[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: City Song]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. If you're a restaurant owner or service worker, you might know that this past Saturday, August 3rd, was the last day for restaurants, cafes, and bars to apply to keep their outdoor dining structures. Under a new city program, restaurants must apply for a permit or adhere to a new set of guidelines for their outdoor dining setups. If establishments do not apply by Saturday, August 3rd, they must take down their existing setups or face sizable fines.

The new regulations include the size of structures, the distance from the sidewalk, the materials used. Proponents like the Department of Transportation, who are in charge of this initiative, say this permanent plan is the best way to make outdoor dining more sanitary, more uniform, and aesthetically pleasing. Meanwhile, some critics, like small business owners who rely on outdoor structures for much-needed revenue during the pandemic, are raising concerns about the program's high costs and onerous regulations. We're joined by Ryan Kailath, reporter at WNYC in Gothamist, to walk us through what this means for restaurants and restaurant workers, as well as patrons like you and me. Hi, Ryan.

Ryan Kailath: Hey, Alison.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we want to hear from you. Are you a restaurant or bar owner who applied for the outdoor dining program? What was your rationale? Or maybe you decided, no, not doing it. Give us a call. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Perhaps you're a service worker who works at a restaurant with outdoor dining, how will this new program impact you? We'd love to hear your stories. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Or maybe you love outdoor dining, but you'd like to see some changes. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can reach out on social media @allofitwnyc.

Let's go all the way back during the pandemic, the city relaxed regulations for outdoor dining in order to help restaurant owners who were hit hard by COVID. What was allowed in the original days, in the old days?

Ryan Kailath: Yes, well, if we go, really, if we can time travel back to the ancient age of 2019, restaurants in the city were having a hard time, especially small restaurants. The sort of rent and labor costs and material costs. The economics weren't working out for restaurants then. You saw a lot of small dinner-only places, 50 seats. Prune, if you remember, that restaurant on East 1st Street famously closed, Gabrielle Hamilton, the owner, said, she joked, "I've been running a non-profit for years," just because a restaurant like that didn't work out.

At the time there was, if we can remember all the way back to 2019, there was outdoor dining. There were 1200 or so restaurants that had sidewalk seating. It was very expensive. Landmarking rules, zoning rules. You didn't see a ton of it. Then the pandemic happened, and of course, it shut everything down right away, but then it actually became this lifeline for restaurants in two ways. One, rents came down. We all remember that, and we remember how quickly they went back up. But two, there were no laws for outdoor dining. Right? The city's emergency plan meant that local laws went out the window, and so this temporary dining program, restaurants could do whatever they wanted, and they did. That's when we saw everything we saw in the past four years.

Alison Stewart: Oh, yes. People sitting out in their coats in cold weather, eating outside.

Ryan Kailath: Yes, exactly.

Alison Stewart: And completely happy to be doing so.

Ryan Kailath: Thrilled. Maybe a little heater, maybe just their own body warmth, all kinds of designs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so this was a lifeline not just for the restaurants that needed to survive during COVID but also for the business model of that small restaurant in New York City. Because where it was previously 50 seats inside, now it might be 50 inside and 100 outside. So that extra revenue, which didn't come with a lot of added costs, maybe you need another server or something like that, really saved a lot of these restaurants. Now that it's changing, they're worried it'll break their business model again.

Alison Stewart: So what problems started to arise with people eating outdoors in these sheds?

Ryan Kailath: The classic complaints that we've fought in public forums for a couple of years now are rats. I've heard the derisive term that these are homeless shelters, sometimes cleanliness, eyesore. A lot of people are worried about their block looking less pretty. Those are the biggest negative arguments.

Alison Stewart: Take me through the rationale of this application process. The city says, okay, we need to do something about it. What was the first thing they did?

Ryan Kailath: Yes. The city emergency ended, so all of a sudden the laws had to kick back in, and there were no laws that--

Alison Stewart: The what?

