With less than a month until the start of spring, many residents are eagerly awaiting the return of outdoor dining in Andover.
But they may find fewer places to eat al fresco when the nice weather finally returns.
Since the height of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, when 26 restaurants were issued permits to offer outdoor dining on public spaces such as sidewalks, fewer and fewer Andover businesses have offered outdoor seating.
The number of restaurants permitted to offer outdoor eating dropped to 24 in 2021, then to 18 in 2022 and 2023. Last year, just 17 restaurants were granted a permit, according to data from the Community Planning and Development office.
While some restaurant owners said they saw fewer outdoor diners last year, others remain optimistic about the future of their sidewalk tables.
“Outdoor dining has been a huge success for us,” said Matthew Perry, owner of Perry’s Plate, as he handled a busy Friday morning rush.
“We’ll see what happens,” said Franco Lozano, the owner of Bueno Malo.
This story was published as part of a collaboration between Andover News and the Department of Journalism in Boston University’s College of Communication. The student journalist is a member of Professor Meghan E. Irons’s Reporting in Depth class.
“After COVID hit and people were kind of forced outside, it opened people’s eyes to the ambiance of outdoor dining and dining under the stars,” he said.
But Lozano said he noticed some of his outdoor dining seats empty in the summer of 2024. When he asked some of his regulars why, some said they were watching their spending or traveling.
“That’s the explanation that we’ve got from a lot of our customers,’’ he said.
Lozano said the town helped him navigate state-permitted rules when he opened his restaurant in 2017.
Town Streamlined Permitting Process
Alexander Vispoli, a member of the Andover Select Board enjoying a hot plate of spinach omelet at Perry’s Plate, reminisced about the town’s early experiences with outdoor dining before COVID-19 forced the town and the rest of the world to shut down. To comply with new rules limiting indoor gatherings, restaurants opted to serve their customers outdoors instead.
“COVID happened, and then outdoor dining became a [bigger] thing,” Vispoli said. “We had some comfort because we had experience with it.”
Vispoli said local restaurants must undergo a permitting process to offer outdoor dining. The biggest challenge during the pandemic era was figuring out what the permitting process would look like and the town clerk came up with a process every restaurant must follow, he added.
“A lot of [the process] had to do with access, people being able to walk through the sidewalk and then traffic,” Vispoli said.
At the time, the permit was only valid for one year and had to be renewed yearly.
The process has since changed to make it less cumbersome for businesses. Now they just have to register for a permit instead of renewing it every year, said Vispoli.
“We streamlined and the response has been great,” he said.
Outdoor Dining For The Dogs
Outdoor dining has been a boost for Brooksy’s Brick Oven and Bar, which replaced Bertucci’s, an Italian restaurant, in 2023 as one of the few restaurants with outdoor seating on Main Street.
“We allow people to bring their dogs,” owner Brooks Rice said.“There’s a big population of people that don’t want to leave their dogs at home, so to be able to go sit down, have a nice meal, and bring their four-legged friend with them is a nice thing that we offer.”
Inside Caffè Nero recently, Amy Blanchette, a lifelong Andover resident who works for a nonprofit, said she still likes to sit outside and dine even though it “gets a little noisy sometimes.”
Blanchette said she hopes more restaurants will make the outdoor dining experience more weather-friendly to keep people dry during sun showers or to block a beating sun.
“It’d be nice if we had a little bit more coverage,” Blanchette said.