You beat me to the comment. Sensationalized news is out of control.
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Thank you for being my soapbox also.
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You could also say half of NC restaurants will re-open.
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The headline and article are pretty useless, but there is the basis of a valid worry there. No one knows what the percentages will be. While there will be federal relief funds, their dispersal up to now has been mismanaged. I was talking to the owner at union special (which is some of the best food in town), and he made an interesting point. He basically felt like this just accelerated restaurants fates by 5 years. The places that are quality, well-managed, and adaptable will actually thrive through this. The places that are slow to react and were already declining will fall by the wayside. It doesn’t hurt that a significant chunk of their sales are wholesale not restaurant. Restaurants that are offering packaged goods as well will be better suited to survive this.
His theory is a simplification to be sure, but fairly accurate I feel. There will be so many factors regarding how many restaurants will survive this. If there are multiple waves (hopefully not), restaurants will not be able to fit enough customers in to break even for the foreseeable future. Alcohol sales are the highest margin items in a restaurant and without that, who knows how places will do. Ultimately, some sort of rent relief will likely be necessary.
To get away from the doom and gloom of the clickbait, if half of the restaurants do close, you will see a huge influx of new establishments. Once the pandemic is over there will be demand again, and this should give a new wave of restaurateurs opportunities.
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In my soapbox post, I did just that.
WRAL lost more credibility with me when I heard the story on the news cast this morning. Not only did they say that Chuck’s was closing because of the pandemic, They never mentioned that AC was going to use the space to expand Beasley’s. Focused on the negative of course. How about a story of how some restaurants and beer shops are busting their asses to stay afloat? How about the deep cleaning I have seen going on at Beer Garden and Flying Saucer? How about the social media posts from North Street advertising what tasty beers they have gotten their hands on?
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Wow, glad to see everyone calling it like it is on here. I thought I was going crazy. This type of made-up number, hypothetical headline is all over the place these days. It’s almost as if they WANT people to be fearful and lose hope. Makes me sad and makes me wonder what the future of media ends up looking like if they continue to lose public trust.
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We don’t yet know what comes after. Recessions have a way of changing habits. Throwing in an unknown quantity like this virus probably amplifies this. The capital lost will surely have a chilling affect so it’s unlikely you will see a one-for-one replacement of restaurants. Simplified menus in restaurants operating at half-capacity indefinitely could be a new norm and price creep could further warp the public consciousness.
I will actually be keenly watching movie theatres. It seems like that’s something that could be beyond repair, at least as we know it. The post-lockdown world will be vastly different. The actual percentage of restaurants that close will be a trivia question but the change will be drastic.
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They are literally incentivized to continue the fear
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I thought the same thing when I heard the WRAL report. Kinda lazy reporting at best or, as you say, sensationalizing. We have had issues with balanced reporting of news in the world for some time. I’m expecting that the restaurant casualties and / or rebirths are going to be greater than 25% and I’m somewhat blown away at the lack of discussion around the plight of smaller format or specialty retail out there. Again, the only thing WRAL has said is ’ stores opening but customers wary of going out…’
It’s going to be a protracted climb back out of this and the world will be different in some ways positive and others maybe not. This pandemic and resulting recession are only going to add another layer of polarization to the world. We need leadership in the world at all levels and we need to find common ground in our daily activities as much as possible to find solutions and mechanisms to ensure we have better protocols in place for what may lie ahead.
I do wish we could (re)discover our humanity while we work ourselves back into being more social, responsibly of course.
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The larger problem is the business model of news providers. So much of their revenue is driven by advertising now and that revenue is based on clicks and eyeballs. So they have to drive traffic to their sites, and more readers click on stupid headlines like that than something more would more accurately reflect the reality. My uneducated guess is that they try to pull in traffic through the headlines and rely on readers to get the full picture by reading the article, which is … optimistic.
Cable news is very similar in that it pays to bring on controversial “experts” and offer hot takes because it drives traffic and revenue. Unless you’re talking about the opinion-based shows (Hannity, Carlson, Maddow, Hayes, and those other wastes of space), I’d argue that it’s less biased reporting as much as it is those companies realizing what brings advertising dollars and maximizing it.
I have no idea how the business model can be fixed, but it’s not going to change until the incentives change.
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Yeah, this wasn’t my experience either, although I did noticed a decline in the last five years. They used to have two patty sizes, and the smaller one was perfect imo. When they switched to a smaller single size patty that you could either order as a single or double burger, I thought they lost a lot of the juiciness and no longer hit the sweet spot in size. The fries/fry sauces were my fav in town at one point but had also declined in quality when I went back a couple years ago.
I have more very sad news… Golden Corral is permanently closing company-operated restaurant on Glenwood Avenue in Raleigh. I think most of us will sorely miss it.
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Thinking about this some more, I do think it’ll be on the landlords more so than the restaurants. If I owned a space with a profitable restaurant pre-COVID and now in May, I see two big decisions:
- I either make them pay (probably driving them away) and now I’m left with an empty space that I’ll rent to someone else. However, the climate isn’t looking good for renters right now.
- Try and make the numbers work because my space has someone that, in good effort, wants to pay me rent.
I’m not a landlord so I’m sure there are details that I’m missing but having someone who wants to pay me rent rather than no one seems like a better situation to be in and we both can try to weather the storm in the future. I’m hoping that the local businesses are also working with local banks with local landlords. That might be the small biz that survives better.
Again, just speculating.
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I think that’s fair but who knows if we’ll get much fair on the other side of this…
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I can’t imagine buffets in general are a good restaurant model anymore.
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Agreed. And given Golden Corral is HQ in Raleigh (?) I hope they figure it out.
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I laughed at this, but then I was wondering if you were being serious.
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Yes. I am very very serious lol. Okay not really. I haven’t eaten at one in a very long time. I don’t think we have one in Cary.
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Sweet Tomatoes announced they’re closing all their stores too
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