
Yelp: More than half of restaurants temporarily closed now permanently shuttered - pseudolus
https://mashable.com/article/yelp-restaurants-temporary-permanent-closures/
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kumarvvr
This pandemic has been extra hard on Restaurants.

In India, an alternative to dining out has emerged in recent years. These are
called "Curry Points". (Perhaps they are called Delis in the US, I'm not sure)

See, Indian food is always a binary thing. As in, we eat a base item (Rice,
pancakes like Dosa, Chapathi, etc) along with a curry. There are very few
cuisines that consist of only one item. And most of them are from other
countries. Examples are Noodles and Pizzas, etc.

So a staple Indian dinner is a bowl of rice, with two / three or more curries
/ gravys etc.

The "Curry Points" I have mentioned, simply sell the curries and gravies. They
usually have about 20 different ones. People buy their choice, with each
sachet costing about 10 - 20 rs ( 1 USD is about 80 Rs, so about 30 cents), go
home, prepare rice or chapathis, which are very easy and quick to make, and
have a decent dinner that does not cost an arm and a leg.

A decent dinner for 2 at a good restaurant in urban centers costs about 800 to
1000 (about 10 - 12 USD), but considering average household income in urban
centers is about 40,000 Rs. (500 USD) per month , they are not suitable for
daily visits.

A similar dinner for 2, with say 4 curries, costs about 2 USD. And that is
including costs of rice / chapathis, energy costs, etc.

I don't know if this kind of model existd in the USA or European countries,
but the businesses are very profitable. The store front is hardly 5 ft x 7 ft,
costs about 4000 Rs. per month (about 50 USD Per month). Some store fronts are
simply vans. Curries are prepared at homes and the storefronts are open for
about 3 hours in the evening.

Perhaps this could be one answer to closing restaurants.

~~~
sowbug
The US doesn't have nearly as many street food vendors as some other
countries. I've never seen anything like a Taiwan night market, for example,
where you might find one person selling green onion pancakes, cooked one by
one on a griddle, for a price that's low even by local standards.

I wonder whether regulatory capture is happening, either intentionally or
organically, by way of licensing, inspection, and food preparation rules that
make it hard for anything smaller than a food truck to thrive in the US.

~~~
kumarvvr
In India, regulation is lax and enforcement is even worse.

However, I have found free market forces weeding out low quality ones. It's
not a perfect solution, but it works.

Most of the food prepared in these curry points is usually fresh.

However, they offer a great way to have a sumptuous meal,with many varieties
for very low cost.

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ac29
But, according to their data very very few restaurants were temporarily closed
_or_ permanently closed. The two most impacted cities were 7.9 and 8.2
closures per thousand (so, less than 1%).

I was under the impression restaurants were a sufficiently difficult business
that new restaurants failed at a pretty high rate (a quarter withinin a year,
half within 3 years, per this source:
[https://www.restaurantowner.com/public/Restaurant-Failure-
Ra...](https://www.restaurantowner.com/public/Restaurant-Failure-Rates-
Recounted-Where-Do-They-Get-Those-Numbers.cfm)). Given this, I'm not sure this
<1% permanent closure rate is that unusual.

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supernova87a
If you want to talk about economic justice and helping tear down barriers that
disadvantage the poor and underserved, having a national strategy that targets
businesses like restaurants would be a good place to start. Along with other
similar industries. Restaurants are a big driver of entry-level and family-
supporting jobs. As you can see, they're also the most vulnerable to
insolvency.

It would be better than Congress doing the mindless easy thing and
promulgating untargeted subsidies that larger corporate entities are the most
talented at cashing in on. By the way, the amount of paperwork and
disorganization of these stimulus implementations doesn't help the most short-
staffed family businesses. But I would guess doing things properly and
strategically takes work and judgement that we don't have right now.

~~~
SaltyLemonZest
I'm not sure how much a better strategy could help, since most American
restaurants teeter on the edge of failure even in a good year. Even if we
tossed around enough aid to keep restaurant books balanced until the far off
point when they can open at full capacity, how many restaurants would survive
the reopening? (It's not an exact comparison, but something like 60% of
restaurants fail within a year after starting.)

And how many restaurant owners are willing to put their life on pause
indefinitely?

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maerF0x0
In california reopening moved our daily death rate from ~60ppl per day to
~90[1]

I hate to say it, but we all have to go sometime. Is smashing the economic
means of the masses worth the lives of so few?

There are plenty of other economic vs. life preserving trade offs we make
elsewhere, so clearly that's not a valid rebuttal.

When will we decide that the emotional response to Covid is not a rational
one?

[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/california/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/california/)

