The Amsterdam Restaurant Using Individual Greenhouses For Social Distancing

Mediamatic ETEN, part of a larger arts and entrepreneurship center focusing on sustainability, is a vegan restaurant located on the Dijksgracht in the Oosterdok neighborhood of Amsterdam. From May 21, the restaurant will begin taking in guests, only this time they will be seated inside Serres Séparées ('separated greenhouses'), enclosed glass structures each equipped with a table for two or three diners.

“This was one of the most feasible ideas from a large list of ideas we had when brainstorming,” Mediamatic's founding partner Willem Velthoven said .Initially, no more than three guests will be allowed to dine inside each greenhouse, even though there is the capacity for more.

"We have other, bigger greenhouses, but using them depends on how everything ends up going. Bigger groups could [come] now but then they should be families. For now, bigger groups are being discouraged because, from our experience, they are just louder and then you get the excited behavior causing spittle to fly and so on, and that's the kind of behavior that would make the virus spread faster," Velthoven said.