After the last two years of COVID-induced closures, the foodservice industry of 2022 looks much differently than it used to. In my Georgia neighborhood, we have seen many restaurants come and go over the last two years. Oddly enough, the restaurants that have seen the most harm have been fast-food restaurants. We’ve lost some of the chain restaurants in the area, but the local independent places are surviving or quickly have been replaced by other local restaurants. A few of them pivoted pretty quickly to delivery and pickup services, and some closed down for months at a time. The menus might not be as robust as they used to, but they’re still there.
Keep in mind, this is in Georgia, where mask mandates and social distancing have been things of the past for a year or so. Elsewhere in the country, restaurants are still having to deal with the realities of social distancing and periodic closures. Add to that a labor shortage in the foodservice industry that’s as bad as it is in the meat processing industry, and you have a bad situation for restaurants.