Chair Menin Opening Remarks: Low Approval Rates and Restaurant Uncertainty
Chair Julie Menin highlights that only 67 restaurants have completed the full application process, representing less than 2% of total applicants, and calls the rollout disastrous for small businesses.
However, just 67 restaurants, I repeat, just 67 restaurants, and this is coming from DOT's own data, have completed their entire outdoor dining application process and received a revocable consent to operate a sidewalk cafe or a roadway cafe.
This represents less than 2% of the approximately 3,800 dining out NYC applications from more than 3,000 restaurants that DOT received.
DOT started to address this problem only weeks before the roadway dining season was set to begin on April 1st, 2025 by issuing conditional approvals to a number of roadway dining setups.
As of yesterday, DOT provided 726 conditional approvals to restaurants to operate a roadway cafe, which would only apply to those restaurants that have made it through DOT's review process and the community board review process.
And I'll get to later during the testimony the concerns that we are now giving community boards major backlogs because of this large delay, and that also is not equitable or fair or sensible.
DOT also authorized the continued operation of 1,808 sidewalk cafes while their applications are pending with the department.
So now we have a situation where hundreds upon hundreds of restaurants are awaiting approval and frankly do not know whether they should make the necessary investments in their outdoor setups for the current season.
This rollout, in short, has been nothing short of disastrous.
The permanent and long-awaited outdoor dining season is upon us, and DOT is woefully unprepared to meet this moment for thousands of small businesses and their eager patrons.
We look forward today to hearing from DOT about the issues that are stalling this process.
We would like to learn how we can improve application processing times and the user friendliness of the application process.
We also look forward to hearing firsthand accounts from restaurant owners, and I want to thank all the restaurant owners and advocacy groups and community board leaders who have come out today to testify.
We absolutely have to address this and improve this process.
So I'm now going to turn it over to my colleague, Chair Brooks Powers, for her opening remarks.
Thank you.
Thank you, Chair, and good morning, and thank you all for joining today's joint hearing of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and the Committee on Consumer and Worker Protection.