During COVID, roadway dining sheds were a lifeline to restaurants, but eventually they became a sanitation nightmare and, to some, an eyesore. So the city set out to codify the outdoor dining program.

Now, councilmembers and those in the restaurant industry want a do-over.

“The rollout of outdoor dining has been disastrous,” Councilmember Julie Menin, who heads the Committee on Consumer and Worker Protection, said.

Menin was also the head of the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection and says the Department of Transportation should have never overseen Dining Out NYC.

“That former agency, which I used to lead, used to run and have approval over sidewalk cafés. They were the agency who should have been given this program and now we are seeing the consequences of it,” Menin said.

Out of roughly 3,900 applications for roadway and sidewalk dining, only 67 restaurants have full approval, and about 2,600 were conditionally approved — but the approval process wasn’t even the biggest issue for some.

Charlotta Jansen says her restaurant Chez Oskar was approved for roadway dining, but they didn’t do it.

“It’s very expensive and we’re really hoping with this hearing we can do it year-round because then it’s worth it,” said Jansen. “Otherwise anything we make, we’ll spend it on taking it down, storing it and then putting it back up.”

“There’s a licensing fee, there is an annual rent, which needs to be pre-paid up front at the beginning of the year, and there’s a security deposit,” Robert Guarino, a partner at Chef Driven Hospitality, said. “So when you add this on top of the challenges of the program itself, which is very hard to apply without hiring a lawyer or an architect.”

Chef Driven Hospitality owns several restaurants including Nizza in Hell’s Kitchen and Guarino says the program even affected their longtime sidewalk café.

“In some cases it’s drastically limited the number of seats we can have,” he said.

For its part, the city DOT says it lowered fees and changed zoning to allow for outdoor dining in more areas of the city.

“The goal that we shared with the Council was to strike a balance between the programs of the past,” DOT First Deputy Commissioner Margaret Forgione said. “Loosening requirements from the pre-pandemic program as much as possible to encourage wider participation, while updating regulations to address quality of life concerns.”

The Council did approve this legislation but now both councilmembers and the restaurant industry hope this hearing will lead to changes, with the top change being to make the roadway dining program year-round.