Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

FRED (the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis), has useful data.

First, all food/beverage hospitality workers in California.[1] Huge COVID transient, followed by recovery to almost the pre-COVID level. But no further increases.

Full-service restaurants had a similar transient, but never came back to pre-COVID levels. Employment peaked in mid-2023, and has declined since. Full-service restaurants didn't get the $20 fast food minimum wage. But workers there may have tip income. California does not have a lower "tipped minimum wage", and all tips go to workers.

What FRED calls "limited service restaurants and other eating places" shows about the same curve as full-service restaurants.[3] This includes both the fast food chains and the fast-casual restaurants. If you have to order at a counter, it's "limited service", even if they bring out the food later.

So, the part of the restaurant industry that wasn't affected by the increase shows about the same trend as the part that was. Basically, post-COVID, onsite eating never fully came back. Food delivery became a much bigger part of the industry.)

Those stats are regardless of business size. California's minimum wage law for "fast food" applies only to businesses with at least 60 locations. But it also includes such things as 7-11 stores that sell hot dogs and pizzas heated up on site. So, not an exact match to the FRED categories.

Overall, the COVID transient and its aftermath is bigger than all other visible effects.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMU06000007072200001SA

[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMU06000007072251101A

[3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMU06000007072259001SA

Why did it only affect California and not other states?

…the California minimum wage?

Similar patterns in Seattle, many once popular sit down restaurants are now empty and only serve as sources for delivery. Huge buildings with dozens of tables sit empty.

Wow here in Spain it's nothing like that. We still go out for dinner a few times a week (especially around lunch time when most restaurants have a 3-course menu for €12-14)

In Seattle a single restaurant burger will run you €12-14. A restaurant with a proper three course meal is like €80++, assuming zero alcohol.

For the restaurants, their rent is pushing like €250-300/m^2 (or much higher in some locations, much lower if you drive more)

Jeez... If Trump wasn't enough to discourage me from visiting America, the prices sure do! For us that's a LOT of money.

I was in Spain at the start of the year and I was impressed that drinks could be had for a price that only had one digit!

I was also a bit confused about why beer was cheaper than water at some restaurants. That one threw me for a loop.

Yes when going out a beer is usually 3 euro or so. There's a few places where it's 5 euro and people complain about the price :)

However some places like Ibiza are super expensive. 15 euro for a beer or 22 for a mix.

And yes bottled water is often more expensive in the supermarket than wine or beer too. In a restaurant you can often get tap water for free.

Take into account that wages here are much lower than the US though (probably less than half) and lower than nothern europe too.

$14US in Seattle will barely get you a side of fries. A popular place near me (not fancy!) lists their pretzel+dip appetizer for $17US, or €14.50.

With these prices, restaurants and eating out in general has become completely inaccessible to a huge swath of people. And even for those who can afford it, it’s a less frequent treat. It has a noticeable impact on the liveliness of the city and the social vibe, from my experience.

This has been long-term problem for Seattle. I moved here after Portland where the restaurant culture is fantastic. Food is wonderful and inexpensive in Portland so I enjoyed going out. Here in Seattle, it's prohibitive and the quality to cost curve is bad so I make delicious inexpensive food at home.

I once read somewhere that franchise or investor-backed restaurants in the U.S. were often categorized by AOV per diner, with menus tailored to hit these targets: Pre COVID it was $10 (quick service restaurant/QSR aka "fast food"), $20 ("fast casual" like Chipotle), $50, etc.

These numbers are trending up as costs go up, and owners are pretty ruthless about staying on top of labor and materials and discounts (https://fransmart.com/dan-rowes-tips-for-learning-the-recipe...).

Customers are really turning against the ever-increasing price of going out to eat, with the perception that quality isn't improving. Tipping is another issue that really rubs people the wrong way.

It's a joy to visit countries like Spain or Taiwan or Japan where costs to eat out are very reasonable, quality is good, tipping is nonexistent, and you don't feel like you're being hustled out the door to improve some cold turnover metric.

We used to eat out a lot. COVID changed it. What changed? We were forced to really learn how to cook properly, then we saw how much money we were spending eating out, and how much healthier and to-our-taste we could make our own cooking.

When things went back to normal, the prices to eat out had jumped so high, it simply wasn't worth it. $15 of fast food to feed both of us turned into $35-40. A $45 dinner out at a restaurant (taxes and tip included) turned into $60-75 meal. Tip expectations had gone from 15%-18% to 20-25%. Add beer or wine or a cocktail and we're instantly at a $100+ night out.

At home $10 of protein, $5 of vegetables and other ingredients and a good youtube video with a recipe, $15 bottle of wine and we were all set.

One of the biggest shifts in pricing we've seen is Chinese restaurants. Entrees that were <$15 before are now around $20 or a lot more for fish dishes. It's not unusual to have an $80 takeout bill.

Lunch specials fortunately are still under $15 at our favorite places, but only on weekdays.

Oh here prices haven't really gone up that much. A 3 course menu would now cost 12-14€ where it was 10-12. An entree from takeaway would be €5 or so.

The only exception is Uber eats. I notice that most takeaways charge more than on the local takeaway app (Glovo). Probably because most tourists don't know Glovo they are used to spending more.

I'd normally never use Uber (we also have a local alternative for the ride service called Cabify) but I got a free Uber one promo so I tried it out. But with the higher pricing the free delivery is so not worth it.

Seattle seems to have its own particular issues (somewhat shared by SF in my experience): there's no longer any compelling reason to go to downtown. There are plenty of reasons to avoid downtown. Restaurants in Woodinville seem very busy. Similarly restaurants in Sonoma are also very busy. I think the customers went elsewhere.

Online shopping has removed some proportion of the reason people would visit a city downtown. Remote working has removed some proportion of the reason people would be in a city downtown. There has to be some unreproducible draw to get people to go to a city: The Vatican/Mona Lisa; food and culture not available elsewhere, etc. Conversely the city has to be not a s.hole.

Portland, too. The neighborhoods are doing OK, but downtown still feels empty.

It’s interesting to me that it hasn’t depressed commercial real estate prices all that much. Rents are still crazy expensive, with many vacant storefronts and even entire buildings along the light rail lines. The market forces around commercial real estate seem disconnected from reality in a surprising and unintuitive way.

Still, downtowns can be cyclical. NYC in the 70s is a prime example. The days of Taxi Driver are long gone. I guess the question is what stimulus needs to be applied to kickstart the turnaround process.

I’m far from a commercial RE expert, but I know they do tend to have very long leases. That would make it less responsive to sudden changes like 2020 and the subsequent changes

There was never a reason to visit DT Seattle outside of Pike Place Market. The restaurants there if anything have gotten better over the years, I'd say a decade ago most of them closed after lunch because everything catered to office workers.

Did it? I haven't looked into the data. The trends seem familiar where I live in the UK and the few places I've visited since the COVID incident.

I assume she's referring to the claim in the article.

I don't see that it did? The linked article is specific to CA data, it's not a broad survey.

It's in the second sentence

> In unadjusted data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, we find that employment in California's fast food sector declined by 2.7 percent relative to employment in the fast food sector elsewhere in the United States from September 2023 through September 2024.

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