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Don’t Blame Restaurants for Covid Spread
Last week, I sat with a new potential restaurant client, six feet apart and fully masked, of course. Let’s call her Viola.
Viola told me her story. She and her husband are both non-citizens, with a strong entrepreneurial spirit—and they opened a small restaurant a few years ago in Scottsdale, AZ. It’s in a hard-to-find location that is, however, usually found by tourists from all over the US and Canada in the booming tourism season in the Desert Southwest.
Enter 2020. Viola told me how they had finally picked up traction in their tiny spot; she shared stories of her regular customers, expanding hours, wine dinners, and more. They were so confident and excited, that she purchased a building to expand into with a new concept that would eventually also house her existing restaurant. That all happened in January.
Then came March. On March 17, restaurants were shut down for dine-in services statewide. Viola explained with tears in her eyes the pain she felt having to lay off her entire staff.
She spoke of haggling with her vendors over outstanding invoices; the cost of sanitizing products and how hard “to-go” really was for this tiny place with an elevated menu that didn’t offer take-out prior to the shutdown.
With every word, I felt my chest start to tighten. Her story is so similar to the dozens of restaurant clients I work with. The tears, the clenched fists—and the visceral pain—all too common in a year that has decimated an entire industry.
And hear this: when I say decimated, I mean demolished. Trashed. Ruined. Never to return to the way it was. I do not think the average person in America truly understands the shape this industry is in. It’s bad. It’s beyond bad. It’s dream crushing and soul upending. According to the National Restaurant Association (NRA), the industry as a whole is down more than $215 billion dollars over the past eight months.
In fact, the NRA put out a press release Tuesday essentially pleading with governors not to lay the blame for the second wave of COVID at the feet of restaurant owners. Many, if not all, of whom have spent millions of dollars (collectively) to comply with all the rules and regulations set forth by each state, hoping and praying it would be enough to restart dine-in services and to restart the necessary cash flow needed to operate at any level.
As more states start to reenact or tighten lockdowns on dine-in service, I fear my state may not be far behind. In March, before we had real data or even understood the virus, most of us accepted the fate of closing dine-in service in restaurants with minimal grumbling.
As the time has gone on, mask mandates, occupancy limits, etc., have allowed restaurants to reopen. Anecdotally, I have heard from most of my client base that many are tracking about 80 to 90 percent of normal revenue. A welcome change from being down those same percentages throughout second quarter and beyond. That is of course, the restaurants who remain still in business.
Nationally, according to QSR magazine, 100,000 restaurants are expected to cease operations permanently before the end of 2020. Moreover, 40 percent of restauranteurs surveyed did not think they could keep operations going at the current pace for more than six months. As one of my clients told me, “It’s really a matter of how long you can last before you simply run out of money.”
PPP dollars are long gone and, with a stalemate in Congress that seems to be stalling any sort of future relief, for many owners another shut down spells one thing: “G O O D B Y E.”
So, what do we do for owners like Viola and countless others?
First: Stop blaming restaurants for the spread without scientific evidence and contact tracing. They are a scapegoat and, frankly, have been through far enough in 2020 to continue to accept such a large swath of blame.
Second: For the love of all things holy, Congress—stop with the stalemate. Pass some comprehensive relief for small business owners.
Third, personal responsibility is truly the antidote to this virus. Be smart, don’t go out if you are sick, wash your hands, care about your neighbors, comply with mask mandates. Do what you can personally.
Finally, support your local restaurants. Dine-in safely if you are allowed or order carry-out. If you can’t or won’t do that, consider purchasing a gift card or two for future use. If you love a place, support them, because without that critical support, there’s a high percentage chance they won’t be open when we return to any semblance of normal.
Susie Timm is a former bank president who started a public relations and marketing firm in 2009, specializing in restaurants and hospitality.
Published in Business, Economics
Ah, they’ll just increase property taxes or personal income taxes. The middle class will bear the burden as always, and the government will complain about wealth disparity, and they’ll promise to tax only the wealthy, but somehow it still ends up soaking the middle class, and the cycle will continue.
But Governor Newsom says
Has there been a documented case of COVID contracted in a restaurant?
I know that the #Science says that you can only get COVID in a pub or restaurant after 8 PM or 10 PM or midnight depending on the #Science in your particular jurisdiction or in California if you inhale while maskless within 3.4 seconds of taking a bite but only if the bite comes from plate not part of a $350 or more prix fixe meal. It’s science, people.
