Re:Chefs are adapting their menus for chilly outdoor dining
by kbenson on Thursday October 22, 2020 @08:24PM
(#24864874)
The few times I've eaten outside in the evening the last few months, I've noted how whichever companies that make those outdoor space heaters are probably experiencing a huge boom, as every restaurant capable sports a new or larger outdoor dining area, and even some that aren't capable get public sector help to make it so (e.g. in my city they closed the major downtown strip to auto traffic to allow outdoor dining areas to take up the entire sidewalk and some of the road).
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Chefs are adapting their menus for chilly outdoor dining
by baby on Thursday October 22, 2020 @08:55PM
(#24865036)
I believe these have been banned in Paris terasse due to the pollution they produce.
Re:Chefs are adapting their menus for chilly outdoor dining
by nthn_g on Friday October 23, 2020 @01:43AM
(#24866349)
That is correct, though the ban will not come into force before the end of winter as restaurants have been hard hit by Covid-19.
Re:Chefs are adapting their menus for chilly outdoor dining
by mumblemumble on Thursday October 22, 2020 @09:45PM
(#24865248)
I'm curious what the energy formula on those things looks like. Is cold weather outdoor socializing going to help us catch up on the backlog of fossil fuel we haven't been burning in our cars?
Re:Chefs are adapting their menus for chilly outdoor dining
by Flashtoo on Friday October 23, 2020 @03:49AM
(#24867003)
A quick calculation: space heating in food service normally uses 46 trillion BTU of energy [1]. That's 0.05% of all energy consumed in the US, which has dipped by about 10-15% [2]. So if these space heaters would increase heating energy use 5-fold annually across the entire food service industry (I think that's a high estimate), that would undo 2% of the dip.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/consumption/commercial/data/2012/c&e/pdf..., table E1. [2] https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec2_3.pdf