The state of the restaurant industry
opentable.com
opentable.com
The restaurant sector generates $3 trillion in annual sales worldwide, and provides employment to a vast number of individuals.[a]
Absent government intervention, the cascading economic impact from just this one sector will be enormous.
[a] https://medium.com/@CravyHQ/the-restaurant-industry-a-global...
Can someone with an economics background tell me whether this is a sound argument? It looks like it could be reasonable to me, but it also looks a lot like the examples of deadweight losses in Bastiat's "That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen".
I would guess that we should count the $3T transferred as a cost on one side of the book and as a benefit on the other side, and from an accounting standpoint not care much either way. I'd also guess we should somehow try to compare the relative value of the service on each side of the transaction to gauge somw "surplus" value. People get food they value at $3.1T, and they pay $3T, and the workers would have done the job for $2.9T, so society wins by $200B in aggregate. Or something. But maybe that's nonsense?
I don't know if that's reasonable, but I am fairly convinced that we shouldn't dig $3T worth of ditches just to fill them in. That is deadweight loss.
At the very least I think we can assume that restaurants are not a deadweight loss because they're profitable, though. People often choose to pay that premium over cooking for themselves, and we should trust that those choices reflect personal relative value well.
Most people will be able to cook for themselves just fine, but by doing so they'll be saving money, which would otherwise have been spent locally. This means that that money won't go on to restaurant workers to be spent, and the remainder won't show up as profit for the restaurant. (Instead it'll go into savings, which will likely have a negligible effect at best since money is ~free to borrow these days)
Locally this will lead to a depressed demand for everything and globally lead to a decrease in paper GDP and profit for the companies (read: stonks go down).
So honestly, I would argue that paying people to dig ditches (vs do literally nothing else, though at that point you might as well just give them cash) is in and of itself beneficial, though of course less so than doing something that generates a benefit outside of that from the activity itself.
This is the point -- paying people to dig ditches breaks down into two activities:
- Paying people, which is net zero benefit. (Otherwise we could all sit in a circle and pay each other to riches.)
- Doing useless work, which is net negative. (Effort, materials and time spent that coukd have been spent on leisure or actually productive ends.)
GDP is obviously a bad measure here. For the same problem stated another way, Google and Wikipedia are free, but increase productivity and aggregate wellbeing immeasurably.
In this case, I'm arguing because of the economic class of the ditch diggers that this is not the case. The ditch diggers will spend the money locally, rather than saving it, on things that give them greater utility than what the people paying for ditches would have gotten (which is most likely just saving it).
I agree asking people to dig ditches for the money is stupid, but in reality they'd either be doing something productive that wouldn't have otherwise been done for structural reasons (building national parks, windmills, solar panels, etc., things where there is a positive externality that prevents the market from doing it) or receiving the money for free.
In the US the Fed regulates total nominal demand (= spending) in the economy. When the Fed is doing their job well, it doesn't matter for nominal spending whether any one industry, like restaurants, is disturbed or not. Or whether some industries are booming.
The Fed will just adjust how much money they are 'printing'.
But what matters are supply side factors.
All those people patronising restaurants or working there presumably did so because they preferred it to the alternative ways to spend their money or time.
After a disturbance, they will have to make do with their second (or third or fourth..) best opportunities instead.
If the disturbance was a long term shift in consumer taste, we should hasten the transition of workers out of that industry.
But the current crisis is presumably temporary. So we pay for lots of friction of adaption back and forth, just to get back to where we used to be. (The adaption is still a good idea. It's probably better for waiters to become eg Uber Eats drivers than to twiddle their thumbs.)
This money is not lost from the economy; people still have to eat after all.
I understood that in the US, waiters make fairly good money because of tipping, no? Which isn't the case of other workers though.
You do know about this thing called service sector that accounts for more than half of the economy ?
The rent and payroll are our biggest expenses naturally, we can of course cut hours and even close entirely; no idea what our staff will do with no income.
If this lasts more than 3-4 weeks (which is likely), yeah it's hard to say how any business is going to survive.
Only good thing is I have a full time job for a major health company and our mobile app usage this week has sky rocketed... so my day job is quite secure at least.
People are trapped at home, itching to get out. You run aggressive promotions right now to drive up your customer base since everyone is sitting at home bored with nothing to do.
Encourage people out of their homes at a time when it seems that the exact opposite is needed to start controlling the spread of the virus?
https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/politics/2020/03/1...
https://katu.com/news/local/oregon-wash-consider-unemploymen...
https://www.wbtv.com/2020/03/17/nc-governors-executive-order...
https://qns.com/story/2020/03/16/new-york-state-waiving-wait...
I had assumed there was some Federal coordination, but I see it is up to each state to take initiative.
"I don't take responsibility at all" -- DJT
Thankfully most states are picking up the slack. I know Ohio passed something comprehensive for the service/restaurant folks and was looking at more support.
It's like a micro version of what the Fed is doing with banks.
If this gets a lot worse, you’ve pre-bought a bunch of meals out, you lost some/all of your income, you might not want the expensive meals over the cash, and you even less want those to be an IOU from a bankrupt place.
As a shop owner, it’s indeed quite cheap loans.
Basically if you want anything less popular than Sam Adams-level of popularity, you have to get it from a restaurant.
There are also all the local micro-breweries...
[1] edit: See section 203 photographed here: https://twitter.com/mitchryals/status/1239938801839099905
[1] http://www.icontact-archive.com/archive?c=653228&f=109&s=277...
[0] https://ny.eater.com/2020/3/17/21182052/new-york-state-liquo...
Unlike your average delivery joint the numbers kept getting worse the more you added, too—no "two large two-topping pizzas and breadsticks at 70% menu price" deals or anything like that.
[1] actual text from email: "As stated in our Terms and Conditions, the prices for menu items on DoorDash may differ from the prices on the restaurant's own menu. For example, our restaurant partners are responsible for setting the price of their menu items on DoorDash, and some restaurant partners choose to set different prices than they offer for in-store diners."
I used the app once because I had a free delivery (that's the 1.99 waived), ending up costing a lot more than just picking it up myself.
If DoorDash or Uber Eats charges 30% (which is fucking insane if they do), where do you think that comes from? Restaurants aren't making 30% profit.
Compounding the problem GrubHub, and presumably other "gig economy" delivery services, preemptively adds non-partner restaurants against their will:
https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/Grubhub-Michelin-star-SF...
Restaurants lose margin on those orders with the expectation that it's made up by more people ordering.
