Hope is on the menu for Big Apple restaurants.
City Council Speaker Julie Menin vowed on Wednesday to revive year-round, pandemic-era outdoor dining – after many eateries dropped out of the program entirely in 2025, citing an expensive, lengthy approvals process.
“This is a big one, we will finally fix the city’s outdoor dining program to make it year-round and reduce the regulatory burdens for restaurants,” the newly-minted speaker said at a breakfast hosted by the Association for a Better New York.
The Manhattan Democrat said she would push to enact measures that “will help small businesses survive and adapt by clearing up policies of the past that can lead to closures and job loss.”
“Preventing job loss is vital to maintaining New York as the economic capital of the world,” she said.
The effort marks a renewed push for Brooklyn Council Member Lincoln Restler’s outdoor dining bill introduced in October, which Menin co-sponsored. A new version of the bill would need to be introduced to the council this session, a Menin rep said.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani, an unrelated press conference Wednesday, voiced his support for the return of a year-round outdoor dining program, which got curbed under his predecessor Eric Adams.
The council in 2023 applied seasonal restrictions to the program, only allowing for al fresco eating from April to November.
Restler’s bill called for removing the restrictions, as well as allowing for larger streetside dining setups.
The bill would notably ensure a “streamline” of the tedious review process for restaurants vying to operate a sidewalk or roadway café – which resulted in a backlog of more than 3,600 applications for outdoor dining sheds last February.
The cumbersome process required for roadway dining includes Department of Transportation, local community board and city comptroller’s office approval. For sidewalk dining, that process also requires a council member to sign off.
The DOT resorted to issuing conditional licenses last year due to the lengthy backlog of applications – while restaurateurs shelled out tens of thousands of dollars on dining sheds, licenses, lawyers and insurance to meet the rigid requirements.
Restaurants also must pay “consent fees” based on the size of the setups.
“One of the issues is the very high cost to the revocable consent fees,” Menin told ABC7. “That’s another area we are looking at, I have a bill that addresses that, that will bring those fees down.”
Only about 400 establishments had full approvals last year, and thousands more participating restaurants were granted conditional permits.
The COVID-age vestibules once helped roughly 13,000 establishments in Gotham get back on their feet and reopen starting in 2020, but critics said blighted, abandoned sheds caused quality of life issues — ranging from rats, noise, parking and even public sex.
Major industry group NYC Hospitality Alliance welcomed the renewed push from the speaker, noting the coalition is “encouraged” by Menin’s focus on year-round outdoor dining.
“Reducing excessive fines and fees, addressing skyrocketing insurance costs, and investing in tourism is essential to strengthening our economy and supporting the hospitality and cultural sectors,” said Andrew Rigie, the group’s executive director.