Low restaurant/food prices have always been contingent on having a large population of people willing to work a very hard job for very low pay during times of t

Low restaurant/food prices have always been contingent on having a large population of people willing to work a very hard job for very low pay during times of the day when most people would rather not be working. They were on the rise throughout the 2010s (due to changes in population pyramid due to fertility rate changes), albeit it at a slower pace before Covid, but Covid shook things up in the sense that it provided a lot of activation energy to those that wanted to get out of food service jobs, creating a more rapid shift in prices (and/or lower quality).