By Forum Staff
Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday opened applications for restaurants to apply for and participate in Dining Out NYC — the city’s permanent outdoor dining program. The online application portal will serve as an easy access point for restaurants to apply to participate in the program, understand the guidelines that the program establishes, and download sample blueprints from the Dining Out NYC Set-Up Menu for how an outdoor setup will need to look.
Dining Out NYC draws on lessons learned from the temporary outdoor dining program created during the COVID-19 pandemic, which saved 100,000 jobs across the city but led to quality-of-life issues as a subset of restaurant owners were unable to maintain loosely-regulated outdoor dining setups, Adams said.
“We’re getting outdoor dining right, getting sheds down, getting trash off our streets, and fundamentally changing what it feels like to be outside in New York City,” said Adams. “The portal we’re opening today will make it easy for restaurants to participate in Dining Out NYC, build setups that work for diners, owners, neighbors, and our city, and continue to hire workers and serve satisfied customers. We’ve locked in the best parts of the pandemic program and done away with the worst, and I can’t wait to dine out this summer!”
A restaurant currently participating in the temporary program must apply to be a part of the permanent program by August 3, 2024 to continue operating throughout the approval process. Restaurants participating in the temporary program that do not apply by August 3 must remove their current outdoor dining setups.
Through an extensive outreach campaign, the City Department of Transportation is notifying all restaurants currently participating in the temporary program to submit applications through the online portal for the permanent program. All restaurants, even those that did not participate in the temporary program, are welcome to apply for Dining Out NYC. A restaurant’s outdoor dining setup must comply with the program’s design requirements within 30 days of their application approval. On this timeline, the first approved Dining Out NYC setups will hit New York City streets in the summer of 2024.
The Dining Out NYC Set-Up Menu will serve as a valuable resource for restaurants, offering guidance on outdoor dining regulations and blueprints for setup options. Under Dining Out NYC, outdoor dining setups will use lightweight materials that are easily movable and visible on the street, and the setups will preserve clear paths on sidewalks and emergency roadway lanes, as well as continue to provide accessibility for people with physical disabilities. Restaurants will secure tables, chairs, and other furnishings within their setups during non-operating hours. The setups themselves will include anti-rat mitigations and will be able to withstand inclement weather.
In conjunction with the New York City Economic Development Corporation, the city retained WXY, a planning, urban design and architecture studio, and SITU, a research, design and fabrication firm, to develop four prototype roadway cafe setups. Each prototype is tailored to a different diverse street context and showcases the envisioned aesthetic of Dining Out NYC. The Dining Out NYC Set-Up Menu outlines best practices utilized by the different prototypes, and the plans for each prototype are available for download.
