Winter is gone. Spring is here. For restaurant owners, the turn of the seasons means open patios and the return of outdoor dining.

While some Wooster eateries, like Muddy’s, already have cleaned off their tables and set up socially distanced dining areas outside, other establishments are waiting for better weather.

After a difficult fall and winter, Greg Tieche, owner of TJ’s Restaurant Trio, re-opened its patio of some 60 outside seats to drive-up business this month.

“October was OK, and then November was devastating,” Tieche said. “I was to the point where I thought, well, we might not survive through the winter.”

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It was cold, so Tieche closed the patio. Then the next wave of the pandemic hit, impacting inside dining. Ohio’s governor issued a new round of restrictions.

But in December, business picked up again.

“Now, we’re doing about a third of the business we used to do,” Tieche said, noting it's mostly carry-out. “The weekends are good. It’s just during the week, it’s not so busy anymore.”

But he is optimistic as the months heat up.

Last summer was “survival mode summer,” he said.

“We had a very reasonable summer because nobody really wanted to go inside,” Tieche said. “They all wanted to be outside where they felt more comfortable, so that’s what carried us last summer.”

He plans to roll out a new online ordering system, like that of Chipotle or Panera, by Mother’s Day or Memorial Day. Alongside this, he wants to create additional seating outside for customers to eat to-go meals at the restaurant.

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Additional outdoor dining tables downtown  

Tieche is lucky, because he has the space to expand. Not all restaurants have that luxury, he said.

Samira Zimmerly, president of the Wooster Area Chamber of Commerce, recently spoke to four downtown establishments about adding more outdoor seating throughout the downtown area.

“We know that outdoor dining is desired by many downtown restaurants and citizens alike,” Zimmerly said. “There are discussions currently happening on this topic, but I do not have an exact timeline or details.”

For now, the plan is in its earliest stages of development, but Zimmerly hopes to have more information soon.

Even though Gary McNeely, owner of Flamingo Jack’s, has the available patio space, he still supports more outdoor dining spaces.

“If we could have more available seating that would be nice because there’s a lot of restaurants downtown that don’t have patios,” McNeely said. “Even when things are technically over, people are still gonna want to be outside and away from each other for a while.”
Patio and food truck plans  

Flamingo Jack’s patio is closed until further notice and better weather. To get his outdoor dining space ready, McNeely needs to power-wash the tables, put up chairs and set up the bar and soda machines.

He isn’t alone. Que Pasa in Orrville and the City Square Steakhouse in Wooster are both waiting for warmer weather, with the latter promising outdoor dining soon.

“It just depends on the weather break,” McNeely said. For now, he has no immediate plans for outdoor dining, but his food trucks still are open for business with another truck coming this spring.

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McNeely wanted to bring a Flamingo Jack’s location and food truck to Orrville last June, but sold the property when the pandemic ramped up. Business slowed, so he laid off staff and focused solely on Wooster.

Nearly nine months later, McNeely plans to bring that extra food truck into the fold within the next few months.  

As for his Orrville location, he said the building was torn down and he has no intention of expanding beyond Wooster in the immediate future.
The return of the regular

With patio prospects back on the table and a vaccine rollout that is including ever more people, Tieche at TJ’s and McNeely have noticed once frequent customers slowly trickling in again.

"Definitely not at the same frequency, but we are seeing our regulars coming back in,” Tieche said. “They are more comfortable now than they were a year ago.”

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Both restaurant owners wonder if after a year of quarantine, people are becoming impatient and want a return to normalcy.

One such diner, the soon-to-be 43-year-old Greg Henderson, feels comfortable enough to dine out at his favorite restaurants. Farmer Boy Restaurant and Bob Evans, both in Wooster, are frequent stops again for Henderson.

“So long as people wear their masks, I’m pretty OK,” he said