Ryan Kailath: Exactly. There were no laws that addressed this new situation, possession, nine-tenths of the law, and these sheds are everywhere and sidewalk dining. So the city council fought it out for a while and finally passed this law. It's going to change everything and it already started. Walking around, I've been taking pictures for my own reporting of all the sheds that are coming down, and they have started to.

Like you alluded to when we started, there are rules about size, regulation, distance from stop signs, season. The roadway sheds, what we call the sheds, those will have to come down for about five months. Sidewalk will be year-round, but everybody pays fees now, subject to approval, et cetera, et cetera.

Alison Stewart: I can remember in the time that I was away, as we say around here, I didn't go out for three months because I was healing from brain surgery, and I was shocked at how many sheds had already come down. Like, everywhere, I was like, whoa, that restaurant used to have a shed. Oh, that place. I'm wondering, were restaurants getting prepared for this August 3rd deadline?

Ryan Kailath: Yes, I talked to so many for my reporting. Some were getting deeply prepared. Some were in with their application because they knew it could work for them the day the application opened. Some, scarily, a week or so before the deadline, were on calls and webinars with the city asking super basic questions that had been answered a million times in other places, so wide spectrum. But, yes, you went into a time warp, basically, and when you came out, you saw that the city's outdoor dining situation is radically changing.

Alison Stewart: Ryan Kailath is my guest. He's arts and culture reporter for WNYC and Gothamists. We are talking about the deadline for New York restaurants to apply to continue their outdoor setups. Listeners, let's get you in on this. Are you a restaurant owner who applied to a recent outdoor dining setup? What was your rationale? Maybe you decided against applying, tell us your reasoning. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Or maybe you're a service worker who works at a restaurant with outdoor dining setup, how do you think the decision is going to impact you? We'd like to hear your story. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC.

Or maybe you're someone who wants to weigh in. You like outdoor dining? Yes. Keep it. Other people? No way. 212-433-9692. You can call us or you can text to us at that number. All right, let's talk about the application by numbers. If you go to diningoutnyc.com, it looks a little like a game, sort of, there's little bubbles you can press on here and there. Did you find it easy to navigate?

Ryan Kailath: No. That website is a lot like a video game, but the most boring, worst one I've ever played. There's also, if you prefer, there's a handy dandy 31-page PDF that just has every little rule written out in the style of the city council. I'm not sure which one is easier.

Alison Stewart: Yes, I wondered if that was supposed to make it happier. Like a happier, like, look, you can take part in this now. Look at these beautiful designs we made. They're trying to roll it out like it's a positive, question mark.

Ryan Kailath: You know, good publicity.

Alison Stewart: Can you do an updated, any number of restaurants who have applied? Do they have licenses?

Ryan Kailath: Yes, if I remember rightly, it was so before the pandemic, there were 1,200 that had sidewalk dining. During the pandemic, over those four years, it exploded to something like 12 or 13,000. So more than ten X, and now that's going to come down by about 80%. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but restaurants are applying I think about 2,600 or 3,000 or so for a mix of we want tables on the sidewalk, we want a shed in the street, or we want both.

Alison Stewart: Was there any sort of, based on geography, one area that did well? Yes, we're going to continue with the licenses or another area that said, ah, not so much.

Ryan Kailath: The city hasn't released it yet. What they're going to be doing they said this month is to have a map that shows all the approved locations. But the process is still so early that a lot of places who are applying, whatever that roughly 3000 number was, a lot of them potentially won't be approved. If they want a shed in the street, they have to do a local public hearing, they have to go to the community board, they have to take feedback. So this is just the start of the process, this deadline on August, and of those 3000 or so that applied, not all will get it.

Alison Stewart: 3,226 license, that was was told.

Ryan Kailath: Licenses, but again, some of those are double, somebody who wants both a sidewalk and a road. So I think it's like 2,600 restaurants.

Alison Stewart: One of the things that was interesting is if you have a shed, whatever we're calling the sheds now, they can't operate year-round.

Ryan Kailath: Yes. I think they come down in, I believe it's November and go back up in April. The coldest parts of the year.