Protip: call in your orders, those take-out apps often take a cut that's just added to the restaurant's list price (last night I saw a $12 half-duck = $16 phone-in takeout or $25 Caviar take-out)
It literally wasn't worth it, and his drivers all switched over. He tried to find other folks to deliver, but, well, delivery folks aren't exactly known for being long-term employees and most of them deliver for the apps.
I still don't understand what a multinational adds to local pizza delivery. Prices went up, pizza doesn't taste any better or get here faster, and my local restaurant makes less. Do not want.
If it was a net loss for everyone except GrubHub or Uber, it wouldn't exist.
I don't know what Uber pays their drivers, but I happen to know the place in question pays a good wage, comparably. I seriously doubt it driving Uber beats it.
>If it was a net loss for everyone except GrubHub or Uber, it wouldn't exist.
And yet, here we are. Econ 101 only takes you so far; why do you choose to ignore the other pressures? Once the econ brain worms take hold, people stop thinking.
And where's your evidence that restaurants are profiting off of Uber Eats / GrubHub / Door Dash / whatever? Restaurants are suing to be removed from these services. Presumably it's not profitable for the restaurant.
Let's not forget that in most states these "gig" jobs hire people as contractors who are then ineligible for unemployment and social security and are not guaranteed a minimum wage. Restaurants typically hire folks as employees.
Insufficient knowledge of the wear and tear on ones car.
Desire to "work for themselves" (despite the fact it really isn't).
TL;DR actors in an economic system are often not fully informed.
and whenever there's a knowledge gap, the "market" exploits it for arbitrage. But eventually (which may be a long time), this exploit would stop working as more people try to exploit it causing the profits from it to go down, or the lack of knowledge for which this exploits exist starts to disappear.
There's no rule to say that the market is super efficient at all times - just that it tends towards efficiency.
Seriously, though - we do. But regulations take time to catch up. As they should.
You'd be surprised how cheap individual portions of food are for restaurants.
cost of raw materials in restaurants are a very small portion of the overall bill the customer pays. A large portion is rent, and an even larger portion is labour/wages. I hear the margins are razor thin at around 5-10% (which is low considering the risks). Not to mention capital expenditure (of which the value, i guess, isn't gonna disappear overnight, so there's that).
Cooking at home also tends to be food that you get in season and/or on discount. You don't have a menu at home, and hence, costs at home are both lower in raw materials, and labour costs are zero (assuming you don't pay yourself, and your time isn't able to be spent productively anyway so zero opportunity cost).
I agree that it definitely is cheaper for restaurants to cook large numbers of the same meal, and they have many other expenditures which raise the price of your meal. But for a single meal, the question is whether you can cook it for less than the price at an equivalent restaurant. In many cases, this isn't the case unless you're cooking in large quantities and eating the same meal for several sittings. Yes, using seasonal ingredients is a good idea -- but a lot of restaurants also do that, and their groceries are still much cheaper than yours anyway.
For example (in Australia), if you want to make just one portion of Thai curry you need at least $60 worth of ingredients (your protein, chillies, lemongrass, galangal, palm sugar, shrimp paste, fish sauce, peanut oil, coriander, coconut milk, Thai basil, kaffir lime leaves, limes, lychees if that's your thing, and so on). So if you're only making one meal it's seriously not worth it (you can buy a decent Thai curry for a fraction of that price). But if you make 10-12 portions of curry (or you make a large batch of curry paste and use it for different dishes) then it starts to become cheaper per-portion.
I have a compromised immune system. I don't do a lot of eating at restaurants. I do get a lot of takeout and have for a lot of years now.
If you call ahead or order online and pick up, it minimizes your exposure to other people. Little Caesar's has a pizza portal where you can order online, pay online, enter a code at the store and retrieve your own pizza from a customer-facing warming oven without ever directly interacting with a person.
If you aren't sucking wind financially as a consequence of layoffs and shut downs, getting takeout can help protect our economy from a total meltdown while fostering new habits for a healthier future culture.
I'm still getting takeout and some staff at eateries are beginning to greet me enthusiastically by my first name like I'm their best friend, apparently thrilled to pieces to have a regular customer while business is hurting.
Things get eaten promptly.
We typically order as close to exactly as much as we will eat. We rarely keep leftovers.
Trash always goes out promptly after the meal is finished. I don't even own a trash can.
Everyone washes hands promptly.
If there was an incident and we feel things are contaminated, we don't keep empty bags, leftover condiments, etc either. If everything is clean, we are willing to keep such things.
There are some articles on HN talking about how long it can live on surfaces. You could use the search function to dig some up.
Edit: here's one:
At the moment studies prove the virus stays in the air for a while but I couldn't find out whether it stays on surfaces or moving stuff makes it fly.
I stopped even buying bread a month ago in my country when there were zero official cases for fear of contamination.
Any info or procedure to make life easier is most welcome.
I don't like delivery and rarely get food delivered (sometimes in hotels). I've read stories about delivery drivers sampling the food or otherwise not protecting it from germs.
If you use Little Caesar's pizza portal, you pull it out of a warming oven yourself. Since it is in a warming oven, I'm guessing the heat will kill the germs.
If you don't have other procedures in place already to handle other issues, I think Little Caesar's pizza portal is the safest "don't need to know much about germ control" option.
If a place has staff that has bad habits, I stop going.
I use self checkout and similar whenever possible.
I usually pay with a card, not cash. Cash tends to be nasty stuff, especially paper money.
I like my food super fresh. I like Little Caesar's in part because they make the dough fresh in house daily. No other major American pizza chain dies that and I tolerate their pizza better than other major chains. I can eat it more consistently, in part because the dough is fresh.
Spices are medicinal. If you are concerned the food is a threat, order spicy foods or add spices. For pizza, red peppers are usually available in store.
If you have no idea what is safe, skip getting paper napkins and trash all extra condiments and the like immediately. Don't keep them around.
Take the trash out of the house immediately to whatever outside trash can you use. Promptly clean up thoroughly afterwards.
Edit:
I will add that staff at eateries are usually better trained in germ control than staff at most other establishments. Cashiers at other stores are a much bigger hazard in my experience and I do my best to use self checkout whenever possible because cashiers are so awful about doing things like licking their fingers to separate bags. You see that much less often in eateries in my experience.
I bet we could enhance containment by just passing and enforcing strict rules for germ control for all cashiers. They are the absolute bane of my existence.
Also, I've been baking my own bread and pizza. When in a lock down, it's a great pastime.
