it’s a sign that people are trading down from restaurants to preparing food at home.
I don’t eat out much.
Most of my favorite restaurants that I ate at a decade ago are closed.
Although I was never a smoker, the stricter no smoking laws killed a lot of local restaurants and bars which had some good food.
Some locals are trying to stay alive with video gaming machines.
It may help the cash flow but it is not helping their food business.
Even if the food is decent, it’s so depressing to watch a lonely person interact with a computer in a public venue.
Then the scamdemic closed a lot of local restaurants.
The restaurants that survived are over priced chains that can’t find good help to staff them and got used to serving take out during Covid which lower their standards of food quality and service.
At least one of the local pizza places has kept its quality and service up.
Other than them there is not much around me worth patronizing.
When we go out to eat it is for lunch.
The places we go used to be packed with patrons.
Now we just walk in and get a table right away.
Plus where we used to eat lunch out 5 days a week, we have cut it back to 2 days a week.