Challenges For the Restuarant Industry

I recently read two articles about the challenges of restaurants re-opening and thriving. There is a big difference between surviving and thriving. Here's a quote from one article in The Atlantic:

One of the more poignant, and frightening, moments of this existential crisis played out on Twitter. On April 16, David Chang, among America’s most successful and high-profile restaurateurs, sent out a tweet asking people in places like Hong Kong and Taipei to share photos of reopened restaurants. The images that immediately flooded in were equal parts eye-opening and inspiring: from a Beijing McDonald’s, where every bag of food came with a read-out of employee temperatures; from Shanghai, where diners passed through a full-body disinfectant machine; from across Asia, where people ate noodles and hot pot in plastic- and cardboard-partitioned cocoons. Less than a month later, Chang returned to social media to announce that he was shuttering two of his restaurants—Nishi in Manhattan and Momofuku CCDC in Washington, D.C.—and folding a third, the East Village Momofuku Ssäm Bar, into a shared space with Bar Wayō at Manhattan’s South Street Seaport.

And here's a quote from a Times interview with David Chang:

What needs to happen next for restaurants? We may be headed for the worst-case scenario. Even with more government intervention, I’m afraid that it’s not going to be adequate for the people who need it the most. I feel like it’s the polar opposite of 2008, when they helped the big banks and insurance companies because they had to or the world as we knew it would end. And now, in 2020, we’re talking about “nonessential” businesses and people who don’t have the clout to be able to speak to the government. I have a hard time seeing all the mom-and-pop shops getting help from the government.

Ideally, though, what would that help look like? More than anything, David, I do not want to incite panic and hysteria, but I think for restaurants and the service industry, there is going to be a morbidly high business death rate. My fear is the restaurants that survive are going to be the big chains, and we’re going to eradicate the very eclectic mix that makes America and going out to eat so vibrant and great. And there is a lot of feeling that even in good times, if chefs can’t make their numbers, they’re going to lose everything, so imagine what they must be feeling now. When the economy is booming, it’s hard for restaurants to get loans from the bank because there’s no assets to back them. I don’t know if it’s going to be feasible for the government to give out a stimulus loan to a restaurant or restaurant groups the way they were able to do in 2008 to the auto companies. So I’m trying to figure out what the best way is. The government should give a greater bailout package to real estate owners so that there can be relief for restaurant owners. It has to move up the chain.