Alison Stewart: What about outside dining? That's different from the sheds, the sidewalk dining, where does that fall onto the rubric?

Ryan Kailath: So they'll also have to pay fees. They'll also have to follow rules. You might remember from before the blip that--

Alison Stewart: I had two blips.

Ryan Kailath: If the neighbors let you, you would see restaurants that had sidewalk tables all the way down the block because they had a friendly neighbor that was closed at night or something like that. Now you're restricted to your own block, so those numbers are shrinking as well. The one that will be, I don't know if you want to call it safe, but won't change that much is the open streets where sometimes they'll block off a street temporarily and restaurants can move tables out there. That's a whole separate thing that's not really touched by this. So if your neighborhood has one of those, it might look the same.

Alison Stewart: I've seen some of these sheds, and they're really elaborate. Is there any sort of side rule for places like, hey, we tried to make a really great-looking shed. We really tried to be gentle with the neighborhood. Is there any sort of outlet for those restaurants?

Ryan Kailath: Yes. I was at Cafe Spaghetti in Red Hook, Columbia Street Waterfront District recently, and theirs is a building. It's got heat in the winter and AC in the summer. It looks like a little house, like a little country house. Nope, that thing's gotta change. Now, you're allowed to have your own design as long as you follow the rules. For example, the rules say no enclosed space. It's got to be open on three sides. So those people who had AC in the worst of summer in their little thing, that's not happening anymore. Unless you want to cool down the entire neighborhood, as my dad would say.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Howard from Sheepshead Bay. Hi, Howard. Thank you so much for calling in.

Howard: Thank you for taking my call and very nice to have you back. I'm very happy that hopefully a lot of these sheds that are blocking streets are going to come down. They block traffic, they block service trucks. I service businesses in the area. In fact, there are a bunch of places on Carmine Street, that vegan places that I love to go to, but while those sheds are up, it's impossible to get through. It's impossible to drive through. I'm thrilled that hopefully some of these are going to come down.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much. Got another one. Shed set a terrible precedent for private companies to take over public space. The sheds in danger and embarrass those bound to wheelchairs and cyclists. That's interesting. All of that's actually interesting, that point.

Ryan Kailath: Yes. Certainly, anybody in the city who's not making room for people who need room to get by, yes, you should have to fix that. That's interesting. The first caller Howard in Sheepshead Bay, he said he enjoys eating at his local restaurants but also needs to service them. Sounds like he might be driving things through those small streets. And, yes, it'll be interesting to see whether some of his favorite restaurants close or not.

Alison Stewart: Depending on where you live, there's going to be an annual fee if you have the outside dining and it goes by different restaurants. West Village near us, $31 per square foot. What is this fee? They call it a revocable consent fee. What does it stand for?

Ryan Kailath: I never bothered to Google it because it's just a fee.

Alison Stewart: It's just a fee. Well, you know what, is the city making money from this?

Ryan Kailath: Yes. As they did before, and it's a lot cheaper than it was before. So previously there was a big upfront fee and then I believe some square foot fees, if you were on the sidewalk, all of them, the upfront and the per square foot have come down. So it actually is much cheaper. Restaurant owners that I talked to as well as the city, which was tooting its own horn, both said, yes, that's the unequivocal positive. It's cheaper than it was before the pandemic.

Alison Stewart: What are some additional costs to the restaurant owner?

Ryan Kailath: Of taking down or the whole thing?

Alison Stewart: Taking down or putting up. Both.

Ryan Kailath: So the city estimates that the sheds, the new sort of approved design ones, will cost low five figures with a lot of variability depending on size and design and how fancy you want it to be. So call that 10,000. Then you've got to store it over the winter, right? Because these things--

Alison Stewart: Where do you find storage in the city? Sorry.

Ryan Kailath: Yes, yes. No. There's a cottage industry already popping up of services that, hey, we'll come take it down, we'll store it, we'll put it back, et cetera. So owners that I talked to, restaurant owners, are having to navigate this sea of new contractors and cottage industry types who were addressing this brand new market.

