Vendors, Landlords And Banks Start Ending Pandemic Breaks Given To Restaurants

Independent restaurants that have staggered through the pandemic are running out of time, raising the specter of a wave closings in the next few months, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The paper attributes the risk to a number of factors: Landlords and vendors waited patiently for payment through the early months of the pandemic increasingly expect to be paid. Bankers are getting tougher. And federal loans have dried up.

Cooler weather means patio dining no longer is an options in many places. The final blow, the Journal reports, may be the wave of government-imposed shutdowns as COVID-19 cases surge in many parts of the country.

The WSJ cited data from the National Restaurant Association indicating that at least 17 percent of U.S. eateries and bars have closed or temporarily shuttered since COVID-19 struck.

The trade group wrote in an October letter to Congress citing recent research involving 6,000 restaurateurs: “What these findings make clear is that more than 500,000 restaurants of every business type — franchise, chain, and independent — are in an economic free fall. And for every month that passes without a solution from Congress, thousands more restaurants will close their doors for good.”

In a recent interview with PYMNTS, online food-delivery company ChowNow’s chief operating officer, Eric Jaffe, put the toll in human terms.

“The industry is critical to American life,” he said. “Ten percent of all of workers in the United States have some kind of tie to the restaurant industry, whether (as) a server, a cook or a manager or (as) a supplier or a servicer to the industry. We’ve got to keep these things afloat because it’s important (not only) for the American economy but (also) the culture of our society and the micro-communities that we live in.”