For Philadelphia restaurant owners: sidewalk seats, streeteries and your menu

Seating on the public sidewalk outside a bar or restaurant needs a Sidewalk Café License, and the café must sit in an area that section 9-208 of the Philadelphia Code authorizes. Anywhere else, it takes an ordinance from City Council, starting with your district council member’s office.¹

Before you apply, the Streets Department Right-of-Way Unit approves a Sidewalk Café Plan filed through eCLIPSE. A public notice must stay on the building for at least ten days before the application, and liability insurance of $1,000,000 has to name the City as additional insured. You also need a Commercial Activity License, a Food Preparation and Serving License, a Business Income & Receipts Tax registration and current City taxes, plus a Pennsylvania liquor license if you serve alcohol.¹

The license costs $227 a year, $20 of it paid up front as a non-refundable application fee. Online applications are reviewed within five business days; at the Permit and License Center, 1401 John F. Kennedy Boulevard, L&I reviews most of them while you wait. A renewal filed more than 60 days late costs an extra 1.5% of the fee per month.¹

A Streetery License lets a restaurant with at least three indoor tables seat guests in the parking lane in front of it, where section 9-215 of the Code allows it or an ordinance does. The Department of Streets approves the design first and sends any structure to the Art Commission.²

A streetery cannot leave less than 12 feet for traffic and must stay 15 feet from a fire hydrant, 20 feet from a crosswalk, curb cut or transit stop, and 30 feet from a traffic signal or a stop or yield sign. A structure with an overhead covering, or with a side over 48 inches tall, needs a building permit.²

The license costs $1,750 a year, including a $200 application fee, and the public notice goes up 10 to 30 days before you apply.²

Between June 14 and July 4, 2026, Philadelphia hosted six FIFA World Cup matches, from Côte d’Ivoire against Ecuador to France against Paraguay. The last one was played exactly 250 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed in the city.³

Pennsylvania’s Department of Community and Economic Development estimates that more than 500,000 people came for the matches, business and government leaders from over 25 countries among them, while noting that the final count was still under way in July. The free Fan Festival ran at Lemon Hill, in East Fairmount Park, through July 19.³

From 2020 to 2024, 24.4% of Philadelphians aged five and over spoke a language other than English at home, and 15.2% were born outside the United States.⁴

Census figures count 15.6% of residents as Hispanic or Latino and 8.0% as Asian.⁴

The MICHELIN Guide’s first Philadelphia selection came out in 2025. It lists 32 restaurants for the city and its surroundings: 3 with one star, 10 Bib Gourmands and 19 selected restaurants.^5,6

The guide flags vegetarian options at 24 of them and vegan options at 14. Its cuisines run from four pizzerias and two vegan restaurants to a deli and an izakaya.⁶

Philadelphia’s 1,574,281 residents of July 2025 are 1.8% fewer than in April 2020, on 134.36 square miles of land: 11,936.9 people per square mile in 2020.⁴

Accommodation and food services sales in the city reached $5.57 billion in 2022.⁴