Red tape blocks NYC restaurants from offering outdoor dining leading to steep drop in options: Its a disaster

New York City has let outdoor dining — a lifeline to restaurants during the pandemic and since — stagnate, issuing less than a fifth as many permits this spring as it did during the height of the program.Six weeks into the 2026 outdoor dining season, only 2,100 Big Apple eateries have permits — down from roughly 2,500 last year and about 13,000 during COVID times, Side Dish has learned.Around 1,000 restaurants were still waiting for permits as of last year, according to the city Department of Transportation, which declined to share how many are still in limbo.Some have been waiting over a year, sources said.New Yorkers love dining al fresco, which gives restaurants the opportunity to increase their footprint — and revenue.But permits have become “too expensive and bureaucratic,” Andrew Rigie, executive director of the NYC Hospitality Alliance, told Side Dish.“We always knew fewer restaurants would have outdoor dining once the pandemic ended, but no one thought that the numbers would plummet so significantly,” he said.Last year, city lawmakers revamped the COVID-era outdoor dining policy, limiting tables on roadways to warmer months and requiring a host of paperwork for restaurants to get permission.“When the city made roadway cafes seasonal, many restaurants didn’t even apply.

It’s too expensive to build, take down, store and pay again to set up in the spring and the city is requiring all fees paid upfront in one lump sum,” Rigie said.There’s also “lots of confusion” and red tape, he noted.Case in point: a bureaucratic nightmare Helen Zhang, co-owner of Ziggy’s Roman Cafe in Dumbo, recently shared on Instagram.The restaurateur showed her followers her odyssey to try to get face time with a DOT worker “107 days” after applying for a permit.“Every nice day that it’s outside, it’s a lot of lost revenue for us,” she recorded herself telling a faceless bureaucrat, who replied: “I can’t promise anything right now.”As of W...