Council grills DOT, businesses over slow rollout of Dining Out NYC program

A joint hearing of the New York City Council committees on Consumer and Worker Protection and Transportation and Infrastructure on April 10, 2025, focused on the troubled rollout of the city’s new permanent outdoor‑dining program, Dining Out NYC, and on ways to speed approvals and reduce burdens on small businesses.

The program, created by Local Law 121 of 2023, was intended to make the city’s pandemic-era open‑restaurants program permanent and to expand outdoor dining citywide. At the hearing, Council Member Julie Menon, chair of the Committee on Consumer and Worker Protection, said the Department of Transportation’s slow processing left restaurant owners “in a state of absolute uncertainty” and called the rollout “nothing short of disastrous.”

Why it matters: Dining Out NYC was billed as a lifeline for thousands of small food businesses and a way to activate streets across all five boroughs. Business owners and industry groups told council members that delays, high up‑front costs and certain engineering and clearance rules have sharply reduced participation from pandemic levels and disproportionately affected small, immigrant‑owned and outer‑borough restaurants.

Most prominent complaints - Processing delays and numbers: Council and witnesses cited sharply different tallies. Menon and industry advocates cited early DOT figures saying only a small number—67 in one statement—had completed the full revocable consent and licensing process. DOT officials said the program has received about 3,922 applications from roughly 3,200 food service establishments and that, as of the hearing, about 2,603 applicants were able to operate under temporary or conditional approvals while final paperwork proceeded. Margaret Forgione, First Deputy Commissioner at DOT, told the committees DOT’s goal is to get “every restaurant operational as soon as possible” and said the agency had issued conditional approvals and allowed sidewalk operation where applicants met the August 3, 2024 deadline. - Seasonal roadway rules and costs: Restaurateurs pressed for year‑round roadway dining. Andrew Ritchie, executive director of…