Alcohol can now be served at two of the temporary seating platforms situated on car parks outside eateries on The Strand in a Bay of Plenty town.

Town centre business group Epic Whakatāne applied for special event liquor licenses for the parklet seating platforms before Christmas and these were approved on Friday.

While the Waka Kotahi, Innovating Streets-funded parklet outside Cafe4U is being enjoyed by customers during lunchtimes and for people enjoying a coffee and cake, the two remaining platforms are located on premises with liquor licenses that do most of their business during the evenings.

The Wagon and Double Zero have had to ask their customers to go indoors if they want to have an alcoholic drink, because their licenses don't include street seating. Consequently, the parklets have been under-utilised.

The Wagon and Double Zero on The Strand both have licenses to serve alcohol inside their premises but couldn't legally serve people alcohol outside.

Double Zero has lent its parklet an Italian air with café umbrellas and plush seating.

Epic Whakatāne marketing manager Cherie Stevenson says the situation was remedied on Friday when the application was approved.

"We're trying something that they did in Taupō with their parklets, otherwise, [the businesses] would have to go back and do their liquor licenses completely from scratch, and that's a $5000 application just to extend it to the parklets.”

Cherie says Epic hadn't initially planned to provide licenses.

'We weren't [previously] advised it was a possibility, we were going to go ahead with them without liquor on them, but we were given this as an idea from the council, because they're trying to assist with this and had been talking with other councils about what they had done. The application got in before Christmas but then everyone was away.”

She says the liquor license will have to be reapplied for any time the seating platform was moved to a new location as the license had to be associated with a business.

The Wagon owner Alex Potter says people like the idea of eating outside but when someone asked to have one of their specialty craft beers with their burger or pizza, they had previously had to be asked to move inside.

She says it's quite a big part of the experience as they served specialty beers and other drinks on tap that couldn't be purchased at all bars.

Alex is looking forward to being able to serve customers outside. She has put off doing much with the parklet until such time as the license came through.

The parklet outside Café4U has a distinctly tropical feel to it.

Cafe4U manager Dawn Apanui says the café's parklet is very popular with customers, although the café also has an outdoor courtyard at the rear of the café.

The parklet has been set up with bamboo screens, potted plants and a shade sail, giving The Strand a tropical look.

Meanwhile, Double Zero has pimped its parklet with outdoor gas heaters and Italian-style café umbrellas.