Updates and improvements to the recently permanent CafeTO program were approved at Toronto City Council on Dec. 13.
CafeTO started as a pilot program and became permanent on Nov. 10, 2021. This last summer, the City says they found “approximately 1,000 places to dine outdoors in Toronto, including more than 330 curb lane cafés, 500 sidewalk cafés.”
At an executive committee meeting, Barbara Gray, general manager of transportation service, says that when the program was made permanent it did have “some bugs to be worked out.”
This latest update aims to bring four improvements to the program to make it easier for restaurants, with three being to streamline and speed up the application process to provide restaurants with better channels of communication.
“We also have updated and moved forward the kinds of education and communication materials that we are providing to operators, including an updated guidebook to make it a lot easier for them to know what they have to do and by when,” says Gray.
