COVID-19: Restaurant Industry Outlook How do things look for locally owned restaurants? Because of the fluid situation with COVID-19 and the increasing number of cases in South Carolina and other states, things are difficult on many fronts. With the initial shutdown, locally owned restaurants faced many issues. There was wasted food due to the short notice of the shutdown. Labor costs continued, which quickly led to layoffs and terminations. Rent and utilities still had to be paid. Government funds designated to help restaurants were difficult to come by and often went to corporations, like Shake Shack and Ruth’s Chris, rather than the small businesses they were meant to help. Loopholes prevented some locally owned restaurants from getting financial help as quickly as they needed it. Once restaurants started to reopen in May, outside dining was OK with social distancing, and indoor dining opened soon after with limits on the number of people and required spacing between tables. This challenged many locally-owned restaurants because fewer customers were allowed inside. It is hard for an already small 50-seat restaurant to be limited to 15 seats and still pay its bills, labor costs and increased food prices stemming from limits in the supply chain. Unfortunately, as the pandemic continues, the uncertainty of what will happen tomorrow has caused many owners to question how much longer they can
stay open without their full capacity of customers. The biggest challenges right now are: •
a situation that changes almost daily with the virus and infection rates.
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fear of the virus keeping people from going out to eat.
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the difficulty of keeping restaurants open with such a small number of customers. There is a break-even number of customers and meals sold that allows restaurants to stay open and many restaurants have not been hitting that "sweet spot" for months.
Can restaurants survive long-term on curbside and delivery alone? Curbside pickup and delivery are a good short-term fix for casual dining restaurants, fast-casual restaurants and limited-service restaurants. However, despite the fact that delivery containers and procedures have improved over the years, it still is not an option for some menus where food temperatures and presentation needs to be precise to ensure quality. The concern is that many restaurants are not — or were not — set up for curbside pickup or delivery because of their menu and the perishability of the food, or the fact that they used the restaurant as part of the experience of their brand. For example, Planet
