"If you pay rent on your building you pay the same rate all the time, even if you're not open." You are correct that the rate is constant, but it can be consta

"If you pay rent on your building you pay the same rate all the time, even if you're not open." You are correct that the rate is constant, but it can be constantly low to the point that it's feasible to only be open during select hours/times. Plenty of restaurants are only open for one course each day, say breakfast or dinner. And in the future, when it comes to 'reopening' - many restaurants which were previously 'full service' will have no choice but to scale back and start small again. "If you open up, the cost of powering your appliances, lighting, heating, etc. is all essentially the same whether or not you feeding 100 people a day or 1000." It is not essentially the same at all. These are variable energy costs than can and will fluctuate based on usage tied to controls such as hours of operation and number of customers served during said time. Obvious examples are gas as a cooking source that varies a lot depending on whether cooking for 100 or 1,000. Others, like electrical, can vary based on which physical sections of a restaurant are open (or not). On a slow day, it's not uncommon for a portion of an establishment to be closed off to conserve energy resources like HVAC.