MAKING OUTDOOR SOCIALISING A REALITY

Freestanding weather canopies and bespoke umbrellas from Dublin-based Outdoor Spaces are helping hospitality businesses transform their exterior areas into usable spaces

Fallon's of Kilcullen

It’s one thing to say we should socialise ‘outdoors’ this summer but another to actually experience it. Ireland’s wildly irrational weather means that enjoying a meal or a pint outdoors is a risky proposition and so hotels and restaurants are being forced to mitigate against that risk if they’re to trade successfully over the summer months. Outdoor facilities are costly but there is funding available under the new Outdoor Dining Enhancement Scheme, allowing hospitality businesses to claim grants from a total allocated budget of €17 million. “Creating usable outdoor areas is defi nitely a signifi cant expense but we’re seeing huge demand from the industry who view our solutions as a way of getting back to normal activities in the safest possible way,” said Denis O’Reilly, Director at

Airfi elds Estate Outdoor Spaces. The company, which was set up in September last year by Denis, Maurice Byrne and Adam Rankin, manufactures and installs 7m x 5m freestanding weather canopies and is the authorised partner for the island of Ireland for Austrian-made Meissl bespoke umbrella solutions that are suitable for any location and most of which can be installed in less than a day. “No groundwork is required with the canopies. We’re currently installing two 7m x 5m canopies at Killashee Hotel in Naas which will provide their guests with immediate cover. If they decide they want to move it to another area we’ll come in, disassemble it and relocate it elsewhere. It couldn’t be simpler.”

Fallon's of Kilcullen was the fi rst business to invest in an umbrella from Outdoor Spaces. “They now have a huge 7m x 7m umbrella installed at the back of the restaurant which has provided them with 50m2 of space for outdoor dining. I think that having that flexibility when it comes to providing both indoor and outdoor dining facilities is here to stay, even post Covid.” Lighting, heating and gutters are built into the umbrella which can be provided in any size and installed in less than a day. “We have been contacted by pubs with outside areas of 5m x 5m; our umbrella would give them 70m2 exterior space which is nearly bigger than the pub inside!”

Outdoor Spaces can provide umbrellas that can take 200 people under them. “At the moment, local authorities are being granted €250,000 to enhance public spaces. Imagine a large umbrella in the square in Wicklow town, used for a market in the morning and in the evening, it’s transformed into a dining area with long tables of delicious food from di erent restaurants. The possibilities are endless and that’s the message that we’re trying to get across.”