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The state of the restaurant industry

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Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#471

Post by nikanj »

yibg wrote: post #467
DoreenMichele wrote: post #457

I've been trying to encourage people to support local eateries by getting takeout. I have a compromised immune system. I don't do a lot of eating at restaurants. I do get a lot of takeout and have for a lot of years now. If you call ahead or order online and pick up, it minimizes your exposure to other people. Little Caesar's has a pizza portal where you can order online, pay online, enter a code at the store and ret…

Anyone knowledge about the probabilities of getting infected from takeout / delivered food? Either via handling at the restaurant itself or en route. All indications are that the virus can survive quite a while on smooth surfaces like plastic bags.

The only thing I know, is the people making the food probably don’t get paid sick leave. With the huge demand in place for delivery food, the pressure is on from their bosses to keep coming in no matter how sick.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#472

Post by stainforth »

chii wrote: post #444
rtisdale wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insufficient knowledge of tax law leading to an incorrect assignment of value to each position. Insufficient knowledge of the wear and tear on ones car. Desire to "work for themselves" (despite the fact it really isn't). TL;DR actors in an economic system are often not fully informed.

> Insufficient knowledge and whenever there's a knowledge gap, the "market" exploits it for arbitrage. But eventually (which may be a long time), this exploit would stop working as more people try to exploit it causing the profits from it to go down, or the lack of knowledge for which this exploits exist starts to disappear. There's no rule to say that the market is super efficient at all times - just that it tends t…

We can and should regulate the "market" when they exploit ignorance of our fellow beings, regardless to the degree of efficiency you purport it has.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#473

Post by stainforth »

chii wrote: post #446
GeorgeWBasic wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Far, far, far better. In fact, it's the only thing that might actually work . All this talk of loans is just people refusing to admit that a capitalist system (I hate saying that word) simply doesn't function under these conditions. The economy needs to be paused.

The rental payment from a shop is income for the landlord. The income from the landlord is payment for his/her obligations - all the way up the chain. If you force rental payments to stop, then who gets hit? The landlord is going to default on their obligations. So do you then bail them out? If the landlord defaults, the banks (presumably) will repossess the property. So it's just somebody else suffering, rather than…

I see plenty of places that landlords just sit on waiting for some maximal amount of rent to be agreed to, only for the business to crumble under high rents, rinse, repeat.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#474

Post by DoreenMichele »

markdown wrote: post #264
jborichevskiy wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The ability of my local Chinese place to serve customers is undiminished, my desire to eat Chinese food is undiminished, and all that's in the way is an ultimately temporary law. Agreed on this. But the rent paid out during the period of reduced revenue coming in creates a delta that this loan is filling in. The loan still needs to be paid back (even assuming 0% interest). That extra money needs to come from somewh…

A better way would be to suspend all debt collection and rent collection for x months. That will keep lots of small businesses alive, and employees on reduced salaries will still be able to feed their families if they don't have to worry about rent. Throw in food stamps for the unemployed and you're most of the way to keeping a nation going.

You might want to read up on The Irish Potato Famine.

Some landlords were letting people stay rent free out of compassion because no one had money and it was tough all over and no one else was going to rent it. Then the government decided to bleed the landlords and insist it get paid if the unit was occupied, even if no rent was being paid.

Landlords had no choice but to begin evicting people. Things got ugly fast.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#475

Post by stainforth »

mech1234 wrote: post #147
slg wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loans don't solve this. It isn't like once this is over restaurant patronage will jump up to 200% of normal. This is business these companies will never get back. Giving them a loan that they can't repay is just delaying the problem.

Spreading the problem out over a long period of time keeps the company in business. It's a no-brainer good idea for the SBA to do this. Not sure what you would prefer instead.

You do know what they would prefer, you just can't accept that there are other ways of humans relating to each other than usury

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#476

Post by markdown »

chii wrote: post #446
GeorgeWBasic wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Far, far, far better. In fact, it's the only thing that might actually work . All this talk of loans is just people refusing to admit that a capitalist system (I hate saying that word) simply doesn't function under these conditions. The economy needs to be paused.

The rental payment from a shop is income for the landlord. The income from the landlord is payment for his/her obligations - all the way up the chain. If you force rental payments to stop, then who gets hit? The landlord is going to default on their obligations. So do you then bail them out? If the landlord defaults, the banks (presumably) will repossess the property. So it's just somebody else suffering, rather than…

> The income from the landlord is payment for his/her obligations

Read my post again. The rent holiday goes hand in hand with a debt holiday. That's the only way this works. Tenants don't have to pay rent, and landowners don't have to pay a mortgage.

Sure some businesses will fail as a result of this, but far more (on a massive scale) will fail if you don't do this.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#477

Post by markdown »

biztos wrote: post #453
markdown wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better way would be to suspend all debt collection and rent collection for x months. That will keep lots of small businesses alive, and employees on reduced salaries will still be able to feed their families if they don't have to worry about rent. Throw in food stamps for the unemployed and you're most of the way to keeping a nation going.

If by “suspend” you mean cancel the debt due in the quarantine months than I definitely agree: in both moral and economic terms it would be best for the rent-seekers to take as much of the hit as possible. But if it’s just a pause in collection, and you still owe that money, then it’s the same old margin problem: very few restaurants make enough money to repay that loan no matter who it comes from.

A business that was going to fail due to low margins without COVID19 shouldn't suddenly get to live because COVID19 destroyed the world economy.

It has to be a pause in collection (and interest), but at the end of the day the lender also has to get their money back.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#478

Post by lopmotr »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #457

I've been trying to encourage people to support local eateries by getting takeout. I have a compromised immune system. I don't do a lot of eating at restaurants. I do get a lot of takeout and have for a lot of years now. If you call ahead or order online and pick up, it minimizes your exposure to other people. Little Caesar's has a pizza portal where you can order online, pay online, enter a code at the store and ret…

Is personal charity to business owners really an effective way to help prevent a recession? What if you're supporting one of the weaker businesses that could barely survive anyway? Those are usefully killed off in a recession, improving overall efficiency. The more that close down, the better business will be for the survivors.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#479

Post by inerg »

aresant wrote: post #88

I have a friend that owns a restaurant, doesn't sell gift cards online and no idea how to do. What's the fastest way to set up a Gift Card program?

Off the top of my head I would say open a Shopify store and find a module that creates a unique order code(Assuming Shopify doesn't do this already). From there build your products for different gift card amounts and then have people redeem the order in store. Most POS f&B systems I assume will let you keep a note for order customization's. In that field I would enter the order code after verifying that the order hasn't been marked delivered in Shopify.

The note keeping isn't super necessary but it can be helpful when trying to track down the order being given to a customer.

In this I'm also assuming Shopify lets you mark orders as pending, delivered, etc. I've only used competitors to it so I'm not 100% sure.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#480

Post by listenallyall »

arbitrary_name wrote: post #390
spookthesunset wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is so much doomsday nonsense like your post I don’t know where to start. People have lost their god damn minds on the internet. Go outside and go on a walk. If you don’t understand why a 3 month country wide lockdown would be orders of magnitude more dangerous than this virus, you need to snap yourself out of the trance you are in. People have lost their minds around here.

Perhaps you have lost your cool a little? I am quite content to work from home, go hiking on the weekends and meet up with friends in open spaces as allowed by the lock down rules. I can arguably go skating, surfing, walking and much more. Its not ideal, but if it's required, I'll do it. We are not going to fall apart. Except for twitchy individuals like you, it seems...

super easy to say on Day 1 or 2 of the situation. tell me how you feel on Day 83.
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