GREENING UP: The Greens is a distanced dining experience at The Rooftop at Pier 17 in New York City. (Getty Images)
Concerts and games might’ve dried up in 2020, but for some venues, concessions kept on ticking.
In New York City, Manhattan’s The Rooftop at Pier 17, the outdoor club that was named VenuesNow’s All-Star Club for 2019, was prepared for a third successful season before the pandemic arrived in March.
While the venue wasn’t able to welcome artists including Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Greensky Bluegrass and Deftones this summer — all have already been rescheduled for 2021 — it still found a way for patrons to enjoy its view of the Brooklyn Bridge and the East River.
“With the concert industry put on pause leading up to the summer season, a big goal of ours was to be able to provide a seasonal amenity for our community,” said Craig Manfra, the venue’s director of marketing. “With the planned reopening of lower Manhattan, we saw not only a desire but a need for more public outdoor space.”
The Rooftop at Pier 17 quickly devised The Greens, a podded outdoor dining experience, to meet the moment. The new venture provides patrons a comfortable and safe socially distant dining experience, welcoming visitors to one of 28 14-foot-by-14-foot “mini-lawns,” each decked out with cabana chairs, umbrellas, Yeti coolers and USB charging stations. The facility’s restaurant, R17, provides high-end food — menu items include tuna tartare, sesame-crusted chicken fingers, Maine lobster rolls, and grilled Faroe Island salmon — and beverages, which are ordered and delivered in contactless fashion.
“We had the advantage of that space on the rooftop,” Manfra said. “One thing that stood out to us was the hustle and bustle of the street-level city life. Other (New York City) restaurants, you’re on the sidewalks, which is better than not eating out at all, but you have cabs driving by, you have foot traffic. To use our venue as an escape and take advantage of those more spacious, calm rooftop vibes was something we wanted to lean into.”
Since opening Aug. 1, Greens reservations have been a hot commodity, getting snatched up immediately when new ones become available. And the initiative is also helping the community: A $1.59 booking fee for each reservation is donated to The Bowery Mission, a local charity for those experiencing hunger and homelessness.
BREW WAHOO: The Pensacola Blue Wahoos hosted the Taps on the Diamond Dinner, a collaboration with regional brewery Oyster City Brewing Co. (Courtesy Pensacola Blue Wahoos)
Down the East Coast, Florida’s Blue Wahoo Stadium, home of the minor league Pensacola Blue Wahoos baseball team, kept workers employed and the community engaged by pivoting almost immediately to providing locals with curbside takeout. Soon, the stadium, which works with concessionaire RS3, was serving up thousands of grocery packages with food and staples like toilet paper for the community. Before long, it was also using its concourses to create “the largest open-air restaurant in the Gulf Coast,” according to Jonathan Griffith, who oversees the Blue Wahoos as president of Studer Entertainment and Retail.
In early May, Blue Wahoo Stadium began offering dining four nights a week, with concessions stands retooled with deli-style ordering procedures compliant with public health guidelines. Menu items — American-style bistro fare such as tacos, burgers, and specialty sandwiches — have rotated along the way.
Though inherently unusual — who before 2020 would’ve imagined dining at a baseball stadium during the summer without a game going on? — Griffith still tried to maintain a baseball spirit.
“We created it as a Minor League Baseball experience,” he said. “We had the dizzy bat races, we had slinging pizzas, we had the MC out on the field. You were getting that experience of everything but the baseball game, basically.”
As more restaurants have reopened in Florida, the Blue Wahoos have reduced dining service from four to two nights a week – but dining has remained core to the team’s non-baseball offerings, which have come to include movies, bingo, trivia, golf tournaments, and even an option for die-hards to rent team clubhouses through Airbnb.
In addition to standard meal service, the Blue Wahoos now offer Diamond Dinners — an upscale spin on the meal kits it served earlier in the pandemic — and have hosted specialty nights. One such event, Taps on the Diamond Dinner, was a collaboration with regional brewery Oyster City Brewing Co. where the beer producer came up with special beverage pairings to go with a multicourse meal that included oysters, ceviche, sushi, pretzel flatbread, spicy Thai chicken and peach cobbler, all served to patrons seated on the infield dirt.
“It’s really meeting that mission to improve the quality of life in our community,” Griffith said. “That’s what this has done, is really give people that opportunity to come out, feel normal again, and do stuff that we were used to doing beforehand. It looks a little different, but they’re still being entertained and having a great time.”
