Dozens of MXSW readers have asked me why I continue to cover East Valley restaurants and their struggle to survive during the COVID-19 crisis.
The common refrain I hear: The sooner everything is shut down, the better for public health.
But across the country, governors and mayors have balked at total shutdowns of restaurants. Dining rooms have closed, but takeout and delivery still are available almost everywhere.
Here are three reasons why restaurants aren’t being, and shouldn’t be, shut down entirely.
Availability of food
Sunday I went to three grocery stores – a Fry’s, a Safeway, and a Walmart – in Chandler and Gilbert to see what was still available on shelves.
Given the complaints on social media, I didn’t expect to find hand sanitizer or toilet paper. But I was very surprised to discover meat, eggs, milk, canned goods, and frozen foods were either totally, or almost totally, sold out.
I checked the same stores again Monday to see if they’d been restocked overnight. They hadn’t. (Pictured above: The empty meat department at Safeway on Monday.)
I checked again this morning. Still bare.
I don’t know if this is just a temporary kink in the food supply chain, or a new reality we’re going to confront for weeks and months to come.
Until we know, do we really want to shut down restaurant delivery and takeout?
The economic impact
This is the easiest argument to understand. There are more than 10,000 restaurants in Arizona employing more than 250,000 people. Roughly 1 out of every 9 jobs in Arizona is in restaurants or food service.
How would a quarter-million people, suddenly out of work, buy food or pay their rent? Arizona’s unemployment benefits max out at $240 a week (about $200 after taxes), and it’s not like other businesses are hiring right now.
As for restaurant owners, they traditionally operate on very slim margins and have been struggling even more than usual recently because of Arizona’s fast-rising rents, minimum wage increases, and a lack of workers.
A complete shutdown – even for just two weeks – likely would lead to a significant number of smaller restaurants closing permanently. Some industry experts project an eight-week shutdown would force as many as 50% to close for good.
‘Flattening the curve’
Many people have argued that a total shutdown is necessary to ‘‘flatten the curve.’’ It would be painful, but would lead to restaurants being able to reopen more quickly, they think.
This, of course, is wrong. Flattening the curve doesn’t not get us through this crisis faster. In fact, it does the opposite.
It prevents the curve from reaching a peak number of cases that would overwhelm our healthcare system. But it does so by lengthening the curve.
In other words, restaurants would have to stay closed even longer.
Even the president’s most optimistic view now is that the COVID-19 crisis is likely to last until ‘‘July or August.’’
East Valley restaurants are under no delusions. This crisis, no matter how short, almost certainly is going to cause hundreds of local restaurants to close permanently and tens of thousands of workers to lose their jobs.
Takeout and delivery, which would have minimal negative impact on public health, could allow some lucky ones to avoid that fate.
