Restaurants go extinct

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Globally and for the foreseeable future. First it was China where eating out is still down one third nearly three months after reopening:

Now the US looks, if anything, even worse, via The Economist:

COVID-19 HAS infected every sector of the global economy. But perhaps none has been hit as hard as the restaurant industry. Lockdowns have forced many eateries to close; even in places without stay-at-home orders in place, few have dared to dine out. In America, restaurant spending has fallen by 51% between the start of the year and the end of April, according to the Census Bureau. Employment in the sector, which historically provided one in twelve jobs, has dropped by nearly half. Last week Steve Hafner, chief executive of OpenTable, a restaurant-reservation website, warned that as many as a quarter of restaurants in the country will never open their doors again.

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.