Why the Hottest Fall Accessory Will Be the Patio Heater
From restaurants to schools, everyone’s prepping for a lifeline during a long, cold, Covid-19 winter
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In cities and towns across the country, makeshift outdoor restaurants strung together with pop-up tents, plants, and string lights have colonized sidewalks and newly pedestrianized streets. With indoor dining not encouraged — or in some places like New York City, still off-limits — these on-the-fly adaptations have become the only lifeline for an industry bludgeoned by the pandemic. “It is very hard, hard times for me; I only survive here,” Amritpal Singh, the owner of Angel Indian, a restaurant in Queens, recently told the New York Times. Singh reportedly spent $3,000 to upgrade his outdoor dining area, and it’s just barely keeping the business afloat.
In New York City, some 9,500 restaurants have been granted outdoor permits; San Francisco has an equivalent Shared Spaces program with 1,000 restaurants approved; and Chicago has granted permits to hundreds more through its Expanded Outdoor Dining Program. But what happens to these restaurants when fall and winter settle in, there still isn’t a vaccine, and people are told the only safe place to gather is outdoors? There is about to be a huge run on outdoor heaters.
The outdoor heater is quickly becoming the symbol of sanity for a long, cold Covid-19 winter.
In mid-July, Dan Munger first started getting calls from restaurants about renting heaters. He’s the director of sales for DMC Facility Services, a Cherry Hill, New Jersey-based company that manages facilities for local restaurants, including chains such as Shake Shack, Chick-fil-A, and Olive Garden. While he gets a pre-winter bump every year, 2020 has already been more like a surge. “I’ve had almost 75% more calls about heaters than last year,” he says. “With the restrictions, they’re all trying to maximize their hours of service.”
