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The state of the restaurant industry

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Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#581

Post by timr »

jedberg wrote: post #410
timr wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree, we should be following their examples. But since we aren't doing extensive free testing, and don't have a culture of sick people wearing masks and self isolating, this is the best we can do for now. Once testing becomes readily available we can look at loosening the restrictions. As the Governor of Colorado put it, saving the economy doesn't do a lot of good if everyone is dead.

"As the Governor of Colorado put it, saving the economy doesn't do a lot of good if everyone is dead."

That's ridiculous, and I hope it's clear to you why it's ridiculous. You should feel silly for repeating it.

There's no rational, educated person who believes that "everyone" is going to die from this. It's not even close to a true statement.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#582

Post by markdown »

imtringued wrote: post #550
markdown wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I don't think you've thought this through. What are the banks going to do if they don't receive their payments? How are you going to bail them out? With a loan? Why not give that loan to those who need it instead of kicking the can down the road?

> What are the banks going to do if they don't receive their payments?

They'll be bailed out by the govt as usual. Which is the point.. the govt has to keep humans fed and housed through this. This is the best way to achieve that end. Kicking the can down the road is exactly what needs to be done. The economic problems and readjustments can happen later. The immediate problem is people fucking dying.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#583

Post by Shermanium »

Engineering-MD wrote: post #577
Shermanium wrote: post #384

We could turn all these empty hotel rooms into ICU beds if we upgrade to negative pressure ventilation, and we could turn all these empty restaurants into community testing and supply distribution centers staffed by the laid off employees paid for with federal helicopter-drop funds. Think New Deal-level changes.

Not real possible. ITU wards are highly specialised. However the UK is already looking at moving the most well patients to hotels and then uograding wards to ITUs.

THIS. Yes I'm aware of the challenges, not the least of which is ventilation. But this is a great step towards a pivot. Thanks!

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#584

Post by Shermanium »

Shermanium wrote: post #583
Engineering-MD wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not real possible. ITU wards are highly specialised. However the UK is already looking at moving the most well patients to hotels and then uograding wards to ITUs.

THIS. Yes I'm aware of the challenges, not the least of which is ventilation. But this is a great step towards a pivot. Thanks!

https://www.hospitalityandcateringnews.com/2020/03/covid-19-...

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#585

Post by eru »

repsilat wrote: post #503
cs702 wrote: post #3

Wow, 50-70% drop in online reservations, phone reservations, and walk-in diners, compared to last year, in every country measured by OpenTable. The restaurant sector generates $3 trillion in annual sales worldwide, and provides employment to a vast number of individuals.[a] Absent government intervention, the cascading economic impact from just this one sector will be enormous. [a] https://medium.com/@CravyHQ/the-res…

> The restaurant sector generates $3 trillion in annual sales worldwide, and provides employment to a vast number of individuals Can someone with an economics background tell me whether this is a sound argument? It looks like it could be reasonable to me, but it also looks a lot like the examples of deadweight losses in Bastiat's "That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen". I would guess that we should count the…

You have to be careful to separate supply and demand.

In the US the Fed regulates total nominal demand (= spending) in the economy. When the Fed is doing their job well, it doesn't matter for nominal spending whether any one industry, like restaurants, is disturbed or not. Or whether some industries are booming.

The Fed will just adjust how much money they are 'printing'.

But what matters are supply side factors.

All those people patronising restaurants or working there presumably did so because they preferred it to the alternative ways to spend their money or time.

After a disturbance, they will have to make do with their second (or third or fourth..) best opportunities instead.

If the disturbance was a long term shift in consumer taste, we should hasten the transition of workers out of that industry.

But the current crisis is presumably temporary. So we pay for lots of friction of adaption back and forth, just to get back to where we used to be. (The adaption is still a good idea. It's probably better for waiters to become eg Uber Eats drivers than to twiddle their thumbs.)

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#586

Post by spookthesunset »

ma2rten wrote: post #448
maximente wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what do you mean by "over"? i don't see the ability to do quarantine style lockdown for >3 months myself, if that's what you meant. there are a lot of 2nd (or >1th) order effects that i suspect will mean that people give up the ghost on flattening the curve. here are some i'm imagining myself; others probably know way more than me: - the local restaurants are probably well on their way to having shut down. the commer…

So?

Thank god people like you aren’t calling the shots.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#587

Post by traitsnspecs »

coldtea wrote: post #551
traitsnspecs wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, my gut feeling is that follow on effects from rampant unemployment and financial insecurity will have a much larger effect (via stress-induced heart attacks, suicide, etc.) than the 3.4% mortality rate among reported cases (WHO numbers, not all infected, maybe not even most infected.) I would love to see an actual statistical comparison. spookthesunset is making an excellent point. Unless we know that deaths fro…

> Unless we know that deaths from the virus are greater than the deaths caused by the second-and-third-order effects of panicking Do you believe that when the death toll raises from non-panicking and not imposing a lockdown (not to mention the total saturation of the healthcare system), that wont create even more panic and self-lockdown -- and have their own second and third order effects?

Yes, and this is why - the population of investors is honestly not all that panicky. If people start dying, investors will watch the death rate, and companies' share prices will reflect some instability but it will be somewhat in line with the actual economic impact, which traders are smart enough to price it at the small level it would actually be given the mortality rate.

By imposing lockdown, we have created a real economic slowdown, that traders are smart enough to deem catastrophic (because a month or restauranteurs going without wages is actually catastrophic and represents a much larger loss of future incomes that the still-small-but-blown-up-in-the-media death rate from the unchecked coronavirus.) Unlike the non-lockdown option, there is no optimistic case. You can't say, "earnings are slow, but people will be sorry if they panic sell because when the media frenzy dies down things will settle." You have to say, "earnings are slow, and might not actually pick up again because the lockdown lost a bunch of people their job."

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#588

Post by jacquesm »

dhosek wrote: post #19
zaroth wrote: post #12

Siting at a table with your family that is wiped down just before you sit seems to me like an incredibly low risk activity. As in, less risky than picking up food from a grocery store where infected people are shopping and touching things on a daily basis.

Except that you're surrounded by potentially infected people on all sides. Delivery or pick up is probably the least risky option for eating.

> Delivery or pick up is probably the least risky option for eating.

No, cooking it yourself is.

Re: The state of the restaurant industry

#590

Post by Melting_Harps »

Melting_Harps wrote: post #324
csolorio wrote: post #293

I run an online mobile ordering app for restaurants as a side project and have never seen this many sign ups in one day. I have a full time job so had to bring my gf on to help with customer support.

> I run an online mobile ordering app for restaurants as a side project and have never seen this many sign ups in one day. I have a full time job so had to bring my gf on to help with customer support. Interesting, I'd like to see how the indie apps compete against the big guys like Doordash and Uber Eats, especially now during this shutdown. What is your biggest bottleneck, background checks and driver license verif…

Interesting update:

https://downdetector.com/status/doordash/

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