Take care!
Isn't this protection against bacteria, not virus (virii?) ?
> Twelve percent of workers said they worked when they were sick with vomiting or diarrhea on two or more shifts during the last year.
https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/ehs/ehsnet/plain_language/food-work...
I began trying to encourage people to get takeout because I heard staff talking about cutting staff hours because their sales are so bad. The local Denny's, normally open 24 hours, is only open 8am to 8pm. I saw one guy there working the register. There's normally multiple staff during the day.
Wash your hands before you touch anything else and then when you grab the food out of the oven you should be in the clear
source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-are-the-risks-of-food-and-...
I'm not going to eateries I wouldn't normally go to. I would be very negatively impacted if the eateries I frequent shut down.
I have a very deadly medical condition. I've had to somehow make my life work in the face of very hostile conditions, in a world that didn't want to accommodate my need for germ control.
I'm supposed to be on boatloads of drugs. I used to be on boatloads of drugs. I gradually got off all of them.
Prevention of exposure to germs to begin with played a role in that.
Like many people, I am worried about both germ control for everyone and economic survival. Unlike most other people, I've wrestled with such questions for me and my family for about two decades and developed some best practices.
Calling ahead or ordering online and getting takeout is one of those best practices.
It has worked for me for a long time under extremely difficult circumstances.
The obsession with efficiency at the cost of other, far more worthy virtues is what has brought us to this point, where "efficient" global supply chains cannot now produce urgently needed goods at a time of crisis.
Supporting "worthy virtues" is all well and good, except that it's subjective and not always well thought out, leading to unfortunate consequences.
I'm sure plenty of people thought it great to help Sally Struthers feed the 3 million starving African children in the 80's...until the result was 10 million starving African children.
> The obsession with efficiency at the cost of other, far more worthy virtues
Having many competing businesses does not ensure these other virtues arise. Having a mechanism whereby the better businesses rise make it more likely they have the income to explore.
I believe other states / municipalities have started to follow suit, but entire state shutdown has been surreal.
So, you can get pad thai takeout from a restaurant. But you may not be able to get a box of noodles from a grocery store.
I’m 36 and I’m not worried about catching the coronavirus, I’m worried about spreading it.
To what extend do you expect your awareness of what's happening in China to be accurate?
Consider for instance the absolute run on bottled water; what possible explanation other than mindless panic could explain that?
Seems like there is a good reason to buy more than usual - what constitutes "crazy amounts"?
> Consider for instance the absolute run on bottled water
Water being one of the most essential requirements for human life beyond breathable air?
The problem with panic buying is it breeds panic.
You buy a 24 roll of toilet paper every week? I feel sorry for your ... well, you know.
Those are panic buying. The other explanations aren't as charitable.
I have a niche SaaS that helps brick and mortar retail stores in North America. There was a drastic shift on Thursday. And it escalated daily.
To give a sense of the speed and scale of the shift. All of 2020, at least 1/2 of stores were up at least 10% daily (great growth for retail).
On Thursday, a majority of stores were down for the first time all year. By Sunday, 3/4 of stores were down at least 10%. On Monday, 1/4 of stores were down 50% for the day.
I am not looking forward to reviewing the numbers tonight.
Here in NC we just joined the list of states that have banned dine-in service entirely. Curbside or delivery only, after 5PM today.
Basically, a site that helps you buy gift cards and support your favorite local restaurant through the COVID pandemic.
Would love community feedback!
That is the problem with "corona panic", it causes other people to panic and behave irrationally
All the drive-throughs only had 1-2 cars in them today at lunch, instead of the line being wrapped around the building like usual.
When we told in-laws that the state (MA) had just banned dining-in starting the next day their response was "wow good thing we went out for dinner tonight then."
[1] - https://www.boxofficemojo.com/date/?ref_=bo_nb_wey_secondary...
I wanted to help a couple of local business but there’s nothing on-line: Google Maps says that they are open (and my city in in lock-down).
If OT wanted to be charitable, they could lower their service fee, but nobody’s making any reservations right now anyway.
Probably don’t even need to click to know which one it is...
https://governor.nc.gov/news/north-carolina-close-restaurant...
Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, several places in the Bay Area, New York, New Jersey, Washington, Illinois, Ohio.
Basically, at this point, whenever a few large jurisdictions announce their intentions to take some coronavirus measures (such as closing schools or closing restaurants), everyone else follows through within 48 hours.
The page is obviously not responsive optimized (vertical table for narrow layouts maybe?) but the importance of the data makes me overlook hastiness in which it was put together.
Not to mention, if it was first-to-last displayed left to right, you may miss the scroll bar and not understand the value of the data being displayed.
My comment was addressing the OP's criticism regarding how tabular data was displayed in the article.
Tables are a vastly underrated means of conveying data.
Anyway graphs would be nice eventually but the heatmap works pretty well.
Thanks for doing this. It's a very interesting perspective into the impact this is having.
So really this is US data, since it looks like almost all of their restaurants are in the US. I wouldn't put much stock in the other countries.
That being said, this data certainly shows a devastating trend for the restaurant industry.
Source: I'm a former OT employee :]
Throwing out a credit lifeline can be a practice that benefits everyone in times of crisis.
Like I said in my earlier comment, the best hope for these businesses is to return to normal revenue numbers. They aren't going to make up for the business they are currently losing. They don't have a liquidity problem. They have a lost revenue problem. They are still accruing costs without accruing revenue. Delaying those costs doesn't fix that disconnect.
>Paying down the debt is a common business practice that people do all the time.
Taking on debt to allow you to make investments and improve future outlook is a smart business decision. Taking on debt in order to meet recurring operating costs rarely works out when there is no hope of future growth.
A profitable restaurant's unit model might be: 10% net profit, 30% COGS, 30% fixed cost, 30% labor cost
During this one month shutdown, the restaurants won't incur labor cost or COGS. So, they're really only in the hole 30% of one month's revenue. With a little back of the envelope math, you'll see that the restaurant owner can pay back a loan for this amount by allocating 10% of their monthly profits (or 1% of monthly revenue) to loan payback.
Now, if the restaurant is NOT profitable, then we have a problem. But, they were probably going to go out of business soon anyways in that case.
Frankly, I think the restaurant industry is over built and many of them deserve to close. The margins are non existent, most of the food is terrible, it's the ultimate bubble economy business.
Not that it would happen though.
