Restaurant space heaters now have new homes

Get ready, Philly storage facilities: The heaters and igloos are coming in.

All winter and spring, area restaurants kept us cozy with heaters: tall heaters, short heaters, seat heaters, tent heaters, space heaters, tabletop heaters, electric heaters, propane heaters — all the different heat you meet! Even in the teeth-chattering weather of the last six months, outdoor dining has been, in a word, hot.

“We spent so much money on heaters,” says Nicole Marquis, whose restaurants Bar Bombón and Charlie was a Sinner racked up 45 tall heaters and hundreds of heated seat cushions. “Now we have a new challenge: Where do we put all of them? It’s a game of Tetris right now.”

After making big investments into warming equipment, restaurant owners have decisions to make.

Keep it or sell it?

“No way do we sell those things now,” says Jill Weber, whose Jet Wine Garden is entirely al fresco.

“Heaters were so hard to get, like trying to find toilet paper last April,” says Avram Hornik, the restaurateur behind Harper’s Garden, Morgan’s Pier, and a few other outdoor-oriented venues.

“Now that I have them, I’m going to get my money’s worth and extend my outdoor seating season,” says Erin Betlejewski Wallace, owner of Devil’s Den.

West Philly’s Dahlak plans to store the heaters from its newly covered back patio and add fans for the warm months. Kensington bar Martha expects to add fans, too. “We’ve done all the hard work of running electricity already,” co-owner Jon Medlinsky says.

Germantown Garden’s igloos proved so popular that owner Derek Gibbons is preparing to bring them back next winter in order to keep the outdoor venue open all year. His team will toss their current, well-used igloos and find a “more sustainable igloo structure for next season.”

This consensus to keep heaters represents something for local restaurateurs: hope. Hope that the city allows outdoor seating areas to become a permanent part of Philadelphia’s urban landscape. Hope that their dining rooms will once again be so busy that diners happily spill out onto sidewalk seating, even in the snow.

Space in the city is always at a premium and some restaurants are lucky to have more than others. At Martha, “storage is getting kind of nuts,” says Medlinsky, who outfitted the bar’s popular backyard with custom heated benches, propane tank top heaters, and overhead electric heaters. At least the propane won’t be a storage problem: Martha borrowed a dozen tanks from generous customers last fall. “We’re returning them full,” Medlinsky notes.

“City living is definitely not conducive to housing these behemoths,” says Peter Hwang, owner of Southgate. “We’ll probably send them to a family member’s garage.” Alma del Mar has the same plan — a relative with extra garage space will store the Italian Market restaurant’s eight heaters, plus the plastic roof and sides from its outdoor structure.

Sam Mink intends to give away Oyster House’s small tank top heaters to a deserving group or business, but store the tall heaters in the restaurant’s basement. Fiore plans to keep its heaters in an on-site storage area with the hope of using its patio for small, private events next winter.

“The storage places are going to have a field day with all that equipment needing to go somewhere!” joked Marianne S. Kelly, who handles marketing and operations at Tiffin. Many heaters are heading into hibernation at U-Haul self-storage facilities around the city. Ellen Yin’s restaurants Fork and High Street Philly share a space that runs about $200 a month. U-Haul is also the destination for Fiorella’s heater collection.

Leaving heaters out all summer is an option, but most restaurant owners agree that they take away from fun, summer vibes. For many, it comes down to limited space, according to Weber. “We need room for the umbrellas.”