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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

>Business are being told to do takeout only which is a huge difference.

Yeah I've been doing a fair amount of takeout and places where you had dozens of people ... operating with two or three people now.

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My brother is a restaurant owner and reports that despite volume being down, profit is up due to less overhead. Others in the restaurant industry are reporting the same. When we come out on the other side of this, I think a lot of businesses are going to rethink a lot of things they held on to as infallible truths.

Sorry as many mentioned, yes the key ingredient is takeout: This is a fast casual italian / pizza restaurant. I find fast casual restaurants doing just fine in my area. It's traditional sit downs that are struggling.

Almost every restaurant owner I know is about to fold or taking emergency loans. From people with several franchised sandwich shops to stand alone restaurants.

Who is reporting profits are up?

I'm guessing they're confusing profit and margin. It wouldn't surprise me if margins were higher now, but I have a hard time believing overall profits are up, anywhere.

Especially when you consider a lot of restaurants make a good chunk of their profit on alcohol sales. While many are offering alcohol to go, I think most of us are picking it up from the corner store instead.

Anecdotally, the owner of one of the nearby pizza places mentioned that both profits and margins are up for her. Of course pizza places historically have a large amount of delivery already. I imagine the current crisis has driven more customers to them at the expense of places that are traditionally dine-in only.

Did his business already have a robust take-out business? If so, I wouldn't be surprised by this comment. I would expect revenues, for awhile, to be the same or even increase... though as individual customers circumstances turn less certain I would expect that to decline over time. Certainly there's less labor overhead, and slightly less expense for utilities, cleaning supplies, etc. But larger pieces, like rents, would remain the same absent some sort of accommodation for the crisis.

A business that didn't have a robust take-out business prior to the crisis I would expect to fare worse. You'd have to do things like get the word out that you are a take out business for one... and some couldn't likely make that transition. Would you order fine dining take out? Sure the food might be good, but half the reason to go to a good restaurant, rather than a cheaper one, is the service.

My personal experience has been that quality of restaurant/food/dining experience has always been negatively correlated with number of tables, or even total sq. ft.

I think fast casual already did that and going say delivery only ... might be a dead end for most small businesses.

Especially as folks get out of their homes and WANT to be out and about ;)

Is the change something that can be stabilized? Or when people have the option to eat out again, will delivery-only restaurants suffer too much from competition with eat-in restaurants? (Assuming there's some level of customer preference for eating in?)

Now I'm curious about pizza places. Most pizza places offer seating. But I feel like Domino's might in fact be delivery-only.

They might be making more money on sales vs staff right now but anyone who has a rent payment isn't going to cover it with takeout alone.

For most major fast food franchises, the drive through constitutes a majority of the food sales. Labor also constitutes the largest line item on a P&L, so if you can work it right, you might be able to make it work. Especially if you're getting assistance (in the form of suspended franchise/royalty fees).

Cheesecake Factory can't make rent this month - https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/26/business/cheesecake-factory-a...

Of course there's less overhead, they are employing fewer people (or drastically reducing paid hours for employees). That's kind of the point of the parent article.

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