The restaurant is TOAST when the loan starts being due as they try to reopen in the middle of recession after a forced closing and they'll all be out of work trying to feed themselves, pay rent and take care of their loved ones.
You mean free money, just because? How could you even begin to figure out who deserves it? That'd be a lot of offices and bureaucracy to set up to solve the question. Unless you just want to give wads of cash to any restaurant claiming to need help, in which case I'm glad you're not leading the economy.
Maybe it could be like farm subsidies, but we pay restaurants to close for a certain amount of time / certain days of the week, on the condition that they pay employees normal wages for those days.
"Normal wages" for many restaurant workers in the U.S. exclude tips. Without tips, "normal wages" is below the minimum wage.
While it might better than nothing, it's not liveable.
Restaurants are required to bump tipped employees up to the non-tipped minimum wage if the tips don't put them over it. Thus, "normal wages" in this case would be the non-tipped minimum wage.
So you could employ a restaurant worker at $0/h and then bump them to minimum wage, because the tips will never cut it? Basically, you'd be collecting all the tips? This cannot seriously be legal!?
That hourly worker w/o a job will pay rent and food. Software engineer...a carwash, new lawn equiment, or hell even a vacation.
Giving an airline a tax break won't drive them more customers. Giving their customers more money will give them customers.
You need to think long term what this money can do.
Most "excess wealth" is tied up in business and other investments. It's not like wealthy people just horde cash like Scrooge McDuck. That wealth is currently working to support the economy. It is hardly passive.
Forcing the wealthy to pay increased tax on this value will cause them to close business functions, sell stocks, etc.
Is that really wise at this point in time? To redistribute value from existing, proven formats into unspecific, theoretically useful ones?
Theft is not immoral simply because it is unfair or mean. It's because it causes systemic dysfunction.
Suspend loan repayments and rent collection for 6 months, and print food stamps for the unemployed.
Loans will help them bounce back when the crisis is over. Makes no sense right now.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/financing-an-economic-shutdown-...
It’s fundamentally different from me starting a small business and going to Chase saying, look here’s a healthy prospect and I’ll be able to pay it back within x years.
Agreed on this. But the rent paid out during the period of reduced revenue coming in creates a delta that this loan is filling in. The loan still needs to be paid back (even assuming 0% interest). That extra money needs to come from somewhere: increased prices, increased traffic, or decreased expenditures.
Throw in food stamps for the unemployed and you're most of the way to keeping a nation going.
If you force rental payments to stop, then who gets hit? The landlord is going to default on their obligations. So do you then bail them out? If the landlord defaults, the banks (presumably) will repossess the property. So it's just somebody else suffering, rather than the tenant.
The loans work, because the obligation to pay back this loan will come from a future where you have the capability. The govt is the eventual guarentor of this loan, and hence, they take the hit if the eventual future does not come to pass (e.g., the restaurant never regain their full business). The gov't can't take the full hit of all these defaults all at once, but they can if it is spread out. So a loan will spread them out into the future (even perhaps, far future), and the economy survives, even if a lot of the business that took the loan didn't.
Read my post again. The rent holiday goes hand in hand with a debt holiday. That's the only way this works. Tenants don't have to pay rent, and landowners don't have to pay a mortgage.
Sure some businesses will fail as a result of this, but far more (on a massive scale) will fail if you don't do this.
They'll be bailed out by the govt as usual. Which is the point.. the govt has to keep humans fed and housed through this. This is the best way to achieve that end. Kicking the can down the road is exactly what needs to be done. The economic problems and readjustments can happen later. The immediate problem is people fucking dying.
As others have pointed out, this is not what any of us are saying. Those debts are paused too.
The loans DO NOT work, because most of these businesses are barely profitable at all. Now they have to recover to their previous levels of income AND pay back a loan? They can't. It's a ridiculous expectation.
I know this would help for people I personally know in this industry.
Dine in has been reduced almost entirely but takeaway orders hasn't deviated too much from the standard.
The reality here is that a lot of small hospitality businesses don't actually make much profit at all so it's unlikely that they'd survive too long with this forced reduced business. And it's always unhelpful to hear (in general not from you) comments like "maybe they should have saved up more earlier" or "they shouldn't be opening up a restaurant then" because a lot of times they can't work in any other industry - this is all they know.
Imagine having reduced business through no fault of your own yet you're still liable for paying the commercial rent of $1.2k per week. You can't sell the business because no one is buying. You can't sell it because you lose all the goodwill which is bad especially if you've spent any money renovating the place up to standard.
But if it’s just a pause in collection, and you still owe that money, then it’s the same old margin problem: very few restaurants make enough money to repay that loan no matter who it comes from.
It has to be a pause in collection (and interest), but at the end of the day the lender also has to get their money back.
Some landlords were letting people stay rent free out of compassion because no one had money and it was tough all over and no one else was going to rent it. Then the government decided to bleed the landlords and insist it get paid if the unit was occupied, even if no rent was being paid.
Landlords had no choice but to begin evicting people. Things got ugly fast.
It's an indication of how things can go wrong with the government working against you, but I don't know that it maps well to the current pandemic.
I wasn't ascribing good intentions to Westminster. I was saying that their intentions, good or bad, and the intentions of the current American government are irrelevant. What's relevant here is they did a thing and it got x result. So we should use that example to wonder what will really happen should we do a similar thing now.
Except nobody is suggesting a similar thing. I started this thread by suggesting that the government do x, and you replied with the assumption that the government would do x+y.
Six months from now, when the quarantine ends, you aren't going to go to your local Teriyaki and Wok, and order six months wroth of Chinese food.
The restaurant will never recoup those six lost months of rent. The employees will never recoup those six lost months of wages. These loans will never be repaid.
Low margins are the result of heavy competition. If there is less competition margins will be high again.
2. The problem is that after the pandemic ends, the margins will remain low. Because new entrants, with no outstanding debts or obligation will eat the lunch of any of the restaurants that remained 'open' during the pandemic.
I have thought quite a bit about whether this situation will cause long-term behavioral changes.
Do you expect the restaurant business to bounce back to where it was after the crisis ends? I would expect that to happen for a short-duration event. But what if this persists for months, or into next year?
I have searched for papers that explore this idea (say after the 1918 Spanish Flu), but haven't found anything relevant.
What's the fastest way to set up a Gift Card program?
The note keeping isn't super necessary but it can be helpful when trying to track down the order being given to a customer.
In this I'm also assuming Shopify lets you mark orders as pending, delivered, etc. I've only used competitors to it so I'm not 100% sure.
