This is Hold 'Em Accountable. Open Letter No. 002.

Same protocol as No. 001. Real credit for real wins. Then a respectful invitation to go further for the operators who got priced out between programs.

Politicians. BIDs. Chambers of commerce. Alliances. Large hospitality groups. Nonprofits. NGOs. City agencies. Every letter runs the same way. Standing in the room is one thing. Serving the street is another. Numbers, not vibes. Credit before critique.

This letter is addressed to the NYC Department of Transportation.

DOT did historic work.

You designed and shipped Open Restaurants in 2020 when nothing else was working. Operators were closing in waves. Indoor capacity was zero. The street was the only venue left. Your team turned curb space into operating space inside weeks. Approximately 8,000 restaurants participated at peak. The mayor's own framing on the official Dining Out NYC site puts the impact at 100,000 jobs saved.

That number is yours. Credit on the record.

You took the harder fight after the crisis ended. Open Restaurants was always going to expire. Making outdoor dining permanent meant getting a new law through the council against community board pushback, against noise lobbies, against curb-space politics. Local Law 121 of 2023 cleared. First permanent citywide outdoor dining law in New York history. Sidewalk and roadway. All five boroughs.

You built the operational layer underneath. Application portal. Setup guides. Inspection cycles. License approvals. Multilingual outreach. SBS coordination on financial estimators and regulatory help. Permanent outdoor dining infrastructure where there used to be a temporary patch.

You built Open Streets alongside it. New commercial corridors in Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, the Bronx, Staten Island. Operators on those blocks gained foot traffic that did not exist before the program.

Credit on the record. Thank you.

The numbers tell the story.

Approximately 8,000 restaurants participated in Open Restaurants at peak.

Roughly 1,800 setups are eligible to operate under Dining Out NYC for the 2026 season. About 500 roadway. About 1,300 sidewalk, with around 700 fully approved and the rest under conditional review. Numbers from DOT, reported in early 2026.

The program now serves roughly 6,200 fewer operators than the program it replaced.

The math behind the gap is structural, not anecdotal.

A 12-location hospitality group rebuilds twelve roadway structures every spring, files twelve applications, carries twelve insurance riders. The compliance cost gets amortized across a payroll of hundreds. Shows up in the operating budget as a line item.

A one-location bistro rebuilds one structure, files one application, carries one insurance policy. The compliance cost lands on a payroll of seven. Shows up as the difference between continuing outdoor dining and not.

Same program. Same fees. Same insurance threshold. Different scales of impact.

The Council's own oversight hearing on Dining Out NYC put the operator complaints on the public record. The application is too long. The seasonality kills the math. The cost is wrong for the businesses the program was designed to serve.

The smallest operators couldn't absorb the upfront. The portfolios kept their setups.

Five operational moves that build on Open Restaurants. All within DOT's authority. None requires new legislation.

01. Tier permit fees by revenue and borough.

A flat fee structure on a public asset is regressive when the operators using it span from one-table sidewalk cafes to multi-location restaurant groups. Below a clear revenue ceiling, free or near-free. Outer-borough operators get an additional discount tier. The fee schedule is published. Operators can price their participation before they apply, not after. The city keeps the revenue from the operators who can actually pay.

02. A streamlined track for single-location operators.

The current application process is the same regardless of operator size. A 14-location group with a permits team and a 1-location cafe with a working owner are filling out the same forms. Build a fast-track for operators below a revenue threshold. One-page intake. One inspection cycle. Resolution in weeks, not months. The complexity stays for the operations that actually need it.

03. Group insurance pooling organized through DOT.

Per-operator liability coverage at the level Dining Out NYC requires is a structural barrier for small operators. DOT has the standing to organize a group policy with a major carrier, with the city as the framework partner. Operators below a revenue threshold buy in at a fraction of the individual market rate. The risk is pooled. The premium drops. The smallest operators get the protection at a price they can carry.

04. Allow year-round structures with proportional standards.

The seasonal-only requirement on roadway structures is the single biggest reason operators told the Council the math doesn't work. Five months of revenue cannot pay for twelve months of structure. Allow year-round permits at a higher standard for operators who want the consistency. Keep the seasonal track for those who want it. Let operators decide which one fits their business.

05. A small operator liaison desk inside DOT.

A direct line for single-location operators stuck in the application pipeline. Real case management. Track the cases. Publish the close rates by borough and by issue type. A liaison is a small team in operational terms. The credibility return for an agency designing programs around small business is enormous.

An agency that designed Open Restaurants can prove the next program serves the same operators.

A. Application processing times published by operator size and borough. Monthly. Public. So operators can plan.

B. Compliance costs disclosed up front by setup type and location. Operators price the program before they apply to the program.

C. Outdoor dining grants reported per quarter across all five boroughs. Who is approved. Who is waiting. Who dropped out.

These are forward-looking standards. None of them costs much. All of them turn DOT's existing data into operational signal for the operators using the program.

You designed Open Restaurants. You saved 100,000 jobs. Make Dining Out NYC work for the operators you saved.

The framework is built. The legal authority is settled. The remaining work is operational. DOT can ship it without going back to the council.

Six thousand fewer operators are in the program right now than were in the one DOT designed during the crisis. The next decade of outdoor dining in New York is yours to design. The smallest operators prove it works.

With respect,
New York Eats Here

P.S. Send tips to the desk at newyorkeatshere.com.

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