InTents December 2020/January 2021 - 26

A DEEP BREATH

Restaurants have turned to companies like Everything
Entertainment, Staten Island, N.Y., to help with outside seating.
But without the need for walls or ﬂooring, proﬁt can be hard
to come by. Photo courtesy of Everything Entertainment.

COLD WEATHER BLUES

any tent rental companies spent autumn trying
to ﬁgure out what will happen once winter

hits and the tents they've erected for restaurants
and other businesses suddenly need heat.
" We're ﬁelding six to eight calls a day for heating tents,
mostly from New York City restaurants, " says Scott Weisberg,
co-owner and president of Staten Island, N.Y.-based Everything
Entertainment. " Basically, there's no good method for heating. "
" We're already seeing some restaurants installing
umbrella-type patio heaters under tents, which is extremely
dangerous, " says Brian Richardson, president of L&A Tent
& Event Rentals, Hamilton, N.J. " And it's against code
because it puts an open ﬂame directly under the tent. "
" The only way to properly heat a tent is by closing it in, " says
Weisberg. " And the only way to keep these places 'COVIDfree,' supposedly, is to open them up. So what do you do? "
Propane heating is prohibited in New York City, he
explains, and " using electricity is impossible because
of the amount of power that's required. You can't use
kerosene either for tents that are heated for 'comfort.' "
" Heating tents in cold weather areas for four to ﬁve months is
next to impossible, " adds Michael Lubas, co-owner of Vermont
Tent Co. in Essex Junction, Vt. " I can put a ﬂoor in a tent and
babysit it if it snows for maybe three days, but that's about it. "
" It's going to be a long winter, " says Lubas. " Not
just for me, but for everybody in the industry. "
It doesn't help that Lubas' company moved into a new
facility last year, doubling its space. " Great move, but bad
timing, " he says.

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Plenty of similar scenarios played out
through the country, but after a deep
breath, most business owners and
managers sat down to determine what
they might be able to do to survive.
" At ϐirst, there weren't really any
options, " says Lubas.
The lack of available options made
for tough times at companies trying
to make payroll, even those that had
been able to access various forms of
government assistance, including the
Paycheck Protection Program. " I got our
team together and assured them that
we would be able to weather the storm
ϐinancially until at least August, " explains
Richardson. " But after that, it was going
to be anyone's guess. "
But some breaks, big and small, began
to appear.
" About seven members of our team
were hired to assist another company on
a project, " says Richardson. " That helped
us slow down our cash burn, as it removed
them from our payroll for three weeks. "
Then in early April, a large online
retailer looking to set up employee hiring
venues reached out to the company. " The
retailer needed to take applications and
interview hundreds of applicants, but it
didn't want to bring people into facilities,
possibly exposing staff to COVID-19, "
he says. " We installed heated tents and
restroom trailers for three months in
offsite satellite parking lots. "

NEW NEEDS MATERIALIZE
Other new needs for tents that
materialized included coronavirus
testing sites for hospitals and
municipalities, and then outdoor
seating for restaurants in areas
that were beginning to reopen.
" We went from having no work to
having more work than our current
stafϐing levels could handle, " says
Richardson. " During peak season we

dec 2020-jan 2021

11/19/20 4:13 PM

InTents December 2020/January 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of InTents December 2020/January 2021