ICU === eating pizza
With fries.
I have 2 cousins who manage a restaurant in upstate New York. Everyone was told to apply for unemployment (which has had its waiting period waived), except for the manager and assistant manager.
The game plan is to trial take-out only dinners, but since less than 5% of their previous business was take out, their hopes aren’t high.
I’m really interested to see how many small businesses like this pull through.
This "corona panic" will kill more people than the virus itself.
I wish I could bet you on that. I could get rich fast
I'm tempted, though I don't have much cash - I keep putting it into startups (my own and others').
The alt-weeklies in Seattle and Portland have already furloughed a lot of staff and ceased print publication.
The economy is a vast web that just had a bowling ball dropped on it.
We handle this like any other shuttered or suffering business though no fault of their own, with safety nets for the people.
Problem is those safety nets have been destroyed in this country and people voted for that to happen on purpose because darn if they are going to let one single migrant get assistance. This is the result. People feeling they must go into work sick because "no other choice".
If you think society will tolerate this kind of lockdown for more than a few weeks, you need to rethink your stance.
If we are locked up for 3 months like this you will have your doomsday scenario. Our entire supply chain will fall apart. People won’t get food, medicine, things that make them happy. Sporting events, social gatherings, etc. People will become depressed and kill themselves. People will go nuts and kill everybody around them.
You’ll have a situation on your hands much, much worse than this virus. Much worse.
People have lost their damn minds and stopped thinking rationally. Snap out it. Go on a damn walk. Nobody is gonna be locked down for three fucking months. If we actually are, I suggest stocking up on guns and ammo now because that will devolve into a doomsday scenario. One much worse than anything this virus can possibly dish out.
The facts appear to be supporting the 3 month shutdown, they include:
- The US Government has said, including the President, that this could last until August. Some expert think that's conservative.
- A vaccine isn't likely for 12+ months.
- Testing facilities are limited and will likely take 3-4 weeks for widespread roll-out.
- We don't fully understand the dynamics of how the virus is spread.
- Congress/Senate are readying a staggeringly large help package (800 BILLION); that relief is at least 2-3 weeks away and I would argue suggests the lock down is going to last well past 3-4 weeks (https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/17/white-house-senate-...).
People have lost their minds around here.
Its not ideal, but if it's required, I'll do it. We are not going to fall apart. Except for twitchy individuals like you, it seems...
I cannot go outside for a walk. We are on state of alarm and the army is on the streets controlling that no one goes out to stop a pandemic that is killing many people and will kill many more.
(/s)
Countries with an adequate social security net in place have a (temporary) answer at least.
Reporter: "How long?"
Trump: "July, August, maybe longer."
This ain’t gonna be more than a few weeks tops. People have lost their damn minds. Go outside and get some fresh air.
there are a lot of 2nd (or >1th) order effects that i suspect will mean that people give up the ghost on flattening the curve. here are some i'm imagining myself; others probably know way more than me:
- the local restaurants are probably well on their way to having shut down. the commercial real estate they rented or owned has way lower prospects of getting picked up. so commercial landlords are hurting.
- ditto above for tourism towns, whose commercial real estate value blows up as those businesses default after 3 months of no traffic and the land sits idle. with these jobs gone, residential real estate also loses huge value. what happens to e.g. Las Vegas?
- anyone who's levered up on commercial real estate basically gets annihilated as all of that value is going to plummet.
- those who were employed and don't make enough via unemployment are going to have to split unemployment between car payments, rent, and food. landlords may be amenable to 3 month non-eviction. we will see their resolve once month 3 ends. and best of good luck getting your new job without a car in most of the US. now residential landlords are /also/ hurting.
- above makes consumerism much more difficult for a large fraction of the population; retail down. shops close; commercial real estate is still less attractive, and now residential is hurting because people (still) can't make rent.
- general market malaise means that previously in-trouble pensions (e.g. Illinois) are going to be even worse off. add up lost tax revenue + increased spending on services and you're looking at some serious trouble if those states don't get some attention from .gov.
so, really, absent some pretty intense government intervention, i just don't see this lasting much longer than 3 months. in fact, i don't even know if you'll see the layered effects start to really show up until you're a few months in.
Interesting, I'd like to see how the indie apps compete against the big guys like Doordash and Uber Eats, especially now during this shutdown. What is your biggest bottleneck, background checks and driver license verification? Bank accounts?
Let me know if you want an extra hand from a remote worker, I used to have to do tech support/emails for my startup, too. All while having a day job so I can understand how overwhelming coming home to 77 unread emails while staring at a backlog of unresolved tickets can be.
The long term impact for a lot of people is terrifying, but I don't see a way to avoid it without instead badly damaging our healthcare system and potentially killing a lot of people.
That way, you’ll have the cash reserve left over to reliably reopen (and rehire them) after the crisis.
This year it was warm (for winter) and dry on that Sunday, and last year it was presumably wet and dreary.
The entire hospitality industry is going to take a huge hit. I do work in the convention, corporate travel/event space, and my calendar up until June has been wiped out. Cascading is the key thing people seem to gloss over. Sure, servers and kitchen staff are obvious. The food delivery people will not be needed. Companies like Aramark that provide cleaning services for floor mats/uniforms/etc are not needed. Down the line it goes.
Source: my ill informed opinion, same as yours. same source as yours.
Social upheaval against a "lockdown" becomes a moot point if people you know keep dropping dead.
Until this happens, I won't really think it was a "big deal" at all, and more along the lines of being merely a flesh wound.
People need to put on their critical thinking caps around here. What is the end game of this lockdown? What data is it based on? How will we know when to end it—given all factors, which include vastly more than slowing the spread of the virus.
Also stop downvoting people asking questions. Asking questions and thinking critically and rationally is what this forum is supposed to be about.
The alternative is to let 2 million Americans die this summer.
I would love to see an actual statistical comparison. spookthesunset is making an excellent point. Unless we know that deaths from the virus are greater than the deaths caused by the second-and-third-order effects of panicking, you can't say for sure that the lockdown is the best thing to do right now.
Do you believe that when the death toll raises from non-panicking and not imposing a lockdown (not to mention the total saturation of the healthcare system), that wont create even more panic and self-lockdown -- and have their own second and third order effects?
