In his masterful story of the 1918 flu pandemic, “The Great Influenza,” presciently released in 2005, the popular historian John M. Barry tells a story eerily familiar to us as we live through the current pandemic. A century ago, churches, theaters and schools were closed. Gauze masks became widely used, though in some cities more than others. Corpses piled up beyond the means to dispose of them. Medical research science, not nearly as primitive as one might expect, desperately sought a vaccine and came close, charting the way for future breakthroughs.
But one aspect of the current crisis is nowhere found in Barry’s powerful account: There is no reference to restaurant closings or even mention of restaurants at all. Yet in New York today, the question of when and how to reopen the economy seems to center on restaurants. Daily updates take center stage in local news — with the woes of owners highlighted. This is not just a story about how close we are to returning to “normal.” Its prominence reflects a major economic change in recent decades. As limited indoor dining returns to the city, restaurants can no longer be understood as the luxury it once was but, rather, as both a prerequisite for a successful economic recovery and an indicator that one is underway.
Federal Labor Department data tells the story of restaurant dining moving to center stage in the economy. In 1910, those involved in preparing food outside the home comprised but 0.8% of employment. By 2000, that figure had grown to 3.7%, or from 323,000 to 4.7 million persons. The trend has continued. In 2019, there were 2.1 million waiters and waitresses alone. No New Yorker will be surprised to learn that there are far more restaurant employees here than in any other U.S. metropolitan area: 157,000 servers earning a median wage of $17 an hour. That’s about 55,000 more than Los Angeles, the city in second place.
Restaurant jobs have climbed as manufacturing employment has fallen sharply. In 1955, the city had 971,000 manufacturing jobs. By 2011, that numbers had fallen to 97,000. Some may wish for a return of well-paying union jobs that fled, but restaurant work is clearly vital. Indoor dining is set to return in New York this week, but mandating far lower than standard numbers of indoor tables may be an economic tourniquet for an industry at the heart of the city’s economy.
The fate of restaurants will tell us where we stand not only in our battle with the virus, but also in our recovery. The contrast with 1918, or even 1960, is telling. Some of us can remember when going “out to eat,” usually at Clark’s Restaurant, was a once-a-month extravagance. Indeed, I can clearly recall the opening of the first McDonald’s in my native Cleveland. Today, 45% of restaurant-goers dine out multiple times a week — or at least they did before COVID.
What changed, among much else, is the emergence of the affluent society.
Restaurants may open nationwide, but they will not thrive if households do not have the disposable income to dine out. They may offer both indoor and outdoor seating, but they will not survive unless theatre and concerts return to the city.
Restaurants, in other words, can help make possible the city’s recovery — but they cannot recover without their full range of customers. When the governor professes concern for such businesses, he must not view them in isolation. They are the canaries in our COVID coalmine.
One can, of course, make a sentimental case for a return to making dinner at home and eating together as families. (That’s my own preference.) But that must be a choice — not one enforced by mandates that risk endangering an increasingly critical part of the city’s economy.
This piece originally appeared at the New York Daily News
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Howard Husock is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, where he directs the Tocqueville Project, and author of the new book, Who Killed Civil Society?
This piece originally appeared in New York Daily News