3 Reasons to Add a Covered Outdoor Dining Area to Your Restaurant

If your restaurant does not have an outdoor dining area, then now is a great time to build one. Outdoor dining areas are more popular than ever due to the COVID-19 epidemic that has made dining outdoors safer than indoor dining. Along with preventing the spread of the COVID-19 virus among diners, covered outdoor dining areas offer many benefits that both diners and business owners appreciate.

Learn three reasons to add a covered outdoor seating area to your restaurant.

1. Prevent the Spread of Many Additional Viruses

No indoor ventilation system can compete with the natural airflow always present outdoors. For this reason, health experts advise the general public to sit in outdoor restaurant seating areas when possible when a virus, such as COVID-19, is currently circulating.

Say someone carrying a virus that travels person-to-person via respiratory droplets, such as COVID-19, is outdoors. The respiratory droplets that enter the air when they cough or sneeze typically do not linger in the air very long before the wind often blows them away.

However, when a person carrying the virus is seated indoors, these droplets can linger in the air longer because of a lack of air movement in enclosed spaces. For this reason, anyone typically has a greater risk of contracting the COVID-19 virus when indoors than when outdoors.

Other common illnesses, such as the common cold and influenza, are also spread by respiratory droplets. The spread of these viruses is preventable when patrons sit in your outdoor dining area during local outbreaks of these viruses.

2. Increase Dining Comfort for People Who Are Disabled

Even if your restaurant is ADA-compliant, you can still take extra steps to increase the comfort of your patrons who are disabled with disabled-friendly features in your outdoor dining area.

Some patrons who are disabled might struggle to enter restaurants not equipped with entryway ramps. So, create a smooth, flat pathway from the parking lot to your outdoor dining area to help customers who are disabled enter your restaurant with ease. Also, leave extra-wide spaces between tables in your outdoor dining area to allow patrons in wheelchairs to navigate between tables easily.

In addition, since wheelchairs come in many heights to accommodate people who are disabled, vary table height outdoors. This height variation allows diners in wheelchairs to choose tables that provide adequate legroom without being so high that they make dining difficult.

3. Increase Business Revenue

Recent studies have shown that a restaurant that adds patio seating often experiences a boost in overall revenue of about 30 percent or even more if the patio seating is available year-round.

There are many reasons for this revenue increase, including:

• An increase in restaurant seating area . If you frequently have a line of customers waiting to be seated when your restaurant is especially busy, then waiting times can be reduced after you add additional seating to your restaurant. When table wait times are shorter, fewer patrons may leave to dine at other restaurants instead of waiting.

• Increased customer satisfaction . Many customers simply enjoy dining outdoors instead of indoors, especially when the weather is nice.

Of course, you need to cover your outdoor dining area with an awning. This awning shields your patrons from rain, the sun's hot UV rays, and other inclement weather to keep your diners comfortable and to allow you to keep your patio open every day of the year. This awning also helps protect customers' food from bird droppings and other debris.

If your restaurant does not currently have an outdoor dining area, then now is the time to add one to increase customer satisfaction and potentially boost profits. Contact the commercial awning experts at Sunstate Awning Architectural Metal & Canvas Solutions to discuss your outdoor dining area awning needs today.