Unseasonably warm weather this week had Vancouver restaurateurs scrambling to get their patios in top shape for sun seekers.
At Displace Hashery in Kitsilano, staff prepared the restaurant’s 95-seater for Saturday’s sunny 14-degree Celsius afternoon. The restaurant reopened Thursday after extensive renovations, including a fresh coat of paint on the patio.
“She’s looking pretty good, getting ready for summer here,” said general manager Duncan Stewart.
While loyal regulars, lively karaoke nights and daily specials help carry the restaurant through the winter, Stewart said that in the summer months, the patio can generate about 65 per cent of Displace’s business.
“Basically, in the summertime we wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for the patio,” he said.
Extended warm seasons in recent years have meant Stewart’s had to start preparing for the summer season and hiring more staff as early as April. He said they’re grateful to see more of Kitsilano’s “patio-chasers” already popping by this year.
“The second an ounce of sunlight comes out of the clouds, people are chomping at the bit to get on a patio,” he said with a chuckle.
Scott Edwards, manager of street activities for the City of Vancouver, said the city is continuing its extended patio-hours pilot program, which lets participating businesses operate their patios until 1 a.m.
Historically, patios had to be closed by 11 p.m., but with the pilot’s success over the past two years, the option for select patios to stay open later may become permanent this summer.
“We had a very simplified process for them to apply and we had very few that we (couldn’t) allow the extended hours,” Edwards said. “In the rare situation where we did, it was typically because there was a history of complaints in regard to noisy patios.”
Edwards said are about 300 large patios (typically with railings and liquor service) and 300 small patios (without railings and typically outside cafes) in Vancouver.
The city doesn’t yet have numbers for how many have apply for extended hours this summer – most were getting their applications in for the end of March. But last year about 65 participated in the 1 a.m. pilot program and in 2014, when the hours were extended until midnight, 115 participated.
Edwards said in the next few months his department hopes to take a report to council for review of the program’s performance, after which the city may let businesses apply for extended hours on a yearly basis.
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