Hugh Clarke
Outdoor dining at the King & Rye.
The restaurant industry has faced many challenges since the COVID-19 pandemic started, but this winter could be one of their biggest hurdles yet.
“It’s going to be a hard winter, a lot of guys aren’t going to make it,” said Mike Anderson, founder of Homegrown Restaurant Group, which operates Holy Cow, Sweet Fire Donna’s, Whiskey & Oyster, Tequila & Taco, Pork Barrel BBQ and The Sushi Bar.
While restaurants have been allowed to have some level of indoor dining since May, many restaurants like Hank & Mitzi’s Italian Kitchen and Fontaine Caffe and Creperie have seen most of their customers choose to sit outside.
“You can have the inside completely empty, while the outside is full and has a wait list,” the owner of Fontaine said.
Other restaurants like Mia’s Italian Kitchen, Vola’s Dockside Grill and Theismann’s Restaurant and Bar have seen the inside of the restaurant filling almost every day, according to partner Dave Nicholas of Alexandria Restaurant Partners.
Even if they are able to fill the space available inside, the capacity limits of keeping tables 6 feet apart and no bar seating is not sustainable.
“No matter how many people want to sit there, they are only going to wait so long for a table,” Nicholas said. Additional outdoor seating on the street and sidewalks has helped restaurants stay afloat.
In early October, the City of Alexandria extended the outdoor dining program through March 2021, which allows for restaurants to use parking spaces for dining.
Restaurant owners have worked hard to figure out how to keep their outdoor spaces open and make people feel safe while sitting inside.
Bringing the Heat
One common solution to keeping outdoor spaces is open is heat lamps. However, their implementation can be a bit tricky.
The heat lamps you see with the mushroom top outside of restaurants run off of propane, which has strict regulations on how and where it can be stored. Tanks must be locked away, but they cannot be stored inside.
Fontaine is working around the storage issue by using Propane Taxi, which will switch out low tanks for them.
“We never planned to store them,” Fontaine’s owner said. “We don’t really have the space to do that. Even if we had the space to store something like that, we are probably using it for something much more important.”
One of the crucial things for businesses right now is to keep space open for customers.
Fontaine orders heater long before it started getting cold. Unlike some people, Fontaine's staff realized very early on that changes to business operations as a result of the pandemic were going to be long term.
“Once we opened up in May, I was already thinking, ‘What does winter look like?’” the owner said. The heaters for the winter were ordered by June.
Other restaurants have had a difficult time finding heat lamps as so many other businesses are rushing to get them too. This also played out in the spring as restaurants all scrambled to get extra patio umbrellas.
Outdoor winter dining veteran Sonoma Cellar lucked out and found four new heat lamps on eBay for their expanded outdoor seating.
“There were none to be found at Home Depot or Lowe’s or any of the normal places to find patio heaters,” said co-owner Elizabeth Myllenbeck. “They were all sold out.”
Sonoma Cellar has kept their back garden open during previous winters. Largely sheltered from the wind, they can keep the space warm with heaters and a fire pit. Every Tuesday night is cigar night. A group of guys have been doing that every week, even through the winter.
In the past, Sonoma Cellar provided blankets for people to use, but out of safety concerns, they are asking people to bring their own blankets. At Hank & Mitzi’s, they’re asking patrons to BYOB (bring your own blanket) and offering free hot drinks from their bar menu to those who dine on the patio.
Blocking the Elements
Other restaurants are not as fortunate as Sonoma Cellar when it comes to blocking the wind.
Many places are looking at ways they can use tents and heaters, but normal propane heat lamps can’t be used near umbrellas or tents.
At an Alexandria Economic Development Partnership webinar about businesses using outdoor spaces, Anderson discussed electric heaters specifically designed for use in a tent.
ARP’s Nicholas is also trying to find the best way to heat a tent. He told us in September they were looking at using dining bubbles – igloo-looking tents, much like you would see in Europe. The Alexandrian’s King & Rye brought the igloos to its patio in December.
There is not a clear consensus on how safe these bubbles are when trying to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. In a Washington Post article, experts suggested dining with individuals from your close circle, keeping a side of the tent open, and disinfecting surfaces inside and airing out the tent after each use. Keeping a side of the tent open may make it a bit cold "inside," but air circulation is critical to pandemic safety.
Safety Indoors
While ARP has seen their restaurants fill up inside, they want to make everyone feel as safe as possible. In late October, ARP installed needlepoint dipolar ionization (NPBI) air purifiers at all of their Virginia restaurants.
This air-purifying system was tested on COVID-19 and has been able to reduce COVID-19 particles in the air by 99.4 percent in 30 minutes, according ARP.
Sonoma Cellar is using Blueair purifiers in their restaurant.
“People are going to start choosing indoors as a dining option, because it’s just too chilly outside,” Myllenbeck said.
Air purifiers have been found to be an effective way to reduce the risk of spreading coronavirus, according to Dr. Gregory Poland, an infectious disease expert at Mayo Clinic. Although he and other experts emphasize that we still need to layer protection in addition to filtering the air, limiting room capacity and having good ventilation are key factors in helping reduce the spread, experts told Vox.
Restaurants will have to continue adapting their strategies throughout the winter.
“This has been challenging,” Fontaine’s owner said. “The good part is that we have all been forced to be creative and think outside the box in ways we probably would have never done.”
