Outdoor dining fades as pandemic persists — making public spaces even less accessible

Outdoor dining was seemingly everywhere earlier in the pandemic — but as policymakers and much of the public try to forget about COVID-19, spaces for people to gather with lesser risk of contracting the disabling and deadly SARS-CoV-2 virus grow rarer.

Cities that once saw hundreds or even thousands of restaurants and bars with outdoor seating have seen those numbers shrink. In New York, where between 6,000 and 8,000 establishments operated outdoors as recently as this summer, just 2,592 applied to operate under new rules that went into effect Aug. 3 — a decline of nearly 60 percent or more. In Philadelphia, the number of restaurants permitted to operate “streetery” set-ups dropped from over 800 to 13, with even fewer signed up for 2025. 

In the early years of COVID-19, cities and states waived fees, regulations, and other bureaucratic hoops for restaurants to set up outside. As policymakers pushed pandemic mitigations to the margins, layers of regulation returned. Restaurant owners across the country argue that new rules, while less stringent than pre-pandemic, still discourage them from bringing tables, chairs, and service outside.

That’s left individuals and communities who do not want to contract COVID-19 — including high risk people, people with Long COVID and other disabilities — with fewer and fewer options. Especially since most restaurants or other indoor public spaces fail to clean their air, like the Toronto-area’s Apricot Tree Café, which uses high-quality air purifiers to reduce the risk of infection.  

Even in California, one of the few places in the United States where state law still cites COVID-19 mitigation as a reason for waiving pre-pandemic restrictions on outdoor dining, the number of restaurants offering al fresco eating has dropped.

“I’ve definitely noticed a shift towards, you know, a lot of the parklets closing. It’s a lot less common,” San Franciscan Anisha Sekar, who has Long COVID and does not eat or drink inside any restaurants or bars, told The Sick Times. “Things that make life more accessible are going away.”

Sekar said she gets invited to indoor events and is tempted to go — but typically decides against it.

These events “sound fun,” she said, but could lead to her “getting more sick or maybe someone else getting sick,” she said. “My immune system is not great after two infections from COVID. When I do the risk-reward calculus about whether it is worth it to eat inside and risk extending the four years I’ve been dealing with this, I think, absolutely not.”

Health measures v. parking spaces

Since SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, spreads more easily indoors, outdoor dining is one mitigation layer that helps decrease the spread of the disease in communities. Even then, some people may not be comfortable dining outdoors as the risk of infection is not zero. Studies and the experiences of people with Long COVID show reinfection can exacerbate symptoms and lower the quality of life of people with the disease. Reinfection also increases the risk of getting Long COVID, if you don’t already have it.

“Epidemiologic evidence makes clear that well-ventilated outdoor settings have a lower risk of COVID-19 transmission than indoor settings,” said Alison Cohen, an assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco. 

“Outdoor dining is a critical way to make restaurants accessible to people for whom indoor dining is too high of a COVID-19 risk and for people who prefer to reduce their risk of COVID-19 infection,” Cohen added.

Amie Pascal, who has Long COVID, relies on outdoor seating in a former parking space outside BRUT Champagne & Wine Bar in Astoria, Oregon, to gather with friends since moving to the city two and a half years ago. This spring that outdoor seating came under threat: A handful of locals complained about the impact on parking, and the City Council considered scrapping permits for restaurants set up in the street.

Astoria’s dense historic downtown offers little space for outdoor seating besides the “parklets” that replaced car storage spots after the pandemic started. Without them, Pascal would have few options. 

“Some locals were complaining that there was ‘a parking problem.’ They consider it a parking problem if they can’t literally pull up in front of the store they’re going to,” Pascal said. “It’s disappointing that people won’t think outside of themselves.”

Lisa Parks, BRUT’s owner, rallied her customers to turn out to council meetings in support — and instead of shrinking the program, the city codified and expanded it.

“My space is extremely small, narrow, unventilated. There’s a lot of people who don’t want to be in here, especially when it’s crowded,” said Parks. “I want people to feel good and comfortable and safe. That’s important to me.”

I want people to feel good and comfortable and safe. That’s important to me.

Lisa Parks

Increased barriers for restaurants

Restaurants in other municipalities haven’t been so lucky. 

In New York City, the city’s initial pandemic outdoor dining program faced legal challenges and political pushback. Mayor Eric Adams took a literal sledgehammer to an outdoor dining shed to symbolize his pledge to rid the city of the alleged scourge of unattractive, rat-infested set-ups. His legislative counterpart, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, took an even harder line — at one point arguing that set-ups in parking spots “were designed to be temporary.” 

Last summer, outdoor dining opponents who sued to stop the New York program specifically cited the ends of the federal pandemic emergency, mask mandates, contact tracing, unemployment relief, and the pandemic eviction moratorium as evidence that roadside outdoor dining should also cease. 

The legal pressure forced the Adamses, who are not related, to advance plans for a permanent program, with significant changes. The new program, which is currently accepting applications, created strict design standards and banned roadway for the entirety of December through March, despite those being increasingly warm months when COVID cases often surge. 

Restaurant owners said the seasonal program  was “destroying small businesses” but the city moved ahead. Forced to scrap unregulated early pandemic set-ups that cost tens of thousands of dollars to build — and burdened by the prospect of having to dismantle every winter — many restaurants have opted not to participate in the permanent program. While over 2,500 eateries and bars applied for permits under the new rules, that figure represents 80 percent of the 12,500 outdoor dining applications submitted to the city since 2020.

Many New York City eateries plan to shut down outdoor operations completely — echoing the fate of their I-95 neighbors in Philadelphia, where stringent permanent rules decimated a once-thriving pandemic experiment. Restaurant operators have griped about new fees, insurance minimums, and rules that prohibit them from extending set-ups beyond the footprint of their storefronts.

Philadelphia City Council Member Rue Landau has pushed to ease the city’s regulations in response to low participation rates. Her focus has been on letting eateries expand their outdoor footprints in front of adjacent businesses, she said in an interview.

“We have a lot of restaurants that are built in buildings that are basically row houses — they’re maybe 15 feet wide and there’s oftentimes a small sidewalk in front … where you may only be able to put up two small tables with two chairs each,” Landau said. “If you have to move into the street, all of a sudden you have a large space [and] you can make even more space accessible.”

People concerned about catching COVID say they want to be able to enjoy the communal and interpersonal experiences of sharing a meal with a far lower risk of infection.

Sarah Buckley, who has Long COVID and lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where temperatures are often too high to eat outside, said she takes every opportunity to do so. Buckley values a restaurant meal now and then — she called it “one of the best ways to spend time together” — but eating indoors wracks her nerves. Her visits to New York and Nashville, cities with more outdoor options, were revelatory.

“Between my second and third [COVID] infection, I started eating indoors at some places,” Buckley, a defense contractor, told The Sick Times. “When I got sick a third time, it kind of threw into focus that the threat is still there, it’s probably always going to be there.”

COVID is transmitted through the air, she said. “But outdoors, you have the wind and other mechanisms that drive it away more than in small spaces like a restaurant.”

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David Meyer is a journalist based in Brooklyn, New York and the deputy editor of Streetsblog NYC.

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