The american restaurant as you knew it died on March 19. That’s the day Governor Gavin Newsom issued a stay-in order to the citizens of California, the first in a 50-state cascade that brought to an end one of the most momentous and successful runs in the industry’s history.
Sure, some of the restaurants you know and love will return. But anywhere from 20 to 80 percent will permanently close, according to the latest estimates. The wide range in projections underscores the wild uncertainty for an industry that generates $900 billion a year and employs 15 million people—15 times the labor force of the airline industry. No one expects the Olive Gardens and Chick-fil-As to stop slinging hash, but as the chef and television star Andrew Zimmern says, “We’re looking at an extinction event for independent restaurants.”
Over 10 weeks in the spring, I spoke with dozens of people in and around the industry—chefs, sommeliers, bartenders, writers, politicians, tech executives, architects, and economists. They shared with me their anger (“COVID ripped the blanket off the haves and have-nots”); their fears (“we can control how we behave, but not how the customer does”); their cold calculations (“we should be talking about trillions in relief, not millions or billions”); their wildest ideas (“you turn the saltshaker and a hologram menu pops out”).
What emerged from the nearly 50 hours of conversation was a consistent narrative about how restaurants can salvage their business—and how hard that will be. It will take rapid scientific advancement, strong local support, continued government relief, and industry-wide innovation. All of which is to say that the restaurants that make it will not be the same, and not just because your hostess will wield a thermometer and your server will wear a mask and the chef will struggle to taste and tweak her food while swaddled in PPE.
Derek Thompson: America’s restaurants will need a miracle
Restaurants have always evolved to fit the societies they feed. From the fast-food boom of the 1950s and ’60s to the surge of sit-down chains in the ’90s to the farm-to-table movement of the past two decades, the price, taste, values, and aesthetics of our restaurants have constantly mutated. The difference now is that the change is happening so fast, I couldn’t write quickly enough to capture it. Perhaps the most certain thing that can be said is that the transformation will be dramatic, and that it will take place in stages: the near-present, post-vaccine, and several years into the future.
Despite the disastrous impact of the government-mandated shutdowns, no one I spoke with complained about them, which says all you need to know about how seriously restaurant people take their role in the community. Everyone was united about something else, too: the belief that their industry, plagued by low wages, rampant sexual harassment, deep-rooted discrimination, abysmal working conditions, and razor-thin profit margins, was in trouble long before the virus appeared. So as perverse as it may sound, the pandemic could offer an opportunity for restaurants to remake themselves into something … better.