RESTAURANTS OPENING BUT CUSTOMERS STILL HESITATE

Although every state now allows indoor restaurant dining to some degree, and 22 states permit eateries to be open at full capacity, 47 percent of potential diners are not ready to enter, according to a late February poll by CivicScience.
About 37 percent of respondents were planning to eat inside a restaurant in the week following the survey, the poll found.
Orders at sit-down restaurant chains fell 37 percent year on year for the week ended 21 February, the research firm NPD Group reported.
Florida gave restaurants leave to reopen fully in September. Some restaurateurs say sales are reaching pre-pandemic levels, but in early March, statewide reservations remained about 20 percent below the same time a year earlier, according to Open Table, an online booking site.
Business at eateries in Orlando and other tourist hotspots is slow, operators told the Wall Street Journal.
More than 110,000 bars and restaurants shut down temporarily or permanently in 2020, the National Restaurant Association has reported.
TREND FORECAST: Many of the businesses that have been lost in the industry will not return. Even in the best of times, the restaurant business has small profit margins. And now, with much of Europe still facing lockdowns and restrictions, many more restaurants will go out of business. 
On the up note, with commercial real estate price tumbling in major cities such as New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and overseas, there will be new opportunities for those who could not afford to operate at previous high rental costs. 
TREND FORECAST: As we have noted, the lower the rents, the greater the opportunity for occupancy increases in dying cities. The Wall Street Journal reported that Pinko, an Italian fashion house, has sublet 4,925 square feet of space in New York’s SoHo neighborhood for a year for its new U.S. flagship store. Valentino, another Italian clothier, has taken space in the district. In December, Target leased 27,500 square feet nearby.
Low rents have lured tenants to the trendy shopping area, brokers say, and the prospect of mass vaccinations is expected to bring tourists ready to spend.
More than 29 percent of SoHo’s retail space was vacant at the end of last year, the Journal reported.
The widespread vacancies pushed rents down from $370 per square foot in 2019 to $290 at the end of 2020, according to Cushman & Wakefield, a real estate services firm. SoHo’s rents peaked at $556 in 2016.
SoHo seems to be reviving at the expense of other Manhattan neighborhoods. Pinko closed stores on West Broadway and Madison Avenue to concentrate on the SoHo spot; Valentino is abandoning its Fifth Avenue locale.