at some examples of what this actually looks like on the streets of NYC!

Suitability Analysis

Let's now look further into the Open Streets: Restaurants regulations.

Here we will look at one factor to begin assessing the suitability of the NYC street network for the Open Streets program: bus routes.

The guidelines clearly state that the sections of streets that are fully closed to traffic cannot be streets that bus lanes run through.

bus route-Copy

Here we see the NYC bus route network in purple. The overlaid red lines show the locations of Open Streets: Restaurants. As you navigate throughout this map you can clearly see that the majority of Open Streets are not along bus routes as the guidelines require.

The few exceptions to this rule are most likely Open Streets only during hours that the buses do not run through those streets, as the guidelines allow.

This map above clearly shows there are many more blocks that could, in theory, participate in the Open Streets program, but they may not be eligible.

To apply for Open Streets, there need to be at least three restaurants on that block that are interested in participating.

Let's now add the locations of all restaurants approved for roadway seating to the map:

bus route

Through this basic suitability analysis of the requirement for Open Streets to not be on bus routes in NYC, we can see that there are other potential locations for Open Streets: Restaurants.

Other factors that contribute to if restaurants apply for this program and there are several other requirements that restaurants need to meet to be able to apply for Open Streets: Restaurants, which is why there seem to be many more eligible blocks than there are Open Streets.

Looking Forward

Looking to the future: is outdoor dining here to stay in NYC?

YES! It is!

On September 25, 2020, Mayor de Blasio announced that the Open Restaurants program will now be permanent in NYC.

With this announcement comes another set of guidelines for safe but comfortable outdoor dining in the winter months.

The detailed memo below gives an overview of guidelines for the use of heat lamps, tents, and preparing for inclement weather.

Recovery Agenda: Mayor de Blasio Extends Outdoor Dining Season Year-Round:

This is an exciting step for NYC and will change how citizens interact with the city.

As this is a current, constantly developing topic, it is still too early to tell if restaurants will choose to continue with outdoor seating through the winter months. It is likely that some may choose to shut down and go back to take-out only until it is warm out again, but many will make the adaptations to make outdoor dining comfortable with heat lamps and tents even on the coldest NYC days.

In Conclusion

New York Forward's Open Restaurant Program was essential for keeping hundreds, if not thousands, of NYC Restaurants in business. COVID-19 has altered everyone's daily life and has changed how many industries function.

Looking specifically at the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals, COVID-19 has impacted the progress and trajectory of all 17 SDGs.

As discussed above, COVID-19 shut down businesses and cities had to quickly put a plan in place for reopening not just restaurants but all industries where the income depends on consumers being in indoor spaces.

Keeping NYC restaurants in business ties mainly to SDG 8, Decent Work and Economic Growth. When restaurants have to close their doors permanently because they cannot afford to stay open, this affects the economic growth of the city, as well as the number of citizens employed.

By creating the Open Restaurants plan, NYC put guidelines in place to do whatever they can to help restaurants stay in business.

While taking necessary measures to keep restaurants open in NYC, the top priority of the phased reopening plan is always the health and safety of the city residents.

The layout and experience of New York City streets have been changed, ultimately benefitting the restaurants and the consumers as we all try our bests to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic.