The city's partial-year outdoor dining program hasn't even been finalized yet, but it's already created an entirely new industry of companies that will design, set up, maintain and store "streeteries" for restaurants that don't have the space to deal with the annual winter shutdown.
The Department of Transportation plans to release its draft design guidelines for the sidewalk and roadside structures this month, but the first eager firms are already vying to get in on this potentially lucrative business of catering to the thousands of Big Apple restaurants that were in the all-year, outdoor-dining program emerged earlier on in the pandemic.
