We live in a country with a very nice outdoors – but fee increases and bureaucratic restrictions are making it hard for hospo to offer us the al fresco experience so many of us enjoy.

This is an excerpt from our food newsletter, The Boil Up.

In November 2021, one question broke through the wall of questions about what Aucklanders were and weren’t allowed to do during step 2 of Alert Level 3.

“Has cabinet given any consideration to al fresco dining?” Wellington-based gallery journalist Barry Soper asked the prime minister at the 1pm press conference on November 8, 2021.

Hospitality businesses in areas under some messy form of Alert Level 3 were still operating under the “click-and-collect” model, and Soper was simply asking questions about whether we could instead sit outside to enjoy a little pizza on behalf of the people and business everywhere (Aucklanders and Auckland).

As Madeleine Chapman reported, Soper persisted with this line of questioning for quite some time. It came to a head two weeks later, and Soper moved on from worrying about eating outside and onto whether the power of the podium had gone to the PM’s head. In solidarity, The Spinoff launched a ticker onsite, counting down the days until Soper could dine alfresco again (in Auckland). It was incredible cut through at a time when we were also faced with perplexing issues like whether we could pee in each other’s houses after beersies in the backyard.

“Barry Soper”, Chapman wrote, “loves al fresco dining. To sit outside with the breeze in your hair and the sun on your skin, dining. It’s the peak of human experience, what us mere mortals were put on this cursed earth to strive for.”

Nearly three years on, as a fan of a little al fresco dining myself, I am here to pick up the torch so passionately lit by Soper and ask why we seem hellbent on making it so damn hard, and so damn expensive for restaurants, bars and cafes to facilitate the peak human experience of eating and drinking outside?

Aotearoa has a lot of really nice outside. Many scenic views and plenty of waterfronts. We also have lots of lovely food, a plethora of wonderful hospitality businesses and tanks full of delicious cold beverages best enjoyed with the breeze in your hair and the sun on your skin.

In the last few weeks, multiple reports have bubbled up about the charges hospitality businesses face for having outdoor dining spaces.

Al fresco dining fees have “riled Tauranga and Mount Maunganui cafe and restaurant owners”. As is the case across most territorial authorities in New Zealand, hospitality businesses are charged based on square metreage and then pay administration fees on top of that.

RNZ reported that Queenstown restaurant and cafe owners are angry about rises of up to 300%. The council says businesses had fair warning of the increases. Restaurant owners make the fair point that due to Queentown’s proximity to Antarctica (I assume), dining outside isn’t a year-round option they can offer, and yet they are pinged for the full year. In a report from the Otago Daily Times, one lakefront hospitality operator says they’re facing a $51,000 annual fee for outdoor dining, while a pop-up food vendor, right outside their area, was operating “without paying”.

That leads us to Christchurch, where those wanting a heap of food truck vendors and restaurants are at war. In short, the Christchurch Arts Centre has made an application for consent to allow 33 food trucks to operate on its site seven days a week, and the Christchurch Central Business Association, representing those with permanent bricks and mortar restaurants, have objected to it. The Press’s Sinead Gill describes the stoush as an “unsolvable question”.

Headed further north again, Eric Crampton responded to the food truck fight in Christchurch, writing a column saying he wished it was a problem Wellington had, bemoaning the lack of food trucks along Wellington’s waterfront. As an economist, Crampton points to issues around planning, consent and what he describes as “a punitive ratings differential on business use of land.”

In Auckland, where the city is heroically trying to encourage more outdoor dining other bureaucratically imposed restrictions make it difficult for many to implement.

In a piece published by Greater Auckland, urbanist Ben van Bruggen wonders whether outdoor dining could revitalise Queen Street. High streets all over the world are struggling, and as van Bruggen writes, Auckland Council “is actively encouraging outdoor dining in the city centre, including on Queen Street, by offering fee-free trials to food and beverage (F&B) operators and seeking feedback on how to improve the situation.”

I think Aucklanders are particularly hard on Queen St and complaining about it has become something of a sport. It does sometimes feel like a shadowy wind tunnel, but the lack of outdoor dining has also always puzzled me. The lack of outdoor dining everywhere puzzles me to be honest, and it puzzles many other particularly obnoxious people who’ve chucked back Aperol Spritzes sitting outside anywhere in Europe, including huddled on the corner of a street with 50 other people outside a London pub.

As van Bruggen notes, there are a range of other practicalities to overcome before outdoor dining on Queen St is a more feasible option for hospitality business, but he says they’re not insurmountable. “The potential is certainly there – as long as we can seize it,” he writes.

Someone once told me they thought the upmarket food court at now-shuttered Queen’s Rise on Queen St was always going to struggle because “Aucklanders like to be seen”. He implied that included as we ate out. The longevity of places like SPQR (until recently, RIP) and Prego on Ponsonby Road suggests that theory might hold some truth.

I was in Wellington recently and wandered down to the markets on the waterfront. I was there just as another round of “Wellington is dead/dying” discourse was kicking off, and the waterfront that day provided a counterargument. “Why is everyone so nice to each other?” one visitor from Auckland (my husband) wondered aloud as the sun shone and people ate delicious food sitting on the grass, surrounding embankments and benches. A true mystery!

Whether it’s because we want to touch grass or be seen, outdoor dining seems like something a country with a very nice outdoors should be good at.

Why, then, do we seem so intent on bogging it down in pinch points and competing agendas? The one true agenda of bringing life, prosperity, and communal experience to our towns and cities is just lying there, hoping to one day break through as successfully as Soper’s question about al fresco dining did in 2021.