By imposing lockdown, we have created a real economic slowdown, that traders are smart enough to deem catastrophic (because a month or restauranteurs going without wages is actually catastrophic and represents a much larger loss of future incomes that the still-small-but-blown-up-in-the-media death rate from the unchecked coronavirus.) Unlike the non-lockdown option, there is no optimistic case. You can't say, "earnings are slow, but people will be sorry if they panic sell because when the media frenzy dies down things will settle." You have to say, "earnings are slow, and might not actually pick up again because the lockdown lost a bunch of people their job."
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s...
Until we know how many people have this or had it, suggesting multi-month lockdowns is ill informed, dangerous doomsday nonsense.
PS: while bitching about downvotes is lame, it is quite disappointing to see HN devolve into yet another panic fueled echo chamber where only “rooting for” the worst case scenario is tolerated.
Don’t let this place turn into an echo chamber people. There are plenty of subreddits and social media groups where you can get your fill of doomsday scenarios. This place bills itself as full of rational thinking people, let’s put on our critical thinking caps and consider the problem from all angles.
Ps: /r/corvid19 seems to be one of the few places on the internet where people are discussing this stuff rationally and not immediately jumping to the worst case scenario.
Places that do have pervasive testing (some town in Italy, South Korea, and Singapore) suggest this virus is widespread and has a >1% death rate. But this data is early and subject to change.
Suggesting we are going to be locked for months or years is irresponsible fear mongering at best.
If you're going to say anything, you're better off overestimate how long it's going to be.
Sorry doomsayers, you better have some good evidence to suggest a 2 month lockup is worth the massive damage to our society. Better also outline what “lockup” means. Is that in big cities? The whole country? The planet?
What is your exit criteria? Who will have to go out into the world to keep shelves stocked and your Uber eats meals delivered? Who is going to be manufacturing your heart medicine? Who will clean that plugged drain? Who will repair that drain unplugger persons tool when it breaks?
2 weeks tops. Perhaps slightly longer for very small isolated hotspot areas. Any more than that and shit is gonna go down.
This video gives a sense of the measures taken in cities outside of Wuhan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfsdJGj3-jM
And I'm not panicking, I'm just tired of people running around doomsaying. There is so much trash information out there and people have completely shut down their ability to think rationally. It kinda ticks me off.
Last point: I live in Seattle. You have previously mentioned how people won't stand for this and there will be riots. What you're failing to grasp is that when people are scared, 90% of them stop going out on their own. Yes, there were some young people still going to bars, but Seattle shut down FAR before any kind of order to do so. People chose to stay in once it became apparent their choice was either staying in or risking needing a hospital that is oversubscribed. That will happen in many, many other places in our country, and there won't be riots because people don't want to be around enough people to riot.
You say: "lock-down 2 weeks tops", when the incubation period is known to be around that or even more, and we have clearly seen that a 2 weeks period does not have any appreciable effect. You say the situation is different than in Italy, even when the number of people in ICUs and deaths is growing exactly in the same way in every other part of the world, with the only exception of countries who took measures earlier. You say it won't be so bad when you admit it will kill a 1% of the infected and all studies talk about at least ~50% of the population catching it at some point. You are not being rational.
I am also tired of the doomsaying but I have not seen any serious study that is minimally optimistic, and I've seen many pessimistic ones.
This study (https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.2020200370, small cohort of 21) had a symptoms-to-discharge period of 19+/-4 days (17+/-4 days in hospital).
Assuming you have a perfect lock down now. People will continue for 7 days to get infected from asymptomatic cases (much longer for some). At the end of that week it will be one week until most symptoms have appeared (but again much longer for some). Now you have hospitalisations of the infected, or home care (as hospitals won't be able to cope). In UK you have to test negative from 3 tests on two subsequent days in order to be cleared for release (report on BBC Radio 4 from an infected patient); assuming a similar standard then we're looking at 7+7+17 days, 31 days until people are starting to be safe to associate with ...
I don't share your "2 weeks top" blind faith.
>Testing there is showing a >1% death rate and because of how those tests work, it is provably about a half to a full order of magnitude lower.
Could you source the proof of this please?
There were posts threatening _physical harm_ to individuals questioning the level of intervention (I believe the words were "I want to throttle the next person who says this isn't a catastrophe") and from typically well-respected users as well.
It's stunning to me to watch this community devolve in this fashion. I take it as a sign of the times, in terms of groupthink and fear-as-contagion, downvote-if-you-don't-agree behavior on the internet, and a broader eternal september effect on this forum.
I only wish individuals showed this much concern surrounding the massive cost in human life we incurred far more willfully via the opioid epidemic, the wars in the middle east, our prison system, etc; I'd go so far as to say I would be more willing to go along with the current overreaction if we didn't seem so hypocritical and self-serving in where and how we assign value to human life.
It is like everybody has that X-Files “I want to believe” poster on their wall when they repeat some of this doomsday stuff.
We are all stuck inside all day, bouncing around with nothing better to do than read doomsday porn. And around and around that stuff goes into people’s head until you get where we are now.
People should be much less concerned about this virus and way more concerned about social unrest. Humans are social creatures. You can’t just “lock” people in their homes for an indeterminate amount of time and expect good things to happen.
Those toilet paper memes and work from home memes are funny at first, but once the novelty wears off over the next week or so, shit is going to get very real. It ain’t funny to see empty shelves of toilet paper or baby wipes when you actually need them.... it ain’t funny to have absolutely nothing to do but sit around and obsess about this virus.
Also, grocery shelves will be full again as the stores limit per-customer amounts.
There is a huge world of stuff that cannot be done remote. Sporting events, construction, weddings, restaurants, building maintenance, manufacturing, and millions of other stuff. Stuff that is critical to keeping our global economy happy. Healthy economy == healthy people.
Ps: have any of the doomsayers spouting nonsense stoped to consider what bullshit it is that all the white collar people can remain “safe” at home while all the blue collar grocery workers and the entire supply chain that feeds it gets to go out each day and expose themselves to a virus so deadly we took these extreme measures? Kind of bullshit, ain’t it?
HackerNews used to pride itself in being better than this. YOU are not helping.
a) We have a large number of infected people (> 10,000) and have no idea who or where they are, because testing sucks.
b) If exponential growth continues (and it would, because we can't isolate all the people who are sick right now), we'll overwhelm hospital facilities and the fatality rate will hit 5% instead of <1%.
BUT
As soon as we clear out a), that kills b) too -- in South Korea they're doing effective contact tracing, testing, and isolation because they have few enough cases. Once we bend the knee of the growth curve, once we get get R0 below 1, we'll have exponential drop-off instead of growth. In 8 weeks, with few enough active cases and robust testing infrastructure, we'll be able to do what China has started doing, and what SK has been doing all along.
