During the pandemic, many restaurants began offering outdoor dining or expanded their current offerings. But outdoor dining has become more than just a survival strategy for restaurants trying to stay afloat during difficult times. Instead, outdoor dining for restaurants has given them a way to safely offer a new restaurant dining experience to customers while staying within local and state restrictions.
But restaurants in cold climates may worry that investing in outdoor dining experiences isn’t worth the money. The short season of warm weather often intimidates restaurant owners. But we’re here to tell you that the benefits of creating an outdoor seating area greatly outweigh the drawbacks. This is true even in areas that experience seasons with highly contrasting weather and temperatures. With a little creativity and a few key pieces of equipment, you can safely serve diners outdoors during all seasons of the year.
The Advantages of Creating and Outdoor Seating Area
One significant advantage of creating an outdoor dining area is the ability to serve more customers. Increasing the number of customers that you can cater to at any given time helps to maximize profits. Streamlining your restaurant operations to account for this new space may be a bit of a learning curve, but it’s worth it. Make sure to get your restaurant evaluated and surveyed by the appropriate parties before putting your new outdoor dining space to use. This ensures that everything is up to code.
Having an outdoor dining space can also offer you space to hold events like restaurant trivia nights. Giving you more space to spread out customers to host events makes it possible to cater to customers not attending. It also gives dedicated space to set up the special event. Bar trivia programs are easy to host when you partner with a trivia subscription service like Deliver Me Trivia.
How to Establish Outdoor Dining in a Cold Climate
There are a few key pieces of equipment that restaurant owners in cold climates may find helpful when establishing an outdoor dining area. One of these is a restaurant patio heater. Depending on the size of your outdoor dining space and the climate that you live in, you may need to invest in several.
If you live in a climate where it snows, make sure that you invest in heavy-duty snow shovels and sidewalk salt to keep the area safe. Once the temperature gets down into the colder range, commercial plastic igloos have become a popular choice for keeping customers warm and toasty as they enjoy their meals.
We hope that these tips for creating outdoor dining areas in climates that experience colder weather are helpful to you! It can take a little work and creativity to establish an environment that works for both you and your customers. But the end results of increased profits and happy customers are worth it. Best of luck in your new venture!