There are some indications that a large share of COVID transmission appears to takes place mostly in the home when we bring the bugs home and take off the masks around family members who are not part of the COVID-resistant majority of people. So, clearly the #Science thus indicates we should go out more and be at home less.
Fortunately, we are being protected from the deadly risk of restaurant gatherings which could kill us just as easily as a superspreader event like a BLM/Antifa riot, a Trump rally, or the fateful Sturgis Bike Rally. Here are some pics from Sweden from a few months ago. I am pretty sure all these people are dead now.
Swedes who will almost certainly all be dead soon.
My wife and I have been getting carry-out much more often than we used to for just this reason. One thing I would add to your recommendations is to make sure to leave a larger than normal tip – even for carry-out. The wait staff is also hurting.
I feel worse for some of the new shops and restaurants that opened locally when they saw in the roaring Trump economy an opportunity to make their dreams of owning a shop or restaurant come true. Then the covid sucker punch has put them down for the count.
There is a Thai/Oriental restaurant that opened in the small town near us about a year ago. We started getting things and they were just starting to get customers to know that they were there when the shutdowns hit. They are now open from 5:00 to 8:00 several days a week and I can’t see how they can maintain that. Two other nearby restaurants are emphasizing carry out and keeping almost normal hours. They will probably make it.
The shutdown rules make no sense to me at all. One thing I am seeing is restaurants who converted outdoor parking to an eating area. Now that cold weather is coming, they are enclosing the area with a tent (with walls and heaters). From where I sit, that is now an indoor space.
Good luck for your customers.
I should also have said “welcome” to Ricochet. Nice to see a fellow Sun Devil alumnus on here.
Odd too, is it not, that in the close to millions of hours of air time in which the TV and radio people bleat on and on about COVID cases, almost nothing is said about the rise in suicide, or the slamming effect on the economy?
Why is that?
I understand this knob is being considered for Secretary of the Interior.
Unfortunately, lawsuits get heard by judges, and the judges will probably go along with their marching orders.
People need jobs to pay income and property taxes, too.
Ah but if you don’t pay property taxes, the local government simply sells off your home and/or property at an auction, getting monies for your former asset. So property taxes are almost always a win-win scenario.
Unless the property is fully paid for, mortgages get paid first. And since so many people are “underwater” these days, the government may end up with nothing.
Masks deniers on the right are akin to those on the left who doubt that only women have periods. The fact that many Governors enact stupid policies (curfews, ban churches etc) doesn’t detract from the efficacy of masks. The data on the efficacy of masks continues to grow.Just today I got the following references in emails:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/masking-science-sars-cov2.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7510705/
There is plenty more- for a taste:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31142-9/fulltext
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7368149/pdf/main.pdf
If you read the literature, avoid retracted studies/articles (NEJM May opinion piece or the 2015 MacIntrye study on cloth masks). I would not place much emphasis on studies of the flu (THIS AIN’T THE FLU) since we now have a number of studies on coronaviruses. I would also not put much faith in modeling studies since we have multiple observational studies available(plus models depend greatly on the assumptions made).
As for restaurants- there is data showing increased risk from going to such establishments (altho bars are worse)-https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/09/more-evidence-points-bars-adding-covid-19-spread
THE MAIN REASON FOR MASKS IS TO ALLOW US TO NOT CLOSE THINGS DOWN. (https://reason.com/2020/11/16/masks-are-a-tool-not-a-panacea/).
As for myself- I try to use take out often & heavily tip.
Yeah no kidding. The article was written by a person who started a public relations and marketing firm specializing in restaurants and hospitality. Just another lobbyist demanding that conservatives encourage Congress to spend more taxpayer money on an industry where the least successful restaurants frequently go out of business even during good economic conditions?
I don’t really think that governments should have any real power to shut down drive-through restaurants during a pandemic, and I generally think that sit-down restaurants should be allowed at least with some very, very limited seating. Once the unelected bureaucrats are given the power to take something away, they are going to want to exercise that power constantly, and if you can’t get the unelected bureaucrats removed a person’s only solution is to move.
However, most Ricochet folks seem much more willing to sacrifice their family’s lives and health for going to a restaurant. That seems very strange to me.
