Few industries have felt the impact of the coronavirus pandemic more than the restaurant industry.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans depend on restaurants and bars to earn a living.
The National Restaurant Association estimates that compared to pre pandemic levels, restaurant employment is down close to 2.5 million jobs
and that the industry lost 240 billion dollars in sales in 2020.
And while the full impact of the pandemic is still playing out, it appears that hundreds of thousands of restaurant businesses have permanently
closed. Which begs the question, what will be left of the restaurant industry once covid has run its course?
I think the service and restaurant economy will be forever changed.
It'll be evolved in new ways we haven't even answered yet.
We have the covid pandemic and people aren't actually eating in restaurants as much as they have in the past.
Restaurants and bars across the country are doing everything in their power to stay open, even when research suggests it's not totally safe.
Stanford researchers found that many people who contract coronavirus report having eaten at restaurants indoors stating that, quote, restaurants
were by far the riskiest places, about four times riskier than gyms and coffee shops.
And the CDC has found that people with coronavirus were twice as likely to say that they've dined indoor or outdoors at a restaurant in the past two
weeks and many restaurants have transitioned to outdoor dining.
But as you can see, sometimes outdoor dining isn't ideal.
The tragic irony is that people who work in restaurants and bars, the same people many well-intentioned business owners are trying to help support are
the most at risk. I recently called on my friend Kendall, who's worked at three restaurants and bars since March 2020 because the first to shut
down. In the restaurant, there are a lot of covid guidelines that you have to follow.
There's nothing really you can do to protect from that because it's like you can't drop off food from like 10 feet away.
You know, it's a very risky job to have right now.
This risk is something essential workers in the restaurant industry have had to evaluate for nearly a year now.
My name is Denzell Washington.
I'm a young chef and single father from Harlem, New York City.
I have a child and I think I need to provide.
My name's Connor Mack, I own a small deli in Austin, Texas, called Other side Deli.
I'm Jo McDaniel.
I'm the general manager of A League of Her Own, or ALOHO, the lesbian -queer bar in Washington, DC.
Financially, we just couldn't close.
We've we've taken a lot of measures to try to do the best we can.
It's just not manageable for us to continue as a business and also close.
As we're recording this, and this is without any recent updates.
There are 15 lesbian dyke-queer girl bars in the United States that we know of.
We're still fighting for things like job security where people are not always secure in their job and then pay inequality.
Women make less money and that's AFAB and otherwise we just make less.
So because we make less, we have less to spend, especially where leisure dollars are concerned.
These pressures are real and they're forcing Americans to make difficult decisions no matter their position in the industry, whether they're cooks
or servers or owners.
It's a very big difference in lifestyle changes that you have to adapt to as well, because you're like, well, I have enough money for food,
not for rent. And without a way to not work, some business owners have chosen to stay open willingly receiving citations and fines from local
officials and police.
I was just beyond fed up and sick to my stomach over how this was affecting my team.
I'm looking at studies from Stanford and stuff from New York, but thinking, OK, if this includes indoor dining in these other states, we are
able to do this without being an imminent threat and we can safely provide a work environment and a dining environment.
So December 7th, we did reopen.
I have four misdemeanor charges against me right now.
My arraignment is February 19th.
I have right now forty three hundred dollars in fines.
Oh, did I get another one last night?
Let's see. January twenty six, 7:42 p.m.
it is nuisance, and this one is failure to obey city health officer relatedto the control of Covid-19 and it says that
I am required to cease and desist operating in violation of Appendix H of the safer at home order.
In March 20 the Cares Act allocated three hundred and forty nine billion dollars towards PPP loans.
Connor says PPP funds were crucial to keeping his business afloat.
The PPP was great. It did really help us.
We used it to redo our patio.
So there's places to sit when that came about, we're still not letting anyone eat inside.
We permanently removed our dining room.
However, the majority of PPP funds went to large companies, including several fast food chains, some of which decided to give the funds back
after public outcry.
It was very clear to us that we were eligible for one of those loans.
No one at the time knew where that would go.
So we quickly applied.
We were able to do it and in our mind was -- Sweet.
We're going to keep as many people employed as possible, as soon as we receive the money it became very clear those following days that the people
who this was meant for weren't getting it.
The United States has surpassed 25 million confirmed cases of Covid, but unlike comparatively wealthy countries, the U.S.
has not paid to keep workers home safe, leaving many small business owners wishing they could either operate as usual or be given the financial
support needed to temporarily shut down.
Had the government decided to take care of its people, say stay home for this long, here's the money to sustain life, we would have
had it, we would be looking at a completely different thing I think.
I would at least make anywhere from eight thousand to fourteen hundred a week with the job that I currently have where I'm making seven dollars an
hour plus tip I make since nobody comes in like forty dollars a day and I work four days a week.
So one hundred and sixty dollars a week.
The way I viewed it, it was just a means for the rich to gain more wealth no matter where we come from, skin color, ideal race, whatever.
All humans have to eat every single day.
Restaurant industry turns out a large portion of America's revenue.
I'm currently two months behind rent.
I've been behind rent the entire time because by the time unemployment hit, I'd already lost all my income and there was no way for me to get that
back while we were waiting for those checks to come in.
So literally, all of covid I've been playing catch up.
To make matters worse, researchers have found that since the pandemic began, tips have decreased by as much as 80 percent.
We saw our tips percentage go down because we're no longer this entertaining, super fun group.
It's like if you're going to get up to the restroom, you have to put your mask on.
So we become these sort of like harbingers of doom.
And yet, in spite of all this, many restaurants and bars have adapted finding new ways to keep their businesses running and their communities
together, you just have to shift it and be willing to be flexible.
So we set up outside, our bar space that was just packed with humans, became six tables, spaced six
feet apart and tons of ventilation systems added
We
worked with Door Dash and Uber Eats and all of these main delivery companies here in Austin just
taking way too high of a
fee, up to 30 percent.
We did some takeout that did fairly well, but ultimately it was like the risk and reward weren't really balancing.
I run a business that's not good to run during a pandemic and so we just kind of keep a smile on and try to keep on doing it.
This isn't a happy story.
Americans working paycheck to paycheck to make ends meet are being forced into harm's way in order to survive.
But maybe this story isn't necessarily how covid almost killed the restaurant industry, rather, how American workers couldn't afford to let it
die.