Hello and welcome back to another edition of - Your Idea Sucks and Here's Why - Today I'll be talking about the idea of moving restaurants outside and why that idea sucks.
I've been reading a bunch of stories and reading people's comments about how to reopen restaurants and one dumb idea that is constantly being brought up is close down the streets and let the restaurants restaurant in the streets!
I like the idea of closing down the streets for other things like parks, riding bicycles, and moving cars that just sit around forever. Give people back the space! Yup agree there.
I don't agree with just moving to restaurant outside though. It doesn't address contact and safety issues for the staff. They still have to interact with you. This is totally something that guests want to have happen and they aren't thinking about staff.
I've had restaurants that have had outdoor seating. You know what happens if it becomes windy or starts raining out of nowhere? They come inside, want their stuff packaged to leave, and/or want a refund.
Do you know what it's like to build up and break down outside seating day after day? Locking it up? Bringing it inside? If it's outside people just break it or steal it? Yeah, that's no fun.
So you have 10 new tables. Assuming it's just 2 tops that's 20 people hanging out. When they need to use the restroom they go inside. You are probably open for minimum seating in the dining room too. You just created a clusterfuck of flow in and out of the dining room.
Wait! You have a rooftop!! We can restaurant up there. Literally ever single rooftop place I have ever been to has an elevator that won't allow proper social distancing or some weird staircase situation that won't allow it either.
Additionally, you're creating a crazy flow issue if something like a fire alarm goes off and you have to evacuate immediately. Pretty sure you're going to get infected if you all have to leave quickly during your happy hour special
Back to the outdoor street area, sorry, got sidetracked. You're in the middle of the street eating things. How much of that space is designated for restaurant and how much for everything else?
The city of Seattle has these funny permits you have to get for outside seating. They take forevveerrrrrrrr to get and on top of that they usually have permanent marking on the sidewalk to show everyone how far from the restaurant you can seat people.
I'm going to go with they're not going to handle the move fast enough. It took them weeks to slap on temporary food pick up signs at restaurants but they had a we got this flag on the space needle seemingly overnight.
A lot of this we have to open up restaurants immediately is coming from the right, investors that are freaking out, and from people that suck at cooking and just want to be served/waited on.
Thanks for joining me for another episode of Your Idea Sucks and Here's Why. I'll wait patiently for your opposing thoughts and will make time to come back with reasons your idea sucks, here's why.
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