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The state of the restaurant industry

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Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#271

Post by spookthesunset »

zaroth wrote: post #34
jedberg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you go to the bathroom and touch the door handle. Or sit in the waiting area next to a sick person. Or one of the chefs is sick and doesn't have perfect cleanliness. There are a lot more places where things can go wrong transmission-wise in a restaurant than a grocery store. Presumably you will not be touching your face during your shopping experience. But to eat in a restaurant sort of dictates putting things…

> Touch the handle going to the bathroom. Wash your hands and use a paper towel on the way out, like you should always do. > Sit in the waiting area next to a sick person. No queuing. > One of the chefs is sick. But takeout and delivery is allowed. So this isn’t any different. The point isn’t that it’s “zero risk” (there’s no such thing). We’re going to have to live with some element of risk in our lives as long as C…

Sure wish this stuff wouldn’t get buried. It should be fine to question and criticize the course we are all taking. Humans can be panicy creatures that love to imagine doomsday scenarios. We live in an age where feeding our imaginations with crap on the internet is a trivial operation.

We owe it to all of us to put on our critical thinking caps rather than downvote anything that says something other than “lockdown more, harder, faster, longer”.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#272

Post by logicalmind »

nck4222 wrote: post #20
dlandis wrote: post #5

Does that data indicate that seated reservations are only presently down 56% YOY in the US ? That's pretty discouraging if that many people are still ignoring standard guidance.

There are a lot of people who don't really understand the importance of social distancing yet. When we told in-laws that the state (MA) had just banned dining-in starting the next day their response was "wow good thing we went out for dinner tonight then."

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has had to question the intelligence of family and acquaintances whom I used to hold in high regard. I've been asked to participate in "measle parties" with my kids. And to do a community stationary bike ride a the local gym to support them.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#273

Post by timr »

jedberg wrote: post #57
zaroth wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Touch the handle going to the bathroom. Wash your hands and use a paper towel on the way out, like you should always do. > Sit in the waiting area next to a sick person. No queuing. > One of the chefs is sick. But takeout and delivery is allowed. So this isn’t any different. The point isn’t that it’s “zero risk” (there’s no such thing). We’re going to have to live with some element of risk in our lives as long as C…

> We lived with Measles for decades and it is much more virulent and about equally as deadly as SARS-CoV-2. We lived with measles for more than just decades, but it wasn't a sudden outbreak that was overwhelming medical facilities. The key here is hospital beds. We need to flatten the infective curve right now so that the medical system isn't overwhelmed. Then we can go back to "just being cautious." https://medium.c…

Repeatedly saying "flatten the curve" isn't a response to someone saying "flatten the curve without destroying the economy when you can avoid it".

Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore...all have managed to contain this virus without kneecapping their economies. We should be following their examples.

Most of the US is nowhere near a crisis point, and locking down an entire city (or worse, country) over a small number of cases is like killing a fly with a nuclear weapon. Other, effective tactics exist to manage this kind of a threat.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#274

Post by fma »

cycrutchfield wrote: post #189
baby wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI is honestly the only solution here.

How about something a bit more targeted? Do we really need to give software engineers working from home extra cash?

That software engineer would spend it elsewhere in the industry, likely some non-essential.

That hourly worker w/o a job will pay rent and food. Software engineer...a carwash, new lawn equiment, or hell even a vacation.

Giving an airline a tax break won't drive them more customers. Giving their customers more money will give them customers.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#275

Post by bentcorner »

jmkb wrote: post #234
save_ferris wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm always a little surprised that so many people never picked up the ability to even do basic cooking. I'm not, unfortunately. For years now, cooking has been marketed as a waste of time and effort like hand-washing clothes (think fast food advertising). Just like anything else, cooking takes time, patience and structure to learn, which many people don't ever have naturally. I was lucky to grow up in a household t…

> For years now, cooking has been marketed as a waste of time and effort like hand-washing clothes (think fast food advertising). Maybe that's the marketing message that hits some demographics, but there's also plenty of marketing push in the other direction: All the food channels on cable & youtube, amateur cooking competitions, prosumer kitchen renovations, gourmet grocery stores, dozens of cooking magazines and th…