Alison Stewart: Who is going to be the boss of all this? The big person who goes around and gives out the tickets.

Ryan Kailath: It seems like the Department of Transportation, who are newly in charge of this program. It was a different city agency before the pandemic. It seems like they'll be doing it. If I recall rightly, it's a small fine, your first violation, and a bigger one the second, if I have that right. And yes, the DOT said that this month there would be a map of approved locations, so any vigilantes who are on the beat in their neighborhood will be able to see it.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Ryan Kailath. He is arts and culture reporter for WNYC/Gothamist. We are talking about New York City restaurants applying for the permit to continue their outdoor dining setup. It passed this past weekend. Listeners, are you a restaurant owner who's applied for the recent dining setup? Maybe you have a shed, you want to keep it. What's your rationale? Maybe you decided against applying. Tell us. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Or if you're a service worker and you work at this restaurant, what do you expect the decision, and how it will impact you? 212-433-9692. Before we went on the air, you were saying that this was really a story about small business and the survival of small business. Tell us a little more.

Ryan Kailath: Yes. That idea I laid out at the beginning that restaurants were having a hard time before COVID, COVID was kind of a lifeline in terms of their business model, I've now talked to people. One of the people in my early reporting, Samantha DiStefano is her name, she's been running restaurants in the area for almost 30 years, New Jersey and New York City. Her newest restaurant, Mama Fox, it's in Bed-Stuy. It's a great neighborhood restaurant. It's exactly this kind of small restaurant we were talking about that was having a hard time before.

She said she was starting to have a hard time again. People are going out less, they're spending less than they do. She said revenue is down 20%, not just for her, but for all her industry friends that she talks to. And with the loss of, I think it was about half her seating this past Saturday, she closed her business down. It was her last day in business. She didn't say that was exactly the reason, but she was certainly pushing back hard against these rules. I think from all the people I've talked to more than two dozen restaurant owners, we're going to see a lot of that in the next year or so.

Alison Stewart: Have you talked to service workers?

Ryan Kailath: Yes. Cafe Gitane. Do you remember that place in Nolita? Classic, turns 30 this year, which is mind-blowing to me. They had the most amazing, just pleasant setup during COVID because they used to be always like four little low blue tables outside, and they spread out to 16. Every day, it was like a block party in front of Cafe Gitane. European tourists and fashion types walking around with their Aperol spritz.

Now that they've gotten rid of most of those tables and they're back down to four, the manager there told me they've had to lay off staff, reduce other people's hours, cut positions, not fill empty positions. I believe her words were she described it as death at the restaurant, and the entire vibe on the street and in the neighborhood is completely different.

Alison Stewart: Got a text says, hi, I'm a person who builds and maintains these street structures. They were originally made in a frenzy to last one season, so I'm glad there'll be guidelines and that all of them will be freshened up. The program is actually pretty reasonable in my eyes and considers problems I've grappled with for years. That's interesting.

Ryan Kailath: That is interesting. And people who can afford it and even people who can't have told me, restaurant owners, service workers, people who are against this say, yes, some rules are better than no rules. Yes, laws are better than a lawlessness. Most people are pretty agreed on that. I think the people pushing back in the industry, in the restaurant industry, were looking for more flexibility. They wanted those really nice setups. They wanted to carve out if, hey, we built a whole other building with AC over here. They wanted just a little room in the regulations.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Gabby from Manhattan. Hi, Gabby. Thanks for calling all of it.

Gabby: Hi. How are you doing?

Alison Stewart: Doing great. What's up?

Gabby: So I'm calling because I'm a retail leasing broker based in Manhattan, and essentially that job helps people find locations for their stores to open, whether it's a restaurant or a dry goods store, et cetera, et cetera. I've helped countless restaurants find their location pre-COVID, during COVID, and after COVID, and not once, not ever has a restaurant ever underwrote outdoor space as part of their business model for paying for rent.

So I find it really interesting when small business owners now talk about or any business owner talks about how their outdoor space is so important to their business model. Fundamentally, I would never advise anyone to make that part of their business model anyway, because there's always a chance for something like this to happen for the laws to change, and then you can't pay your base rent, which is based on your indoor square footage. So that's just the insight that I wanted to call and discuss.

