Sad story from NPR about the restaurant industry during the pandemic.
30,000 square feet of broken dreams.
- Thread starter lucas80
- Start date
I'm trying to stimulate restaurants as much as I can without gaining 20 lb or going broke. I counted the other day and I have $200 in restaurant gift cards that I bought back in the spring. I will use them at a later date. Or not.
A
anon_89hvcc2uyzmki
Guest
Power hungry governments inflict unnecessary pain and wreak economic havoc on millions of small businesses.
Then we get "stories" about said damage.......like this couldn't have been seen coming like a Mack truck with it's hi-beams on and horn blaring.
Then we get "stories" about said damage.......like this couldn't have been seen coming like a Mack truck with it's hi-beams on and horn blaring.
Our brilliant Congress chose to bail out the giant corporations with trillions in aid, but let small businesses die. This wasn't an accident. All those mom & pop joints that will now be replaced by boring, uninteresting, national chain restaurants are never coming back. The industry will never be the same.
I know you've been drunk the whole time (i can relate) and you're sick of your children, but you keep acting like things would have been hunky dory if the government had not acted and it's a foolish belief.
I know you are in the industry and times suck, but I would think it would takes years of plight before independent restauranteurs are killed off. Looks like things are rebounding some in Ankeny. I got carryout from Tavern 180 last night and it was surprisingly busy inside for a Monday. For any Ankeny people that have not tried Tavern 180, it is excellent.
Independent restaurants will not be able to make it anywhere near "years of Plight". Sucken inventory cost and inability to retain quality staff alone will kill many.
I didn't say "independent restaurants" I said "independent restauranteurs." Restaurants come and go, but not the people that own them. I am envisioning restaurants owned by LLCs which go under, but the LLC members live to fight another day with new investors once conditions improve.
Many will get wiped out, but new blood will line up to invest and rebuild...
This is possible. It is also possible the people lining up are giant corporations who have been able to float the storm and can further stack the odds in thier favor.
As opposed to well over 500,000 dead at this point? Would that sad story have been more to your liking? Better because they were mostly old people or fat people or already sick people so #whothefvckcarez? That was also "coming like a Mack truck with it's hi-beams on and horn blaring".
People like to eat good food. Once conditions "normalize," people who make good food will make money.
Independent restaurants are like the craft beer of beers,.. People recognize Olive Garden when they see it...
Craft beers require better ingredients and a higher knowledge than "natuaral light". You might be able to argue that thier will always be a place for fine dinning but even a blind man could see these events are going to help the companies big enough to weather the storm.
In a country of 300 million hundreds of thousands of people die every year. Haven't you noticed how there narrative of total deaths isn't being pushed anymore? Rememeber 'with" not "of".
Last edited:
Not necessarily about fine dining, it's about good food,.. There will always be room for someone offering an alternate good food experience that the big box restaurants can't replicate...
It is going to be a very hard period, but I believe in the resilience of small business folk, and the creative folks who often times are the genius behind a good restaurant. There will always be a void that chains cannot fill.
Soon, America will be nothing but Amazon Warehouses, Walmart, McDonald’s, and Olive Garden.
Only if those companies own all commercial property. But then they would be subject to antitrust laws.
A
anon_89hvcc2uyzmki
Guest
Have never said things would be "hunky dory" the other way.
But governments playing overlords of individuals and businesses (especially when the science doesn't support these measures) is the greater of the two evils.
A
anon_89hvcc2uyzmki
Guest
A lot of "what ifs" in that scenario there. I guess we'll never know if that would have come to fruition because of the unprecedented and unnecessary measures that were forced upon us.
What I do know is that a virus with a 99% survival rate is not tantamount to a "mack truck with it's hi-beams on and horn blaring". This is because a multitude of viruses already kill hundreds of thousands of people every single year. And we've accepted it as a fact of life. Up until 2020. And then suddenly we didn't.
And we are not better off for it. I would argue that civilization, on the whole, is worse off for all that has transpired in the way of unwarranted overreactions.
Before 2020, when was the last time a multitude of of viruses packed hospitals with patients like this around the globe the way this has? Do you just not believe that's happened?
Serious question: why won't someone be able to start a 'mom & pop' joint after the pandemic crowd controls subside?
I thought the restaurant biz in normal times had a monstrous fail rate and people constantly trying to get into that market.
Are consumers going to shun 'mom & pop' places post pandemic?
I don't understand the 'never'. Isn't it up to us where we choose to go?
A
anon_89hvcc2uyzmki
Guest
That I don't know. But I do know that we've been forced down this path for better or worse. Again, with unprecedented measures that are adverse to scientific data.
My personal opinion is that this path was the incorrect path for the long term health and well being of children, individuals, families and small to mid size business (which drives our economy) for decades to come.
It seems to me that "our hospitals can't take anymore" is an invisible threat used to steer us towards a future that is significantly restructured and configured adverse to how our society has been operating (largely successfully) for a long damn time.
But hey. I could be wrong. That is for damn sure precedented.
This is incorrect. Covid is already one of the leading causes of death in our country. In fact, THE leading cause just a couple weeks ago.
By ADRIANA DIAZ CBS NEWS December 5, 2020, 7:21 AM
COVID-19 was the leading cause of death in the U.S. this week, report says
COVID-19 was ranked as the leading cause of death in the U.S. this week, with 11,820, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. That's more than the number of Americans who died from ischemic heart disease (10,724), tracheal, bronchus and lung cancer (3,965), and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (3,766).
A
anon_89hvcc2uyzmki
Guest
Not sure if accurate or not but even if it is......could you take a more narrow view of this entire situation? Unlikely.
Yes. But it probably won't be the same Mom or the same Pop. Their dreams have been destroyed.
Just like the trees in the path of the derecho on August 10th, "small businesses" will come back. But that won't fix the carnage that has been done.
I used this real life scenario in another post. My Dad (80 and diabetic) had a stroke 30 days ago, They found a blood clot in his leg that caused severe swelling. He had been ignoring that for months. They also found severe ulcers in his esophagus and stomach. Ignored by my father for months, maybe longer. The ulcers were causing him to feel full and he would eat. He hasn’t eaten more than two bites in a meal since 11/26. Today we moved him to a nursing home. He’s lost his entire left side of his body. He’s lost his will to live. He’s a fraction of himself 30 days ago,
If he catches COVID in the nursing home and dies, what do you think the cause of death will be? I am willing to bet there are thousands upon thousands of similar cases across the country. I’m not denying that COVID is deadly. It is, but I’m not buying the total numbers.
Ive also posted in another thread that approximately 480,000 people die from smoking every year in the US. Strange how COVID has passed that.
Lol - you're the one that claimed Covid isn't a big deal and that other viruses kill as many or more. That's simply wrong and ignorant of the dangers of Covid.
The cause of death will be what causes him to die. The notion that the numbers are inflated is wrong, if anything they are under reported. And Covid has not passed deaths from smoking but it's on pace. A good reason to have restrictions, like smoking, to help prevent the spread.
Technically, some families have had multiple deaths so it is probably only a quarter of a million families with some having multiple people to mourn.
Telling yourself that something is true is not the same as that thing actually being true. There is no virus in the past century that remotely approaches the death toll from Covid.
Or, the power hungry government that refused to provide any assistance to restaurants should be held accountable. If Democrats were in charge of the Senate and were President there would be a lot more restaurants and small businesses that would still be open today. Also, there would a lot more people still alive.
But instead you choose to blame state governors who were acting responsibly but were left flailing.
You’re the one suggesting that the thing that kills him isn’t actually the thing that kills him, silly.
