Curbside dining is slowly starting to emerge with the spring weather, and a few folks have asked me to clarify the new rules for the city’s Dining Out program. The city is now permitting both roadway cafes and sidewalk cafes — 2600 have received permits so far — but I am focusing on the roadway cafes for now, which can be placed in any kind of parking area, including truck loading and unloading zones. Here goes:

LENGTH: The restaurant frontage is the linear space the cafes can occupy. They cannot go past their own frontage, but they can round the corner. The maximum length is 40 feet.

WIDTH: The maximum width from the curb is 8 feet.

BARRIERS: Barriers are required and have a minimum height of 30 inches, maximum height of 42 inches, not including any plantings. The minimum width is 4 inches. They must be filled with water. No advertising is permitted except the name of the restaurant.

FLOORING: Flooring is not required, but where it is not used, an ADA-compliant ramp is required into the roadway cafe.

OVERHEAD COVERINGS: Umbrellas or overhead coverings are permitted and must be a minimum of 7 feet and can extend no higher than 10 feet from the base or floor of the dining area. The coverings must be easily removable, wind-resistant and made of fire-resistant grade materials and have a weighted base.

LIGHTING: Lighting must be outdoor rated, properly secured, protected and lightweight and must be located within the roadway cafe and can only illuminate the cafe.

TIMING: Dining setups can be up from April 1 to Nov. 29, when they have to come down for the winter.
Roadway dining season in the city starts Tuesday, April 1. The structures can stay up until Nov. 29, when they have to come down for the winter.

You can search to see which restaurants have gotten permits here, but the system doesn’t make sense to me (and it didn’t seem to work when I tried it). It should work that you can see all the locations on the map, not search by name…

So far about 3000 restaurants have received permits citywide, out of approximately 10,000 citywide that had sheds during covid.

Now here’s the catch. If these things have to be disassembled each winter, where will they go? And the short answer: that’s the restaurant’s problem. The long answer: DOT is working with the private sector to create rentable outdoor dining setups with setup and breakdown services.