(Bloomberg) One in every four U.S. restaurants will go out of business due to the coronavirus quarantines that have battered the food-service industry, according to a forecast by OpenTable.
The bleak projection underscores the widespread pain for American restaurants as lockdowns have forced people to cook at home or order takeout rather than eat out. Total reservations and walk-in customers from OpenTable’s network were down 95% on May 13 from the same day a year ago, according to data from the service, which is owned by Booking Holdings Inc.
This has been calamitous for the industry. Restaurants lost more than $30 billion in sales during March and $50 billion in April, according to National Restaurant Association estimates. In 2019, U.S. Bureau of Labor data showed 9.6 million Americans working in food service.
OpenTable, which provides services for almost 60,000 restaurants, surveys about 20,000 of them for online and phone reservations as well as walk-in customers. Take-out and deliveries are excluded from the data.