“In retrospect, a fatal error when nobody is eating out at restaurants.”
In our area, pickup and eat at home/???? seems to be the winner.
A 50 something man we know, who spent about 20 years in the high end restaurant business has a lot of friends in that business. He is always suggesting to everyone to support those dead end businesses by eating there or via charities.
We keep telling him that is like supporting dying businesses in dying malls. It is time for those people to move on. We have a couple of high end take out/eat at home businesses which are doing great.
We have increased our monthly donations to the Salvation Army and our church’s local charity efforts.
Seriously, those business would probably be better off just closing, so they wouldn’t have to pay expenses while having little to no income, but they are all locked in to commercial leases that are going to be multi-year contracts. That expense will keep piling up no matter what they do, so there’s no easy escape hatch for most of them.
The best they can do is lay off most of the staff and operate with a skeleton crew, limited menu and just try to make whatever small income they can to try and stop the bleeding.