Alison Stewart: Gabby, thank you so much for sharing. What do you think, Ryan?

Ryan Kailath: Thanks, Gaby. That is super interesting. This is new, right? This is just in the past few years. I did talk to some people who opened not before the pandemic and this was a change to their way of running business, but people who opened in 2022 and 2023. I imagine, Gabby, that maybe those people weren't coming to you, but one of them, in what some people like to call Dime Square in Downtown, I think their restaurant was something like 40 seats inside and 86 outside when they opened in 2022. So for them, it was absolutely a part of the decision that they could do this.

Now, that was a big, well-capitalized restaurant group. The guy is a socialite. I think his wedding was in Vogue. He's got six places around town. He told me he's going to be fine because he can swing it. He's going to lose a few seats. He's applying to the new program. He can afford storage. He can afford building. He can afford everything. Who I was hearing from are the people who didn't have that deep well of capital, who were struggling to make expenses on a monthly or quarterly basis, who said, hey, I can't throw another 20k, a season down.

Alison Stewart: Anna online, too. Hi, Anna. Thanks for calling.

Anna: Oh, hi, guys. I just happen to have caught your show. I'm born and raised in Manhattan, and I personally think all of those outdoor sheds need to go right now. They're horrible. It's enough already. During the lockdown, it was fantastic. New York's a friendly city, it's great we're helping out the businesses and everyone, and it was hard on everyone, but they're dangerous. I don't mean to sound like a prude, because I'm a laid-back kind of gal, but you try to cross the street, and even if when you have a light, you can't see sometimes the bikers that are going by really fast. It's a total danger. And you know what? When I go outside, I want-- The outdoor cafes, those are fantastic. Outdoor cafes are fantastic, but I want fresh air. I want a little bit of open space. They all have to go. It's enough already. That's all I wanted to say.

Alison Stewart: All right, Anna. We got a text. Always surprised the fuss New York City makes about activities that test the world that they do it-- Wait, let me reset that. Always surprised the fuss New York City makes about activities the Test of the World does every day. It says that. Outdoor terraces, sidewalk tables, and chairs are all over the city, like Madrid, and it works really well. Heaters in winter and cooling mist in the summer. Stop complicating things.

Ryan Kailath: Wow. So the texter versus Anna there.

Alison Stewart: It's really interesting.

Ryan Kailath: Anna raised a good point, especially about what the city calls daylighting. That's where you have enough space at corners to be able to see cars or bikes that are coming. That was a problem with these because a lot of these sheds go right up to the stop sign, you can't even see that there's a stop sign there. That is one of the new regulations. You've got to make sure the stop sign is visible. You got to have a little room at the corner so pedestrians and vehicles can interact. I imagine a lot of people would say that's one of the better regulations here.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about the person who told you that the sheds were "nasty rat shacks". How much will the new program reduce rats? It's a big question in New York all the time.

Ryan Kailath: Yes, we got to get our sanitation reporter, Liam Quigley, in here for that one. I imagine that they provided a habitat in some spaces, but I'd be surprised if rats couldn't find somewhere else to live in the city.

Alison Stewart: A year from now, what do you think the outdoor dining landscape will look like?

Ryan Kailath: I think it'll be severely shrunk. A year from now will be what? Late next summer. The applications are ongoing, they're rolling, so people who didn't apply by this deadline, that's a problem for this season. They'll have to take down or adjust this season, but people who want to apply next season, they can continue. It's not like a one-and-done situation forever, but based on these initial numbers, based on everyone I've talked to, based on the costs and just back and nap and the numbers involved, it seems like, again, big restaurant groups will be able to afford this and benefit from the revenue that comes with it, and smaller local businesses will not, and they'll miss out.

Alison Stewart: Arts and culture reporter for WNYC and Gothamist, Ryan Kailath, thank you so much for your time.

Ryan Kailath: Thanks, Alison.

 

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