It’s a new thing. You’d normally never eat outside in the winter in cities like Chicago, Boston, or New York, but because of Coronavirus people will.

It just so happens that people inclined to do these things have mostly all been driven out of major urban areas where the restaurants are and if they weren't they would mostly still not go downtown for overpriced beer.

With food trucks, first and foremost, people don't "hang out" for as long as they might at a restaurant. It's more akin to fast food - get your food, wolf it down, get out. The process is also different - people approach a window, order their food, and then eat it wherever they want. They have the option of eating it near the truck, but the convenience of taking your food to a different area of your choosing (say, your warm and cozy house) is also there. In addition, in places where food trucks are hugely popular like Portland and Austin, there are "food truck parks" where multiple trucks congregate around a shared communal eating area that is often covered and heated. That space is often operated by an entity other than the food truck so the truck operators don't have to worry about it.

Restaurants, on the other hand, are places where people like to hang out at for extended periods of time. Whereas at a food truck you might order all of your food at once, at a restaurant you're ordering your first drink, then an appetizer or two, then another round of drinks and your entree, then more drinks and your dessert. That process lasts a lot longer than your time at a food truck. There also isn't a convenient "communal area" like at a food truck park that is in the center of a block of restaurants that restaurants can send people to - restaurants must figure out how to build their own seating areas and provide ample warmth.

Food trucks don't care about people being comfortable because that's not in their business model - you order your food and where you eat it is your problem. In order for restaurants to maintain business, they need to cater to the comfort and warmth of their customers.

Winter is going to be very difficult for restaurants. If they don't adapt to serving meals outdoors, they may not survive.

They're going to have to change a lot to create a comfortable environment for patrons. Fire pits, heaters, warm dishes: soups, stews, ramen, pho, pastas. Warm drinks and heated cocktails. All of this while maintaining safe social distancing.

I've already seen a number of restaurants and bars make the attempt. It's pretty ingenuitive.

The pandemic will probably be over in a year, though, so at least in the USA, I don't see a great future in the near-term for mid-40Fs outdoor dining.

I grew up in the South and live in the Pacific Northwest now. I think you see a lot less outdoor dining in the South not because of the winters but because of the summers. It's so hot that eating outside is miserable half the year, so restaurants aren't physically designed for outdoor dining during the couple of spring and fall months when it would be nice.

This is wrong in my experience. There are hundreds of restaurants equipped for summer dining [1]. Lots of restaurants have open rooftops, patio seating, open-air "fireman"-style garage door walls, etc. Pretty much every BBQ joint and taqueria is outdoors.

Outdoor eating is very popular in the Georgia summer.

[1] https://www.gafollowers.com/13-rooftop-bars-atlanta/

And all restaurants, even outdoors, are banned for the next six weeks, anyway.

To be fair, we used to be smokers, so were used to this before. Around September, everyone else stopped eating outside, and the staff often looked at us funny when we continued.