Pictures of the first day of outdoor dining for New York City's restaurants show that restaurants are still fighting an uphill battle
Irene Jiang / Business Insider
- New York City allowed restaurants to reopen for outdoor dining only on Monday.
- We walked through the city's Lower East Side neighborhood to speak to restaurant owners and workers about the reopening process, and we found that sidewalk dining is far from a silver bullet for struggling restaurants.
- Social distancing rules are incredibly hard for restaurants in a cramped city like New York to follow. And even if restaurants are able to space out tables, preventing pedestrians from encroaching upon dining space will be a whole other issue.
- Even with socially distanced outdoor tables, most restaurants won't be able to even approach the level of business they had before the pandemic.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood to reopen for outdoor dining. Monday in New York City was the kind of hot, sunny day that frequent sit-downs in the shade.
Unlike other jurisdictions, which have also allowed indoor dining to reopen at limited capacity, New York City has only allowed outdoor dining to reopen, socially distanced of course. And in a famously crowded city where space is a precious commodity, the tenets of social distancing are especially difficult for restaurants to follow.
The pandemic has been worst for restaurants that typically rely on dine-in revenue. Those that could pivot to a take-out and delivery model, often generating only a fraction of what they used to make. Outdoor dining has been touted as a potential (at least temporary) solution for restaurants with limited indoor dining space. But restaurants have incredibly thin profit margins, meaning they have to be mostly full to make money.
We took a walk around Manhattan's Lower East Side to speak to restaurant owners and workers about reopening for outdoor dining, and we found that outdoor dining is far from a silver bullet for struggling restaurants.
At around 11:30 am, many restaurants were still setting up their seating areas.
Irene Jiang / Business Insider
Even with seating spilling into parking spots, the required six-foot social distance between tables meant that seating was still extremely limited. For restaurants that only profit when their dining rooms are full, sidewalk seating is hardly a long-term solution.
Irene Jiang / Business Insider
At Ivan Ramen, an open door was the only sign the restaurant was open.
Irene Jiang / Business Insider
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
See Also:
- Yelp pages will now show you if a business is following coronavirus safety guidelines like spacing out tables and requiring staff to wear masks
- 10 restaurant chains including McDonald's and Subway are hiring more than 400,000 new employees. Here's the full list.
- A Chinatown restaurant was looted during protests after a troll spread allegedly fake racist messages from the owner, highlighting the complicated relationship between Black and Asian Americans