Why go inside a place where you can’t wear a breathing mask? And even breathing masks aren’t 100% perfect.
A person can go to church, a movie theater, or even a gym with a mask, but how is a person going to eat with a mask?
I’m a misanthrope who doesn’t care anything about fine food. I don’t drink alcohol, and I really don’t drink coffee either. I don’t really care that much if I ever go inside a restaurant again, but I guess it is a real sacrifice for those who really enjoy restaurants.
Yeah, I think I will continue to avoid restaurants.
The problem there, of course, is when they mandate masks AND close things down.
I eat to live, I don’t live to eat.
Please point to any country or US state in which mask mandates had an actual, measurable effect on the case or death curve and caused that curve to vary in any way.
Just read the 1st linked article- it has references- really just read…..of course that is the whole point of my post- the data is there-ignoring it doesn’t make it false-nor is ignoring facts a winning longterm proposition in the electorate. The lefts great weakness is the denial of Truth-we should lead with the truth wherever we can.
I am far from a lobbyist. I am actually LOL at you for even saying that. I own a small business. I work with small business owners. We just want to survive man. You do you.
Thank you! #GoDevils
Because suicide, mental illness, increased cancer and heart disease are “collateral inconveniences” (Dr. Fauci’s characterization) to people focused exclusively on a virus, especially when the know-everything experts like Dr. Fauci are experts in communicable diseases. An expert in communicable diseases gets credit for reducing communicable diseases, but gets to push off any responsibility for harm in other areas. As to the media who should be asking, they are just not smart enough to think about more than one thing at a time, nor have they been taught how to analyze information dealing with other than simplistic situations.
Hospitals, small groups … What I don’t see is how any of that has translated into broad policy outcomes. I have looked at state and country COVID data curves obsessively and plotted policy implementation dates and there is not even a blip. Anywhere.
I have no doubt that a competent health care professional with access to quality PPE is bound to have a better outcome. The point you keep missing is that the wonderfulness of the tech in the right hands does not translate into broad policy and that is the entire point. Using your methodology, the US must have won the Vietnam war because all the weapons tests and training exercises clearly indicated vast superiority.
What I asked you to do was to point to a graph of any jurisdiction’s COVID case or death data and show me where the POLICY has had an impact.
Because you cannot do that and because you are absolutely correct that the PPE tech can and does work under the right conditions, why isn’t the best policy max PPE around caregivers, medical professionals and the vulnerable instead of silly delaying actions in an utterly futile attempt to control general spread?
If masks are only marginally effective, doesn’t that merely delay the spread, delay herd immunity (which appears to kick in at a pretty low percentage) and keep Granny at a not significantly reduced risk for a significantly longer period of time? What is the point of that?
There is no proof herd immunity kicks in at low levels-NONE- it is solely conjecture. There is no proof herd immunity is lasting-NONE. In fact, herd immunity depends on several factors and mitigation steps LOWER the levels of infection required for herd immunity. The best way to achieve herd immunity is a combo of vaccines and mitigation. We never set out to achieve “herd immunity” by letting a disease rip thru our community. To seek “herd immunity” by letting the virus spread widely at this point is clearly unacceptable-operation warp speed is on the cusp of success. Two effective vaccines with the capability to make 40+ million doses a month is a game changer(and operation warp speed was predicated on starting manufacture of the vaccines DURING testing-ie by December we should have 40 million doses ). If herd immunity occurs at low levels than the vaccines will quickly reach herd immunity WITHOUT killing granny. Many here have claimed that the epidemic was over this summer (or quoted faux-experts- like Dr Levitt) and have consistently disparaged mitigating strategies-which not only work, but up until this month where the only effective steps we could take. We need to continue to emphasize social distancing, masks, and hand sanitation while we churn out vaccines. The more we employ mitigation steps the more we can keep the economy open- it isn’t either nothing or lockdowns.
The government never ends up with nothing. It’s similar to the rule that the king never starves when his people are starving. Mao doesn’t go hungry, the Chinese people are told to tighten their belts.
Nah. The main reason for masks is to continue to control us and force us to limited liberty. I no longer care if some people die. It’s not been enough to justify the curtailment of liberty.
I’ve been wondering the exact same thing.
I did not mean to insult harshly.
However, a “public relations and marketing firm … specializing in restaurants and hospitality”?
Wanting taxpayer money for a specific business, especially a field that is not something like hospitals or the military? Seems like a lobbyist to me.