Of course, that's assuming we get our act together on lockdown & testing infrastructure. But if we do, we could be out of lockdown by June.
All these folks saying "we need to flatten the curve so that everyone gets it over 41 years!" are extrapolating the wrong data points...
Is this hyperbole, or is anyone actually saying 41 years?
I haven't done careful math, but eyeballing it, roughly a year (give or take some months) is the longest I'd come up with to keep peak simultaneous cases under 1.5mil.
I assume the "41 years" people are using some other constraint.
But every luxury industry that involves going outside and meeting people will be wiped out. The tourist industry is going to be completely dead for a while. Hopefully it can be revived afterward. Hopefully the people involved can find other jobs in the mean time. But it's going to be a harsh year for a lot of people.
It's unbelievable how lucky I am that I can do my work from home.
Of course that depends on the variety remaining. It may not. It’s been 3 weeks and I’m already starting to tire of my local options.
Maybe I might end up learning to cook after all...
It's a great time to learn!
Also, due to the low margins of the restaurant business, I assume they’re using subpar ingredients.
Actually, if I'm home all day long, I like to go out to socialize. The normal daily interactions with co-workers/clients/etc is now removed by working from home. While I don't eat out that much, Happy Hour has become a thing for me. Now, I guess I'm going to have to start labeling myself an alcoholic since I've resorted to drinking alone at home.
I think my wife and I could afford to eat out every meal if we really wanted to (and we didn't go to anything too fancy), but we certainly don't have a 500 m^2 home nor any land. That'd be 3 times the size of our home, and our home is already pretty big for our neighbourhood.
You clearly don't have children. I need to work from home while also getting primary school children to do their schoolwork and not kill each other.
I genuinely enjoy cooking, it is what I do with the extra time I would otherwise be spent commuting.
Luckily, lots of people are not like me and cannot cook if their life depended on it. I am hoping they can keep the local restaurants in business!
I like the idea of buying myself gift cards at local restaurants. Its one way to help them.
I have a tiny kitchen with a single very basic pot and some super shitty baking sheets that I got from a thrift store, IKEA chef/paring knives, a mediocre damaged Henckels from Craigslist, and some mediocre non-stick skillets. All in probably $50. Ya, I might like a ~$120 French or Japanese chef knife, and maybe a nicer pot, but it's absolutely fine. My actual chef friend came by recently and made a killer meal with little trouble.
I admit when I lived in the U.S the answer might have been less but it was probably still "lots of people", I have generally been the worst cook I know and I can still put together about a dozen decent meals.
on edit: but note that I did say the spur left was the tastiness of delivered food so actually I am confused as to are you kidding me based on inability to produce tasty food?
I suspect this is going to start changing soon. High end takeaways will have to happen where restaurants would fail otherwise.
How about any property left vacant for 1 month gets a windfall tax of 10% the market valuation [this is obviously not a fleshed out proposal] ... that should incentivise landlord's to act to prevent losing tenants.
It not a lot, but if enough people do it, it could help them actually reopen.
Of course, as recently as Sunday people like Nunes were telling people it was important to support their local businesses by eating out as if it were their patriotic duty. It might be different now that even Fox and Trump are saying the same thing as the CDC finally.
Maybe not if people literally cannot feed themselves without eating out, though I think that's pretty embarrassing.
I'm thankful for this, though I wish we hadn't spent the last month trying to convince that same 46% of the country (who trend significantly towards the elderly end of the spectrum) that it was an overblown conspiracy against the incumbent president.
I stocked up a month ago when everything was still running to ensure my household has food 12 weeks (I always have 30 days, but wanted to be on the safe side), but I know many people did not, and it’s going to be a while before all of those people can be properly supplied.
You will also note that I was following the guidance that the national military provides to its own staff under these circumstances:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/nsa-corona...
Suddenly all the years I've spent buying and learning to cook "strange" foods is paying off. Also the people buying "non-perishable" foods are going to suddenly discover how important sauce and spice is when they're eating their unseasoned white rice and beans every night for the next year.
I'm not, unfortunately. For years now, cooking has been marketed as a waste of time and effort like hand-washing clothes (think fast food advertising).
Just like anything else, cooking takes time, patience and structure to learn, which many people don't ever have naturally. I was lucky to grow up in a household that enjoyed cooking and I learned when I was kid and boy does it pay off in adulthood, but I also see why so many of my peers don't do it. Everything in our world is optimized for time now, and cooking takes time.
Maybe that's the marketing message that hits some demographics, but there's also plenty of marketing push in the other direction: All the food channels on cable & youtube, amateur cooking competitions, prosumer kitchen renovations, gourmet grocery stores, dozens of cooking magazines and thousands of cookbooks. Not to mention emphasis that cooking skills are desirable for those in the dating scene.
(Now I'm looking forward to a competitive clothes-washing show... no, that's too absurd. Maybe competitive tailoring.)
That exists (kind of). I'm familiar with Project Runway, although that's more fashion oriented but has a strong technical tailoring aspect to it. I'm sure there's more Bob Ross-style shows around sewing/tailoring too.
Still, you're right that many people have access to all those things and choose not to cook for whatever reason.
That being said, I am also not in a position where i would go hungry or eat poorly if restaurants near me completely closed down... I do recall someone in college asking me how to boil water for spaghetti noodles, so I have no doubt plenty will be learning how to cook the hard way soon enough
My wife is an excellent cook (I'm crap, but I can cook enough to survive), but she also loves going to restaurants or ordering delivery. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you always have to.
As in, less risky than picking up food from a grocery store where infected people are shopping and touching things on a daily basis.
EDIT: HN is preventing me from replying to you so I’ll edit it in here...
Yes, of course, all of it...
- They of course should remove the salt & paper shakers. Single use packets can be provided.
- They need disposable or wiped down menus.
- There can be no self-serve dispensers for napkins or utensils, those have to be distributed one by one.
- Seating must be reorganized to keep reasonable distances.
- Chefs and waitstaff all must check temperature before their shifts and record in a logbook
These are all reasonable common sense measures we can take to keep a massive segment of the economy alive.
Restaurants can add a $10 COVID cleaning surcharge if they want to.
I mean, it’s only worth like $1 trillion dollars to the economy. There are ~15 million jobs at stake, and that’s not counting secondary effects. And the problem isn’t going away in a few days or even a couple weeks.
