Restaurants Enclose Outdoor Spaces With Tents, Domes Ahead of Winter Months

It started with the outdoor heaters. As temperatures slipped in northern U.S. cities, the mushroom heat lamps were the first to materialize as a ubiquitous outdoor feature at restaurants. Then came the pop-up tents. Simple in structure at first, vinyl screens protecting diners from piercing winds arrived as a second wintertime hospitality must. The most sophisticated of these structures have taken on a decidedly permanent look.

Fashioned out of plywood or plastic, or specially commissioned from high-end outdoor event suppliers, the architecture of the outdoor dining age has advanced to a point where diners might never notice that they’re sitting outside. With coronavirus counts rising, the case for outdoor dining has never been stronger. Some restaurants have invested in robust outdoor additions, including winter yurts, bubble tents and geodesic domes.

However, the idea behind pandemic-era outdoor seating is not just to reduce the capacity inside. The goal is to increase airflow between guests and quell the transmission of a deadly respiratory disease. Some winterized spaces may be reducing that natural ventilation in favor of warmth and comfort. So what exactly is a Covid-safe outdoor space?

New York City is one of the few jurisdictions with its own definition: It only permits one-table igloos with “adequate ventilation,” and treats outdoor spaces walled in on three or more sides as indoor restaurants, capped at 25% capacity. (Whether these guidelines are enforced is another question.) But when it comes to finding the line, restaurants in most places are on their own — and some of them have made sizable investments in solutions that could come to naught, if cities decide that even outdoor dining is unsafe.

“City to city, county to county, state to state, it’s all over the map,” says Jay Coldren, managing director for the Eat + Drink Studio at Streetsense, a hospitality design and strategy firm. He wrote a comprehensive winter dining guide because so few resources exist. “There isn’t a single cohesive guideline for the way that restaurants or food-service operators can behave responsibly both with indoor and outdoor dining.”

Coldren adds, “The guidelines in New York are very clear. The guidelines in other places are mud.”

Absent consistent national guidance, the U.S. hospitality industry has made big investments to adapt to the changing rules — and to the weather. Some interventions are as simple as freestanding curtains to block the wind, which is often a bigger impediment to al-fresco dining than the temperature. (One Connecticut town is embracing a BYOB campaign: Bring your own blanket.) Costs and scale rise from there. At the highest end of the scale, greenhouses, bubble tents and geodesic domes are some of the strategies that restaurants are trying.

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