'If it has four sides, you are essentially indoors': Some McHenry County restaurants turn to tents but wonder if worth cost, risk

The ban on indoor dining has led local restaurants, bars and breweries to consider outdoor tents as a way to offer dine-in service while still complying with Gov. JB Pritzker’s orders, but some in the industry have said the tents themselves add more costs and safety considerations.

Mike Dallas, co-founder of Scorched Earth Brewing Co., said he decided to rent an outdoor tent for the customers at his Algonquin brewery rather than defy the governor’s order, but that decision is rehashed on an almost daily basis.

“I served in the military, so when you hear your leaders trying to do the right thing and saying that this will save lives – and we know that the numbers are up right now ... at this point we think it’s better just to try to do the tent and try to live in that world, but, ultimately, is the tent all that much more different than inside? I don’t know, honestly,” Dallas said.

Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said during an Oct. 23 news conference that the state expects restaurants to use “some kind of tentlike apparatus” to stave off the cold for outdoor diners, but added that these structures should only have two sides

“An indoor tent is the same as indoor dining,” Ezike said. “If it has four sides, you are essentially indoors.”

“Any time we gather in [an] enclosed space with reduced ventilation, the risk increases,” Lindsey Salvatelli, spokeswoman for the McHenry County Department of Health, said in an emailed statement Wednesday.

When Tier 3 of the governor's mitigation plan took effect Nov. 20, the state released COVID-19 safety guidance for the use of outdoor dining tents through the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.

According to this guidance, outdoor structures designed to accommodate multiple tables of people must have two sides open, and customers must remain seated at tables at least 6 feet apart.

The tent at Scorched Earth Brewing has four sides, two of which Dallas said he keeps open where they meet in the corner of the structure.

The tent walls don’t reach the ground, leaving another gap for air to flow through, and the heater runs heated air through the tent from outside, providing further air circulation.

This means the tent is far from cozy and closer to bearable, requiring customers to come bundled up in winter gear, Dallas said. He said he can't help but look around at his competitors, many of whom defied the order to offer customers the warmer alternative of indoor dining.

This is one of the reasons why Sammy’s Bar and Grill in Huntley decided to take down its tent when the weather got colder, co-owner Diane Walsh said in an interview Thursday.

“With the open two ends ... you wouldn’t be able to keep it warm enough,” Walsh said. With the sides closed to keep more heat in, “it’s no different than sitting inside, really, in our eyes, and the space would be bigger inside than it is [in the tent].”

Providing a space that is sufficiently warm but also sufficiently ventilated will become even more difficult in the coming months, which is why Dallas and his wife and co-founder, Jennifer, have committed to using the tent only through the end of December, at which point they will reevaluate their
situation.

They also will face the increased likelihood of snowstorms and high winds, both of which spell trouble for an outdoor tent, said Don Thennes, co-owner of Ed’s Rentals and Sales.

Restaurants no longer need a permit to erect a tent on their property, according to COVID-19 restrictions, but they must work with their local fire prevention bureau to comply with fire safety requirements, said Chris Kopera, Crystal Lake’s bureau chief of fire prevention.

In collaborating with businesses and other fire prevention bureaus across Lake and McHenry counties, Kopera said he has come across a lot of innovative ideas for making tents work in the winter, including anchoring the sides of the tent with special weights.

He encouraged business owners to share ideas with one another and to reach out to their local fire department for advice.

Kopera said he and his team do routine and complaint-based inspections. Over the past two weeks, he performed inspections on six tents at restaurants or bars in Crystal Lake, only one of which was in response to a complaint.

The most common issues are related to heating, he said. Most heaters burn gas or propane to emit heat, meaning they cannot be placed inside a tent, and a proper ventilation system is needed to exhaust potentially harmful fumes.

The process can become expensive very quickly, Dallas said. He pays about $2,500 a month to rent a sturdy, 20- by 30-foot tent, plus the added cost of replacing the 100-gallon propane tank to keep it heated.

“It’s just the only way to have people still here,” Dallas said. “Will the business that we bring in pay for that tent? I don’t know. … It may not. It honestly may not.”

With a pocketbook typical of a small business, Walsh said, Sammy’s Bar and Grill can’t afford to invest in state-of-the-art outdoor heaters or fancy dining igloos, which seat a single party and are a safer alternative.

“We actually own our tent, but it’s just getting ripped apart with the weather, and trying to heat the tent is the issue,” Walsh said. “That’s where the cost comes in.”

Dallas rented his tent from Ed’s Rental and Sales, where Thennes said larger tents rent for $8,500 a month.

Across the store's three locations in Algonquin, Crystal Lake and McHenry, Thennes said he has gotten about 15 to 20 inquiries about tents since the start of Tier 3 on Nov. 20, but he only has rented out two – one to Scorched Earth and one to Matt's Tavern in Crystal Lake – because of the liability of long-term rentals in the winter months.

“When they have a tent out for a long amount of time, there’s a lot of exposure there for it getting wrecked or people getting hurt, that sort of thing,” Thennes said.

The shop’s larger tents are valued at $25,000 to $40,000 and do not always hold up well in cold temperatures or snowy conditions.

Dallas said he and his wife are “rule followers,” and they want to be considerate to their “socially responsible” customer base, but the decision is a thorny one in his mind.

“We’re trying to do the right thing, but this is our first time owning a small business, and we can’t let it die,” he said. “If they want everyone to follow the rules and not have people inside, then the government should be stepping up and providing the funding necessary to the industry to take care of us.

“I think most people who are in this industry [couldn’t] care less about politics and just are here because they like to make Thai food or Polish food or Greek food or, in our case, we like to make beer and serve beer.”