Corners of the new world

The world is changing so fast along so many dimensions it's hard to begin to think it all through, though we really have to try. Here are a couple of thoughts.

One of the sectors of the economy many have thought about is restaurants because it's very obvious to do so. There are a lot of them, they are very visible, they employ a lot of people, they pay a lot of rent, we like to eat their food.

Over the last month and change lots of restaurants have retooled to sell takeout, and many of them are running at about 30% capacity, so they are keeping the lights on and the cockroaches at bay, but it's hard for them to pay rent and property taxes. It's assumed that, as reopening occurs, that they will need to space tables further apart, which will really mess with their economic models, which are predicated on doing certain amount of volume and -- as you rise up the value chain towards your fancy restaurants -- are increasingly dependent on alcohol sales for profitability. At some sense everything else -- the ambiance, the food, the sense of luxury in having literate grad students and aspiring actors bring you food -- is a loss leader.

But if you spread the tables out and diminish throughput and alcohol sales per square foot, it gets harder to pay the rent. One thing you can do is have bigger restaurants -- have restaurants take out the walls between them and the spaces left dark as stores close and all retail goes online and have the same kitchen feed the same number of people, just spread over more square feet. Admittedly, that is bad for the owners of the building/shopping center, but they were already being fucked by Amazon and the retailpocalypse. The waiters would have to walk further for sure.

In the near term it's going to be tough to get all these waiters, buspeople, and bartenders back to work in their current capacity. At the same time, restaurants need to ramp up their ability to serve takeout. Which means they, along with everyone else, needs to get better at digital marketing and other guerrilla marketing techniques. After all, waiting tables is significantly a sales function. "Would you like fries with that?" "Can I get you another glass of wine?" "Would you like anything to start? Our calamari are to die for!"

Same with sales associates in retail. They are going to need to expand their game to figure out how to survive in a digital, distributed world. Society is going to need to help them. It can be done. We will see how much of this the state can help with, and how much the private sector has to do.

---------------------

Oh yeah, high school sports will need to move to online broadcasts. Kids are gonna figure out how to do it.