How the outdoor dining ‘streatery’ has evolved five years after the pandemic

Selling toilet paper and creating elaborate family to-go meals were simply not enough to make up for the empty dining rooms at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, came a much-needed Hail Mary: the streatery program. Restaurants began erecting outdoor sheds — ranging from elaborate fully-enclosed second dining rooms to small lean-tos — to encourage skittish would-be customers to come back to restaurants.

Local municipalities scrambled to launch emergency street dining rules and waived permit costs for outdoor structures. I was living in New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic, and I remember that in 2020 and 2021, the city felt like one big block party — filled with groups of mask-wearing friends and families enjoying a meal out for the first time since March 2020.

At its peak, more than 12,000 restaurants across the city participated. But after a while, people dropped the masks, began venturing back inside, and many of these structures fell into disrepair.

I remember walking past abandoned and graffitied outdoor dining structures in my Queens neighborhood that restaurants no longer needed but had not yet removed. Unlike with wiping down groceries and hoarding N-95 masks, outdoor dining did not become a relic of the pandemic years. Instead, the streatery evolved.

With growing demand across the United States for a more permanent solution, cities and states began replacing pandemic-era emergency rules with more permanent — and often more restrictive — outdoor dining programs. In 2023 and 2024, municipalities began implementing stricter regulations for a new wave of outdoor dining, with mixed responses from businesses and residents.

The challenge was no longer simply how to get customers comfortable eating outside. Cities had to balance consumers’ desire for dining al fresco in the warmer months with bike lanes, bus lanes, traffic flow, parking and accessibility.

Now, five years after the pandemic, cities are taking very different approaches to that balancing act. New York City: Outdoor Dining 3.0 In 2023, New York approved a permanent Dining Out NYC program with new regulations and a compromise: Sidewalk cafés were allowed year-round, but roadway cafés had to be limited to the warmer months and shut down from December through April.

The new rules ended up being unpopular with many operators, and the number of restaurants with outdoor dining licenses dropped dramatically, from more than 12,000 in 2021 to fewer than 2,000 by summer 2026. “The outdoor dining program [during the pandemic] helped save thousands of restaurants from permanently shuttering,” Andrew Rigie, executive director of New York City Hospitality Alliance, said. “But there weren't many standards, so as we transitioned out of the pandemic, the goal was to create a more standardized but equitable program.

Unfortunately, that program had a lot of shortcomings.” For smaller restaurants in particular, Rigie said, the cost of setting up a roadway café, breaking it down, storing it over the winter, and setting it up again the following spring became a deterrent to participation.

This summer, New York City’s City Council voted to transition to a permanent outdoor dining program with less red tape. Under outdoor dining 3.0 — which consists of a few separate pieces of legislation — roadway cafés can be open year-round but must close by 11 p.m.

Operators can also use high-quality, weatherproof materials for their structures instead of taking them down every winter. Mayor Zohran Mamdani is expected to sign this new program into law soon. “We hope this will reduce a lot of the operational financial burdens on those restaurants that have already received an outdoor dining license, and that it will encourage other restaurants that were deterred from participating to apply,” Rigie said.

California: Making pandemic-era flexibility permanent California has taken a notably different approach.

The state also enacted several regulatory flexibilities around street dining during the pandemic. Last year, it passed AB 592, which extended these provisions and modified them in places where street parking was displaced.

Instead of expiring this summer, regulations covering permanent outdoor dining structures, as well as outdoor catering and alcohol service, were extended through 2029. “There are fewer ‘streateries’ today than during the height of the pandemic, but the spaces that remain are significantly higher quality and structurally permanent,” California Restaurant Association president and CEO Jot Condie said. “AB 592 was a significant help to restaurant owners by … providing certainty for restaurant operators,

and it permanently allows local governments to grant relief from parking minimums when spaces are converted to outdoor dining.” Put simply, California has largely moved in the direction of making the pandemic-era flexibility stick, rather than replacing it with an entirely new, more restrictive framework.

Washington, D.C.: Stricter and more expensive

Restaurant operators have been unhappy with legislation that tightened regulations and made it more difficult to comply with guidelines while continuing to operate outdoor dining structures. A new system was enacted last December.

Moving from a temporary and flexible pandemic-era program to a permanent, more rigidly structured one could cost operators more than $10,000 in setup costs and fees. The rules also include ADA compliance and structure-quality requirements, as well as a prohibition on outdoor live music and TVs.

Most existing structures did not meet these requirements, which went into effect in March, and needed to be torn down and rebuilt. “Changes to the streatery policy can carry real costs for owners and operators,” RAMW, the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington, said in an emailed statement. “New guidelines create additional concerns for many small and independent restaurants already working hard to recover from other challenges.

Some operators have chosen not to continue because of the cost or operational requirements, while others are actively working through the permitting process to keep their outdoor dining spaces.”

The bottom line

All three of these updated programs are still relatively new, and either in their first or second season of operation. But they illustrate the central challenge for cities trying to make outdoor dining a permanent part of the restaurant landscape: There is a fine, but crucial, line between helpful regulation that provides consistency and streetscape balance, and too many rules that become financially prohibitive for operators.

After all, as nice as dining al fresco might be, for most operators, $10,000 is prohibitively expensive just to keep the street party going.