15,770 US Restaurants Now Permanently Closed Due To COVID-19

If you think that almost 16,000 US restaurants gone for good won’t impact the beer biz, you’ve never sold beer.

And to say that this is unprecedented is an understatement…

As first reported by Business Insider, 15,770 of the 26,160 US restaurants on Yelp’s platform that have been closed since March are now permanent closures.

According to Yelp, the bulk of theses closings are taking place in the nation’s most populated regions. California has had the highest number of permanent closures since the lockdown, followed by Texas and New York.

But Yelp’s data doesn’t fully reflect the escalating second round of hospitality industry shutdowns now taking place in many US states…

“The bar and nightlife industry has been similarly decimated,” reports Delish…

“Despite being six times smaller than the restaurant industry, it has also seen mass closures, with roughly 5,454 total business closures, 2,429 of which are classified as permanent closures, making the industry’s permanent closures 44 percent.”

“We anticipate states will roll back or delay reopening plans, which will inevitably impact the future success of businesses, possibly turning even more temporary closures into permanent ones,” Justin Norman, vice president of data science at Yelp, told Business Insider.

“Unfortunately, we do expect closures to continue. The virus isn’t going anywhere soon, so businesses will need to be resilient.”

In addition to those shocking numbers, the Yelp report also noted that restaurants have now surpassed the retail industry to make up the highest total business closures since the pandemic began.

So what does this mean for the beer industry? Nothing good.

Draft beers sales have largely plummeted in the wake of the pandemic shutdowns. And as things reopen, beer reps representing those breweries able to survive, will be returning to a brave new world with significantly less outlets to sell their products to.

Tough times for restaurants. Tough times for breweries. Tough times for businesses, everywhere.

And with COVID-19 continuing to wreak havoc around the world the worry is things could get tougher…