How Outdoor Dining Helped NYC Restaurants Survive—and Thrive—During the Pandemic

Tori Latham
·2 min read

Despite the turmoil surrounding outdoor dining in New York City, a new report makes clear that the practice can have some major benefits for restaurants and bars.

A city report has analyzed the impact of the Open Streets program, which kept traffic off of busy streets during the pandemic and allowed businesses along them to set up shop in the road. Included in the report is evidence that restaurants and bars along these thoroughfares did better than those on regular commercial streets, and some even did better than they were doing before Covid-19 hit the city, according to The New York Times.

More from Robb Report

“During the pandemic, New Yorkers clearly loved eating outdoors—but we now also have empirical evidence of the positive role that dining on Open Streets had on local neighborhood economies and our broader city recovery,” Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez told the Times.

The numbers illustrate quite well just how beneficial the Open Streets program was in certain areas of the city. It looked at five such roads in Queens’s Astoria, Manhattan’s Chinatown and Koreatown and Brooklyn’s Park Slope and Prospect Heights. In 2021, from only June through August, these five areas brought in an average of $6 million in total revenue. That’s 19 percent higher than the $5 million average for the three years prior to the pandemic. And during that same June through August, restaurants and bars nearby but not on Open Streets brought in only $3.6 million in average total revenue, down 29 percent from the $5.3 million average they made before the pandemic.

Not only did these Open Streets do well economically, but they also grew. In the five areas assessed by the report, 101 restaurants and bars operated on the Open Streets in the summer of 2021, up from an average of 92 before Covid. In those other, non–Open Streets commercial areas, the total number was just 80 restaurants and bars, down from an average of 103 pre-pandemic.

“This research shows how building street life builds community wealth,” said Janette Sadik-Khan, a former NYC transportation commissioner and a principal with Bloomberg Associates, which helped produce the report. “New York offers cities evidence that the same strategies that can bring life into the open during a public emergency can also help cities recover long after.”

The Open Streets program was made permanent last year, but the state of outdoor dining in New York is still in flux, with some claiming that the practice has created unmanageable noise and trash issues, among other problems. But perhaps the positive economic impact will help sway some of those on the fence.

Best of Robb Report

Sign up for Robb Report's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Click here to read the full article.