My field of business was hit hard for 10 or 20 years, but I didn’t beg for taxpayer money. More taxpayer money never really solves situations anyway.
…
I was just google translating an instagram article from someone who has been living in the United States for the past year or so. She just flew home to Eastern Europe. Apparently the virus is really bad there.
Here are some quotes:
“SHOCK! This is complete irresponsibility… mess! It seems to me that in (my native country) there are many more people with coronavirus than in the USA. … I begin to be afraid of people.
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I also noticed that in the USA they are much more responsible for precautions, for wearing masks and large crowds of people.
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Here I see people walking without masks in restaurants, shopping centers and even the airport. In the USA you won’t go anywhere without a mask…
It even happened that I went into a restaurant wearing a mask, and the administrator joked: “How are you going to eat?! Why do you need a mask?!”
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Some do not tolerate (the disease).
…for 8 months in the USA (I) did not get sick – and (here) immediately after a week.”
…
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Someone replies to her message or warning stating, “All the same thoughts … in the USA I felt calmer. There everyone and everything observed (precautions). And here there is some kind of irresponsibility.”
Someone else replies: “In Russia, the story is the same; people are absolutely not afraid of anything… in Russia the figures are underestimated both in morbidity and mortality, it has long been known to everyone.”
1,707 deaths across a nation of 330 million people; right? Which – if I did my math right – comes out to .00051571% of the population.
1. No response to the question about actual statistical impact on COVID cases or deaths from mask policy in any jurisdictions so I guess that point is conceded.
2. When Senator Paul asked Dr. Fauci if the apparent end of the pandemic in NYC indicated herd immunity and Fauci snapped that “22%” was not herd immunity, Fauci then made the preposterous claim that NY following CDC guidelines was the cause of the decline. At that time the identical curve over the identical time frame occurred in Sweden, Italy, NJ and MA and across most of western Europe and those entities took highly varied approaches. Fauci was demonstrably wrong.
If there is existing resistance from past exposure to COVID variants then the functional equivalent of herd immunity does in fact kick in at a lower pct as found in this paper: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160762v3 which would also explain why Sweden and NYC now have low incidence of positive testing results even with a low overall incidence of antibodies.
3. Not “allowing a disease to rip through a population” presumes that there is a timely alternative (and that the prescribed fix is not more damaging to public health than the disease). Closing the schools was stupid. Lockdowns of more than two weeks were criminally irresponsible. The entire world is aware of recommended mitigation methods some of which are mandated in some places. But COVID still does exactly what it wants in the exact same pattern in every similar region. We are in effect already letting it rip through our various Potemkin prevention barriers.
Given that COVID is remarkably mild, asymptomatic or resisted by an identifiable vast majority of the population and given that control measures have not worked to control the spread then why not “let er rip” in that majority (it is happening anyway) but instead focus PPE-based strategies where there is higher risk and more potential benefit?
4. There appears to be a lot of evidence of lasting T-cell immunity (See, e.g., https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.15.383463v1.full.pdf )
As contagious as it is, COVID does not spread exponentially. The rise and fall patterns suggests to me that we are not all equally susceptible and that the bug runs out of susceptible, high social contact carriers and ideal climate conditions in a fairly predictable way, way below pure herd immunity incidence. Why did over 80% of the two studied shipboard populations with COVID breakouts test negative if there is not some source of native resistance?
It would make sense to isolate the vulnerable for the duration of that predictable curve in that particular place but not do anything more costly than sustained mitigation advice for the rest. Exposure to COVID in the low-to-no risk majority could build a T-cell record that likely helps us all in the future.
As for predictability, I just won a small bet by predicting in October (a) the date of peak case count in MT, UT, ND and CO within a day (it was 11/13 and 11/14) and (b) that all four would peak within a day of each other. If there were an exacta play available, I would have cleaned up. The bug does what it does in regional patterns and we don’t seem to have any impact on that no matter what the Governors or Anthony Fauci think they are achieving.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Under no circumstances are you to think that our disagreement indicates any adverse personal judgments. Your comments are invariably substantive, thoughtful and well-founded and a cut above even the generally high quality of Ricochet comments. I think the essence of the disagreement is the substantive differences between theory and practice in large policy applications.
Cheers.
They’ll just print up more.
We are so going to be Venezuela.