> Maybe competitive tailoring

That exists (kind of). I'm familiar with Project Runway, although that's more fashion oriented but has a strong technical tailoring aspect to it. I'm sure there's more Bob Ross-style shows around sewing/tailoring too.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#276

Post by mcv »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #228
mcv wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food delivery to homes will probably boom. That's going to be the replacement for visiting a restaurant in the coming weeks or months. But every luxury industry that involves going outside and meeting people will be wiped out. The tourist industry is going to be completely dead for a while. Hopefully it can be revived afterward. Hopefully the people involved can find other jobs in the mean time. But it's going to be…

if you're home all day long one of the main spurs for going out to eat is gone, at the end of the day you're no longer too tired to make food, you're not getting home too late to make it at a good time, you don't need to save time. Thus the only spur left to wanting to order food is eating something tasty you can't make at home easily - I admit that is good but given that the delivery is also a potential virus delive…

> "if you're home all day long one of the main spurs for going out to eat is gone, at the end of the day you're no longer too tired to make food"

You clearly don't have children. I need to work from home while also getting primary school children to do their schoolwork and not kill each other.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#277

Post by _jal »

pc86 wrote: post #249
_jal wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know the owner of a restaurant who stopped delivery after the apps took over. It literally wasn't worth it, and his drivers all switched over. He tried to find other folks to deliver, but, well, delivery folks aren't exactly known for being long-term employees and most of them deliver for the apps. I still don't understand what a multinational adds to local pizza delivery. Prices went up, pizza doesn't taste any be…

Your local restaurant might make less (I'm not sure I buy that), but the delivery driver likely makes more per hour. If it was a net loss for everyone except GrubHub or Uber, it wouldn't exist.

> Your local restaurant might make less (I'm not sure I buy that), but the delivery driver likely makes more per hour.

I don't know what Uber pays their drivers, but I happen to know the place in question pays a good wage, comparably. I seriously doubt it driving Uber beats it.

>If it was a net loss for everyone except GrubHub or Uber, it wouldn't exist.

And yet, here we are. Econ 101 only takes you so far; why do you choose to ignore the other pressures? Once the econ brain worms take hold, people stop thinking.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#278

Post by mcv »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #270
oarsinsync wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of us tech yuppies that either can’t cook or won’t cook. We will continue to order in all our meals. Of course that depends on the variety remaining. It may not. It’s been 3 weeks and I’m already starting to tire of my local options. Maybe I might end up learning to cook after all...

If you like the technical aspects of "tech", you could learn to love the technical aspects of cooking. You can treat cooking as a chore, an art, or a science. Your choice!

Even if you love cooking as an art, it can still be a chore sometimes. It's hard to deliver art when tired, picky children are screaming.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#279

Post by fma »

reddit_clone wrote: post #65
vkou wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think any other country would have been able to contain this outbreak?

There _is_ this doctor who sounded early warning and he was ignored and hassled (Guy is dead now :-( ). Not sure how other countries would have handled it. But it still is a history-changing decision point that could have gone better.

Even with Dr. Li's silencing...we (USA) still had 2 months to prepare...but didn't. Trump bought us time with blocking flights to/from China, but travel from Italy and Korea were still happening...Korea STILL is happening.

The first cases in my city (Atlanta) were all from Italy.

I suspect banning flights from China was also motivated by politics.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#280

Post by lotsofpulp »

SamPatt wrote: post #266
oarsinsync wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of us tech yuppies that either can’t cook or won’t cook. We will continue to order in all our meals. Of course that depends on the variety remaining. It may not. It’s been 3 weeks and I’m already starting to tire of my local options. Maybe I might end up learning to cook after all...

It's cheaper and better for you, and you can cook for your own preferences once you understand the basics. It's a great time to learn!

Not to mention the resulting product is far superior than what is available at 95% of restaurants.
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