I saw a video of the Tesla Factory in China and the changes they’ve made to protect workers. For example, the cafeteria tables have been converted into single-person cubbies enclosed on 3 sides.
Are they going to spray down the salt and pepper shakers, the menus, the hot sauce, the napkin dispenser, the chair seat and back? For self-serve places, how often are the trash cans disinfected, or the ketchup and mustard dispensers (or packet piles)?
All that not to mention the other patrons in close proximity while you dine.
We don't realize how many communal surfaces we touch in a normal day.
No, cooking it yourself is.
There are a lot more places where things can go wrong transmission-wise in a restaurant than a grocery store. Presumably you will not be touching your face during your shopping experience. But to eat in a restaurant sort of dictates putting things in your face.
Wash your hands and use a paper towel on the way out, like you should always do.
> Sit in the waiting area next to a sick person.
No queuing.
> One of the chefs is sick.
But takeout and delivery is allowed. So this isn’t any different.
The point isn’t that it’s “zero risk” (there’s no such thing).
We’re going to have to live with some element of risk in our lives as long as COVID exists without a vaccine. This is totally normal and to be expected.
We lived with Measles for decades and it is much more virulent and about equally as deadly as SARS-CoV-2. In the 1980s there were still about 2 million people a year dying from Measles.
EDIT: You’re right, we’ve been living with Measles for millennia in fact. And as recently as the 1800s there are populations that have been decimated by it. Measles absolutely did consume a massive percentage of hospital resources, although it’s fair to say that hospitals were acclimated to the demand.
The “flatten the curve” graphic is extremely misleading. The axis have no scale and the two curves themselves are not to any scale. The actual ICU capacity is like 4 pixels off the y-axis.
But that’s besides the point. We should absolutely be taking common sense and appropriate actions to reduce the spread of this virus (and several other diseases come to mind which are more deadly). When possible we should do this in a way that doesn’t destroy people’s livelihood.
That means a rational and scientific approach, not the emotional reaction which is so prevalent and actually damaging. Restaurants cannot stay closed indefinitely, particularly when we have reasonable approaches which can make them safe.
We lived with measles for more than just decades, but it wasn't a sudden outbreak that was overwhelming medical facilities.
The key here is hospital beds. We need to flatten the infective curve right now so that the medical system isn't overwhelmed. Then we can go back to "just being cautious."
https://medium.com/@yishan/its-the-rate-of-hospitalizations-...
> In the 1980s there were still about 2 million people a year dying from Measles.
Again, irrelevant. It wasn't overwhelming the medical system because the infections were spread out. Also we had a vaccine by then.
Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore...all have managed to contain this virus without kneecapping their economies. We should be following their examples.
Most of the US is nowhere near a crisis point, and locking down an entire city (or worse, country) over a small number of cases is like killing a fly with a nuclear weapon. Other, effective tactics exist to manage this kind of a threat.
Once testing becomes readily available we can look at loosening the restrictions.
As the Governor of Colorado put it, saving the economy doesn't do a lot of good if everyone is dead.
Just maybe, somewhere in the middle, Rhyme and Reason can come back home from the Mountain of Ignorance and devise a plan that keeps people safe without cratering the economy.
I'm not sure how big a role testing actually plays. Even South Korea is only testing a fraction of a percent of its populace. And many cases are asymptomatic but apparently can also still spread. So I think what we need to be doing, regardless of testing, is seriously teaching extreme personal hygiene.
As in, shuttered restaurants need to be undergoing emergency training right now on how they can re-open and provide a safe environment.
That's ridiculous, and I hope it's clear to you why it's ridiculous. You should feel silly for repeating it.
There's no rational, educated person who believes that "everyone" is going to die from this. It's not even close to a true statement.
We owe it to all of us to put on our critical thinking caps rather than downvote anything that says something other than “lockdown more, harder, faster, longer”.
At least with a grocery store, you can wash off the produce before you use it. With a restaurant, there's nothing covering the food at all.
And remember, the chefs in the kitchen are paid peanuts, and have no safety net whatsoever, so there's zero incentive for them to get tested or to stay out of work if they get sick. This is also the case during normal times. Eating out is a good way to catch something in a country where we think it's a great idea to fire cooks and other low-wage workers when they call in sick.
Eating at home is still a better idea for the reasons you state, but takeout is an acceptable if less-ideal alternative.
We could talk about things like the expansion of government programs, or we could talk about your theory of how I'm stripping people's humanities away. You would also presume quite poorly if you thought I haven't worked in the food industry.
If you have something interesting to offer to the scenario of collapsing American restaurants, go ahead. Such as more discussion on dehumanization.
These priorities are lop-sided at best.
Restaurants are not a critical component of your basic sustenance. They never were, in the course of human history. Heavy dependence on them for ones immediate sustenance needs is a very recent development.
On the other hand, shelter is.
Some other countries already have programs. NZ just introduced a program where everyone who’s job is locked-out will still get paid (so they can continue to pay bills). Other countries have different programs.
Restaurants employ ~10% of working Americans. A lot of people are going to lose jobs.
Restaurants employ ~10% of working Americans. A lot of
people are going to lose jobs.
But meanwhile what happens to the other 90% Americans who are working who face uncertain futures - some even in underrepresented sectors or even non-union sectors? How do they make rent or their mortgage payments?
All I'm asking is why are restaurant workers deserving of such singular attention and their concerns need such elevation over the rest of the entire working classes of America including other blue & white collar workers?
This is not to say other industries (like hotels) won't also be badly hurt. But restaurants are probably the single largest highly effected sector.
You didn't quite offer anything interesting, just stated the industry is collapsing and workers should get other jobs...that isn't interesting or helpful.
Curious how many people you employ and if your business is immune from the economic impact of this pandemic, maybe some of these workers would like you to hire them.
This is a far more interesting statement: “The restaurant industry is brittle and consolidating, and the the American middle class might not be strong enough to support it anymore. Recent events just magnify the weaknesses of the existing system.“
If that is what you intended to communicate, then maybe that is what you should have written.
I would conjecture that it describes much of the US economy, not just the food service industry.
Maybe you need to reread what you commented on
https://www.eater.com/2020/3/9/21166993/how-much-to-run-a-re...
(Near the bottom of the page if you can read German: https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/coronavirus-deutschland-rki... )
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-socia...
Do people actually talk like this about the livelihood of millions of people in real life, or is an affectation for HN?
The less conversant you are with the actual academia, the more contrived the terms you invent will be. I doubt many did more than undergrad business or economic here.