Tommy's Tavern & Tap doesn't lack for places to eat. Eight locations across the Northeast, a steady ramp of new openings, and a brand that's learned to ship hospitality details at scale. When they cut the ribbon on their Edison location, the indoor floor plan was finished work — but the rooftop sat at half its potential. Thousands of square feet of premium real estate, generating revenue only when the weather cooperated.
This was our fourth project with the Tommy's group. The brief was the one we hear from every commercial operator running a seasonal patio: make this space work when the weather doesn't.
A Summer-Only Rooftop
The Edison rooftop launched the way most restaurant rooftops do — an open deck, a corner bar, lounge furniture sized for July, and minimal protection from the weather. Beautiful in season. Empty for half the year.
The Existing Rooftop
Aerial view of the rooftop — the open dining area, the lounge with the fire feature, the corner bar build. This is the footprint we needed to cover end-to-end to make the space work year-round.
It's a setup that photographs well on a Saturday in June and sits dark for the seven months when New Jersey isn't cooperating. For a sports-bar concept with TV walls, table service, and a real liquor program, that's a lot of square footage running at zero revenue. The owners wanted the rooftop to feel like a permanent dining room — usable in a 40° April rain, comfortable on an October Thursday, indistinguishable from the indoor experience.
The Design — 17 Bays, Black Frame, Smart Controls
We designed a 17-bay Azenco R-Blade louvered roof to span the full rooftop footprint. Black powder-coated structural frame, motorized aluminum louvers that pivot from fully open to fully closed in roughly 60 seconds, integrated drainage routed internally through the columns so there are no visible gutters on the architecture. At Tommy's scale, this isn't a single-zone install: seventeen independent louver bays let the operators run the system in sections — bar side closed against weather, dining side open to the sky, or every bay together for a full enclosure.
Here's the design package we presented to the Tommy's team — aerial context, exterior elevation, three interior views, and both louver states (closed for weather, open for ventilation).
1. Aerial Context
Top-down rendering of the building with the louvered roof installed. The grid of parallel aluminum slats across the rooftop is the R-Blade system covering every square foot of the dining area — not a partial cover, not a wood pergola, full footprint protection.
2. Exterior Elevation
Street-level view showing how the louvered roof sits on the building. White aluminum louvers above the existing parapet wall, “Tommy's Tavern + Tap” signage front and center, the building reading as a single coherent structure instead of a covered patio bolted on after the fact.
3. Bar Build — Interior View, Louvers Closed
Interior view from the dining floor looking toward the bar. TV walls behind the bar for the sports-bar concept, black powder-coated structural columns supporting the louver system, and the white aluminum louvers shown in the fully closed position overhead — the configuration the operators run during rain, full sun, or after the heaters kick on.
4. Dining Floor — Angle View
The same space rotated 90 degrees, looking down the long axis of the dining floor. The bar runs along the right side with the TV wall behind it. The linear shadow pattern on the floor is light coming through small gaps in the closed louvers — the system controls sunlight precisely rather than just blocking it.
5. Same Space, Louvers Open
Identical rooftop, louvers rotated to fully open. You can see sky and trees through the gaps. This is the configuration the operators run in good weather: full ventilation, dappled shade instead of full enclosure, the breeze moving through. From this state, the GM can close every bay in 60 seconds when the radar shows weather coming.
The lighting runs warm LED downlights on dimmer zones — broad-daylight bright at lunch service, candle-warm at 10 p.m. The whole system — louvers, lights, ceiling fans, infrared heaters — runs through the Bond smart bridge, so the GM can drive the rooftop from a tablet behind the bar.
Engineering for a Rooftop — Crane and Steel Reinforcement
Rooftop installations are a different animal from ground-up patios. Nothing walks up a flight of stairs.
Every Column Came Up by Crane
Materials staged in the parking lot and rigged into place over the existing parapet. The crane work was the easy part to plan — the harder part was the load on the deck.
A 17-bay R-Blade system at this footprint is heavy, and Tommy's original rooftop wasn't engineered with that load case in mind. Before any of the Azenco hardware arrived, our team installed a custom steel beam grid to reinforce the deck — additional structural steel run beneath every bearing point of the new system, tied back to the building's existing columns. Every connection was PE-stamped and reviewed against local code before fabrication started.
That work doesn't show up in the finished photos. But it's the part that determines whether a project gets through plan review, and it was the longest pole in the schedule.
Walkthrough with Dana Shaw and Nelson
Breslow owner Dana Shaw and project manager Nelson walk through the finished system — the structural reinforcement, the bay-by-bay louver controls, and how the install integrates with the existing rooftop architecture.
The Atmosphere — Dinner Service, Live Music
The shift from "covered patio" to "year-round venue" is the part operators feel first in the books.
A Friday Night on the Rooftop
Live band, full dining room, every louver closed against the cool of the evening, every heater warming a table. This is the operating mode that makes the math work at this scale.
The footprint isn't generating peak summer revenue and dead winter revenue anymore — it's generating shoulder-season revenue, weeknight dinner revenue, weather-event revenue. The rooftop runs eight months a year now instead of four. That's most of the pitch.
Year-Round Service, Without Asking for It
The accessories matter more in a commercial install than they do on residential projects. They're what turn a covered patio into a year-round profit center.
The infrared heaters mount overhead and warm the people, not the air. They work with the louvers partially open as well as fully closed — a 50° spring evening can have airflow and still have comfortable dining tables. The ceiling fans run the other direction in summer, breaking up the still-air feel that kills patio dining in humid New Jersey afternoons.
The louvers themselves are the part that changes the operating model. A thunderstorm used to mean clearing the deck and sending tables inside. Now the staff has 30 seconds to swing the louvers closed and keep service running. The integrated drainage handles the runoff. Bond ties everything to wind sensors, so if a real squall comes through, the louvers move to a safe position automatically.
Our Fourth Tommy's Tavern & Tap
The Edison rooftop is the fourth restaurant we've built with the Tommy's Tavern & Tap group — preceded by installs at Tommy's Bridgewater, Tommy's Clifton, and Tommy's Sea Bright. Each one has been a slightly different problem: a ground-level patio at one, a partially-enclosed deck at another, a full rooftop here. The repeatable part isn't the design — every site is its own engineering problem. The repeatable part is the way the system integrates into a working restaurant: minimal interruption to service during install, plan review and permitting handled in-house, and a single contact for the lifetime of the system.
For an operator scaling a brand, a louvered roof is starting to be table stakes. The first install pays back in the first full year of weather coverage. The second one doesn't need a sales pitch.
Related Projects & Resources
- Lake Success Country Club — Commercial case study.
- Tommy's Tavern Bridgewater — Commercial case study.
- Tommy's Tavern Clifton — Commercial case study.
- Commercial Outdoor Structures Overview — How we work with restaurants, country clubs, and hospitality operators.
- Motorized Pergola Installation: What to Expect — Blog.
- Azenco R-Blade Maintenance Guide — Blog.
- Top 5 Pergola Designs for Northeast Homes — Blog.