New Yorkers may once again be able to enjoy outdoor dining all year long if City Council Speaker Julie Menin has anything to say about it.
During a Wednesday speech before the Association for a Better New York (ABNY), Menin announced that she intends to significantly reform the seasonal outdoor dining program established by her predecessor, Adrienne Adams, and former Mayor Eric Adams in 2023.
“We will finally fix the city’s outdoor dining program to make it year-round and reduce the regulatory burdens for restaurants,” Menin said. “These measures will help small businesses survive and adapt by clearing up policies of the past that can lead to closures and job loss.”
Menin plans to essentially replace the current program via a bill introduced by City Council Member Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn) last year.
It would undo a change to the city’s outdoor dining policies that led to a dramatic drop in the number of restaurants participating in the program since the seasonal version rolled out. The current program prohibits restaurants from leaving their roadside dining sheds on city streets during December, January, February, and March.
Just 400 restaurants — 300 on sidewalk and 100 roadside — completed the full application process for the program last year, which entails paying thousands of dollars in fees upfront. Another 2,600 received conditional approval, meaning they were allowed to operate on the condition that they would finish the application and pay the fees.
Last year marked a sizable drop-off from the program’s peak of roughly 8,000 participants during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — when the city first introduced outdoor dining.
“The Adams administration and the bureaucracy destroyed outdoor dining, and it’s time for us to bring it back,” Restler told amNewYork. “Outdoor dining is great for neighborhood restaurants. It’s great for the workers in the industry. And it’s great for street life in our neighborhoods.”
Restler’s legislation, which did not receive a vote before the end of the last council session, would remove seasonal restrictions on roadway dining setups and allow a broader range of eateries to participate in the program — including grocery stores. It would allow restaurants with smaller footprints to have larger outdoor dining set-ups.
The measure also aims to make the application process and rules for setting up the structures less onerous for restaurants.
“Our goal here is for outdoor dining to work and for restaurants and neighborhoods to benefit from it,” he said. “The seasonal nature of the program has been the single biggest obstacle for restaurants to participate because they don’t have the space to store outdoor dining structures. The application process is onerous and burdensome. The cost is exorbitant.”
Although Restler already introduced the bill last session, he said he will re-introduce it — a procedural step lawmakers must take when a new legislative session begins — during the council’s next stated meeting next Thursday.
The speaker’s move was welcomed by Andrew Rigie, executive director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance.
“We applaud her commitment to bringing back year-round outdoor dining and cutting red tape – a vital opportunity that helps restaurants, workers, and neighborhoods thrive,” Rigie said in a statement to amNewYork. “We look forward to working with Speaker Menin and the City Council to ensure the program is reformed in a way that is fair and sustainable for communities across the five boroughs,”
