Live data from Hacker News

The state of the restaurant industry

opentable.com

351–360 of 591 posts

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few times in my career, I have been in a meeting that I didn't want to be in. One of the meeting-runners hinted that the meeting could be shorter than scheduled. Failure to deliver on that was not well received. If you're going to say anything, you're better off overestimate how long it's going to be.

This is what I think too. Way easier to put a date far out there and yank it back than underestimate and have to extend it.

Good. Expect to be quarantined for the next 3 months. Then you can be pleasantly surprised when it’s 2.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what data? If you think society will tolerate this kind of lockdown for more than a few weeks, you need to rethink your stance. If we are locked up for 3 months like this you will have your doomsday scenario. Our entire supply chain will fall apart. People won’t get food, medicine, things that make them happy. Sporting events, social gatherings, etc. People will become depressed and kill themselves. People w…

Based on what I'm seeing, it seems like that's exactly the path we're on in the US unfortunately.

Based on what data?

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#353
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…

Are you kidding me, how many people do you know who can put together a decent meal, let alone a tasty meal. Combined with the fact that people will stress-eat and stress-drink delivery food and liquor sales will experience a big-time boom.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The restaurant industry is brittle and consolidating, and the the American middle class might not be strong enough to support it anymore. Recent events just magnify the weaknesses of the existing system. We could talk about things like the expansion of government programs, or we could talk about your theory of how I'm stripping people's humanities away. You would also presume quite poorly if you thought I haven't wor…

Whats more remarkable is that no one has made a peep about RENTAL PAYMENT DEFERRALS or SUSPENSIONS to even COMMERCIAL LANDLORDS of APARTMENTS / SINGLE FAMILY HOMES yet somehow sit-down restaurants and their health are a top concern. These priorities are lop-sided at best. Restaurants are not a critical component of your basic sustenance. They never were, in the course of human history. Heavy dependence on them for on…

Shelter is a human right. Landlords aren't.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how this can be over in less than 3 months.

Based on what data? If you think society will tolerate this kind of lockdown for more than a few weeks, you need to rethink your stance. If we are locked up for 3 months like this you will have your doomsday scenario. Our entire supply chain will fall apart. People won’t get food, medicine, things that make them happy. Sporting events, social gatherings, etc. People will become depressed and kill themselves. People w…

You say that, but at the white house task force press conferences they're setting the signal pretty clearly.

Reporter: "How long?"

Trump: "July, August, maybe longer."

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#356
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there’s just so many of them. Between the hotel and restaurant industry we’re talking about more than 20 million people.

Having seen it first hand, the vast majority of those 20 million people are living check to check. even missing a few shifts puts them on the brink of homelessness. this is going to be very, very bad.

I’m pretty sure the police departments and judges aren’t going to be allowing evictions right now.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#357
post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes you wonder if the real “virus” is a mental one? Society got infected with one hell of a meme. It is like everybody has that X-Files “I want to believe” poster on their wall when they repeat some of this doomsday stuff. We are all stuck inside all day, bouncing around with nothing better to do than read doomsday porn. And around and around that stuff goes into people’s head until you get where we are now. People…

Video calling is a thing... not like it’s solitary confinement. Also, grocery shelves will be full again as the stores limit per-customer amounts.

You live a very sheltered life if you think all humans need is video conferencing and stocked grocery shelves.

There is a huge world of stuff that cannot be done remote. Sporting events, construction, weddings, restaurants, building maintenance, manufacturing, and millions of other stuff. Stuff that is critical to keeping our global economy happy. Healthy economy == healthy people.

Ps: have any of the doomsayers spouting nonsense stoped to consider what bullshit it is that all the white collar people can remain “safe” at home while all the blue collar grocery workers and the entire supply chain that feeds it gets to go out each day and expose themselves to a virus so deadly we took these extreme measures? Kind of bullshit, ain’t it?

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#358
post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not clear. Right now we need lockdown because: a) We have a large number of infected people (> 10,000) and have no idea who or where they are, because testing sucks. b) If exponential growth continues (and it would, because we can't isolate all the people who are sick right now ), we'll overwhelm hospital facilities and the fatality rate will hit 5% instead of BUT As soon as we clear out a), that kills b) too…

> "we need to flatten the curve so that everyone gets it over 41 years!" Is this hyperbole, or is anyone actually saying 41 years? I haven't done careful math, but eyeballing it, roughly a year (give or take some months) is the longest I'd come up with to keep peak simultaneous cases under 1.5mil.

5% of cases need hospitalization for ~2-3 weeks; 2% require an ICU; 1% a ventilator. We have 96k ICU beds (and 160k ventilators) in the USA. Most constrained means we can't have more than 4.8 million sick at a given time -- but that's over 2-3 weeks, which yields ~2-3 years for 200 million people.

I assume the "41 years" people are using some other constraint.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what data? If you think society will tolerate this kind of lockdown for more than a few weeks, you need to rethink your stance. If we are locked up for 3 months like this you will have your doomsday scenario. Our entire supply chain will fall apart. People won’t get food, medicine, things that make them happy. Sporting events, social gatherings, etc. People will become depressed and kill themselves. People w…

You say that, but at the white house task force press conferences they're setting the signal pretty clearly. Reporter: "How long?" Trump: "July, August, maybe longer."

Better go get guns if you believe that ‘cause a 3 month lockdown will be much, much, much, much worse than the virus.

This ain’t gonna be more than a few weeks tops. People have lost their damn minds. Go outside and get some fresh air.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you kidding me, how many people do you know who can put together a decent meal, let alone a tasty meal. Combined with the fact that people will stress-eat and stress-drink delivery food and liquor sales will experience a big-time boom.

Quite a few actually. Cooking isn't that difficult.
Post reply on HN