This is the second time I've posted a comment on a similar article [1], so I'll try to make this one a little different. First, there's a lot of genuine pain t

This is the second time I've posted a comment on a similar article [1], so I'll try to make this one a little different. First, there's a lot of genuine pain that restaurants are feeling that's not their fault. But I will say that the restaurant industry has been due for a reckoning for 10-15 years - they became addicted to 1) lower and lower margins, 2) a workforce ready to deal with the low pay, terrible hours, and abusive environments, and 3) a seemingly endless stream of customers. All of this combined to create a world where #1 forced many restaurants to become dependent on #2 and #3 to be profitable - which was clearly unsustainable, but no one was willing to recognize that. Part of the dynamic for #1 is that you had a flood of first-time operators coming on the market with lots of capital and a long runway for profitability. Restaurant concepts that make no sense if you're a traditional owner/operator might be fine if you have cash to cover the losses for 1-3 years. There was also a huge shift from solo location operators to people with "concepts" that are built out of the gate with dreams of building an empire - everyone saw Shake Shack and Chipotle and said, "How hard can that be?" All of these well-funded, inexperienced operators got their restaurants out the door, optimized for growth rather than sustainability, and then the pandemic hit, and suddenly the sand that their business was built on began to slide out from underneath them. This is a generalization, of course, and only reflects a subset of the restaurants that have been hurt/closed by the pandemic. I'll absolutely say that another big swath of restaurants that closed are restaurants that have been around a long time and were probably running on fumes already, and unable to adapt. But at the heart of both groups are businesses that were built on unsustainable foundations and poor business practices. Running a restaurant is _hard_ - comparing it to running an accounting business is laughable (as the author did in their first essay). The best restaurant operators can look at a menu and know_ exactly how much they are going to make on each dish, have a professional level nderstanding of electrical and mechanical maintenance, understand a forest of local laws and regulation, and can hire and attract quality talent AND keep them interested and engaged. On top of that, in major metro areas, they also have to be branding, social, and marketing experts. Covid has been hard for everyone, especially restaurants, but the best-run restaurants were able to dig in and adjust and adapt, because they had a solid foundation and a strong leadership team. Complaining that teenagers don't want to work a shit job for low pay and terrible hours totally misses the point. 1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27135057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27135057