This restaurant is taking the city for a ride.
A Brooklyn pizzeria has been using a school bus parked on the street to get around City Hall restrictions that forced restaurants to tear down outdoor dining sheds ahead of winter — but city officials say the eatery is about to get schooled.
L’Industrie in Williamsburg – which has been using its eat-in school bus for the last few weeks – is one of 136 Big Apple restaurants along with a Manhattan spot using a parked trolley that was slapped with a warning from the Department of Transportation to take down their creative dining-rule workarounds.
A manager at the pizzeria declined to comment to The Post — but at least some pizza-loving customers had nothing but praise for trying to find a loophole.
Liz, who has been eating at the pizzeria for over seven years, told The Post that she doesn’t agree with outdoor seating for big restaurants, but called the bus “clever.”
“I don’t like these outdoor things but I do support L’Industrie,” she added.
Patron Matin Yaqubi, a self-proclaimed “big fan” of outdoor dining around the city, called the venture “a very creative idea.”
“I feel like places like this that have become very TikTok famous, there’s very little room inside,” Yaqubi, 23, added. “I like that’s there space out here to enjoy my pizza.”
Eateries that don’t comply with the warning within 30 days could face “escalating and recurring” fines up to $1,000, summonses and may not be eligible for future roadway outdoor dining applications, a DOT rep told The Post.
The city required all restaurants in the five boroughs to take down their dining sheds by Nov. 29 deadline — with sheds that meet strict new city rules allowed to reopen in April 2025.
Several restaurant owners told The Post ahead of the deadline that their outdoor dining structures were an economic lifeline long after the pandemic – and that scrapping their sheds during the holiday season would hurt their bottom line.
“I’m a little bit disappointed because that’s the busiest part of the year, right now,” Mirico Mennuni, 36, a manager at San Carlo Osteria Piemonte in SoHo, told The Post. “So I’m putting down the shed right now, it means like for the month of December, that’s going to be a little bit less profitable.”
Roughly 90% of establishments that participated in outdoor dining this year were found to be in compliance and took down their roadway setups by the deadline, a DOT rep said.
Ayza, a wine and chocolate bar in NoMad, still had its pandemic-era 18-seat trolley car structure standing Tuesday afternoon – which resulted in a similar warning letter from the DOT.
After receiving the agency’s warning, the wine bar is now scrambling to find a home for the massive decommissioned trolley car Ayla’s owners found in Boston — and anticipates a 20% to 30% reduction in business as a result.
Torpak said the trolley car was an instant hit among diners during the pandemic, citing several proposals inside the battery-powered vehicle to commemorate memorable COVID-era first dates.
“It’s so hard to imagine how it will be without the trolley,” said Coskun Toprak, Ayza’s manager. We are looking for what’s the best way to take this out of the city, because we don’t want to do something wrong or take a risk.
We also have to look at the regulations and process of how something like this can be driven out of the city,” he added.
“We do respect the rules and regulations,” the manager said. “The rules are always changing, but something like this is just beautiful.”