~~~
dcrn
It doesn't seem right that one should be forced to go before it's "their" time
as a result of the masses' inability to care about the collective health of
their neighbors.

~~~
maerF0x0
No one would force someone to expose themselves to that risk should they
choose not to participate in the wider society. Your point would make sense if
people were intentionally spreading the disease. (ftr i am against covid
parties). But in this case for someone to get the disease they must choose to
expose themselves to it (by going to a restaurant, by not sanitizing their
hands before touching their eyes et al)

The point is that the freedoms/rights of the masses are being restricted for
the benefit of few.

And to be clear I'm not saying that people should not be prudent whilst
retaining their freedoms. It's prudent to wear a seat belt in a car, or a
helmet on a motorcycle. Similarly it's prudent to wear a mask and sanitize
hands and objects.

But to tell everyone they cannot drive because someone (not the driver) might
die, or you cannot drive a motorcycle because it increases your chance of
death over alternative means of transport has never been a rational argument.
Yet we take similar arguments about covid19 as sufficient?

~~~
dcrn
I see your points, but I admittedly have a different perspective.

Sure, no one would force a person to expose themselves to that risk. However,
for much of the population, there comes a point where they have to participate
in the wider society for necessities, e.g. groceries; obviously, there are a
few exceptions to that statement. Sure, they could get their groceries
delivered, if they can afford it. But if they can't afford it, then they must
participate in order to continue to live. All of this doesn't even begin to
touch on essential workers, who are forced to work and may not have an easy
time attaining another job.

The freedoms and rights aren't being restricted for the benefit of few; it's
for the _safety_ of many.

The example for driving doesn't match here, I feel. One can observe cars
driving erratically and do their best to avoid them or one choose to take an
alternative mode of transport in order to avoid getting into a car accident.
But viral transmission doesn't have any realistic similarity to traffic
deaths. One cannot see viral particles in the air as they get transmitted from
one person to another. And anyone who comes into contact with that person is
at risk from the moment the transmitter contracts the virus until they become
immune. Traffic deaths don't work like that.

One cannot choose to not to be a part of society when they are required to
participate to be able to live. That ability to live is a right afforded to
everyone. Why is someone's right to life worth less than someone's temporarily
restricted freedom to do what they want?

Are you comfortable dying for my right to see an improv show? Because I'll
tell you right now, I'm sure as hell not comfortable dying for yours.

Is smashing the already transient lives of real people worth the bottom lines
of a few restaurants?

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Axsuul
It would be interesting to know how many restaurant closures there were around
the same time last year.

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nikolay
Not only restaurants. A lot of people reinvented self-sufficiency: from doing
their own hair, nails, to planting fruits and veggies in their backyards.
There are many negative effects of the pandemic, worst of all, all the
suffering, but also many positive ones as well.

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virtuous_signal
Well this is sad.

It seems to me that this should have been avoidable - along with others like
airlines and cruise lines saying they're going to go bankrupt. Why is hitting
"pause" for half a year such a death sentence? As an individual, while I don't
have a lot of money and my income is 0 currently, I've reduced expenses and
could live off my savings for the next couple years. Why can't businesses do a
similar thing -- is there some competitive advantage, in better times, that
motivates businesses to keep almost nothing in reserves?

~~~
chrisco255
Because you can't hit pause on your liabilities. Double entry bookkeeping
doesn't give a care about your virus. Your liabilities are someone else's
assets. A pause in business activity on the scale we're seeing causes a chain
reaction. The restaurant can't pause rent or loans (and even if they could,
that just causes other downstream effects for bank balance sheets who can no
longer loan out as much because their reserves are tapped, etc), or pause
utilities, and when the restaurant ceases to purchase food and equipment that
causes downstream effects on distributors and suppliers who have to tighten
their belt which affects their creditors, employees, and suppliers, which
affects everything else. Many restaurants lease or rent their equipment. There
are huge capital costs to starting a restaurant.

Businesses often operate on the margins, especially restaurants. They have to
pull a lot of volume in order to make it selling food at $10-20 a plate. They
maybe have 3% net profit margins, so they need to sell millions of dollars
worth of food to make a decent income for the owners.

~~~
wahern
This is the problem with everybody being leveraged to the hilt.

I suspect some small fraction of property owners, however, are unleveraged,
absentee, and likely willing to grant rent forbearance for quite awhile. For
example, older people holding onto real estate for their children, or who
simply really like their tenant and are committed to the community.
Restaurants lucky enough to have such landlords, or similarly situated
landlord-restaurateurs, are probably counting their blessings right now.

We wouldn't have a very dynamic economy if everybody operated this way, but at
least there's _some_ heterogeneity to help us bootstrap things. No comfort for
the huge number of people who have effectively lost their life savings,
though.

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jeppesen-io
For years and years the internet has been full of "something something is
going to be the next economic disaster". Sometimes that's Obama or Trump
elected. Sometimes it's high corporate or government debt.

Always thought they were along the lines of even a broken clock is right twice
a day, at best.

But this, makes me worry for the first time

