8 figures reveal how the coronavirus pandemic is devastating restaurants across America

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(Business Insider) The coronavirus outbreak is already devastating the restaurant industry.

Roger Lipton, a restaurant industry analyst, investor, and advisor who recently penned a blog post about the upcoming "restaurant apocalypse," told Business Insider that the restaurant industry is facing an unexpected and unprecedented challenge.

"Any pundit who thinks that they're going to use a recent history — and by recent history, I mean the last 100 years, including the Depression — as a template for what is going to go on here? They're kidding themselves," Lipton told Business Insider on Monday. .....(more)

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-coronavirus-devastating-restaurants-across-us-2020-3

[PJMcK]

1. Here are the 8 data points for restaurants' dangerous future

1. Roughly 110,000 restaurants are expected to close for good in the next month.

2. An estimated 30,000 restaurants have already shuttered permanently.

3. Restaurants have lost an estimated $25 billion in sales.

4. Three million people have already lost their jobs.

5. Orders at full-service restaurants dropped by 71% in the week ending March 22.

6. Fine dining sales have dropped by more than 90%.

7. Two-thirds of people say they're ditching casual dining chains.

8. Half of restaurants can't survive more than 16 days if they stop bringing in money.

In my younger years, I worked in a few restaurants as a busboy, waiter, bartender and grill chef. It's a very demanding business with very little room for financial error. This crisis must be devastating businesses that took years to build! A tremendous number of people will lose their jobs, if they haven't already, and those jobs won't be coming back anytime in the near term.

The economic tragedy is compounded by the fact that restaurants are only one slice of our economy that is being crushed by this health crisis. Many other sectors are equally vulnerable.