Since February 2020, about 110,000 U.S. restaurants – about 17 percent of the total – have closed permanently, according to the National Restaurant Association (NRA).
Those failures have brought a boon to people dealing in and shopping for used commercial stoves, mixers, steam tables, and other gear.
Grafe Auction, a Minnesota firm that helps restaurants that close unload their equipment, ran 289 such auctions in 2020, compared to 203 in 2019. Last August was the firm’s most profitable month since its founding in 1959, according to John Schultz, the company’s marketing chief.
Some eateries have bought equipment to support outdoor dining; others that have survived are grabbing items at bargain prices in hopes of future expansion.
For the moment, however, “this is as dire a situation for the restaurant industry in this country as we’ve ever seen,” NRA executive vice-president Sean Kennedy told the Associated Press.
TRENDPOST: We note this article to illustrate the economic severity and the personal costs inflicted upon restauranteurs by politicians who decided, without providing a shred of scientific evidence, to lock them down in their fight to win the COVID War.
As we reported, the virus infection rate in those establishments, according to Andrew Cuomo, the Governor of New York who was among the first in the nation to lock down restaurants, is just 1.4 percent.
Also, for those wanting to go into the business to fill voids that were created, now may be a good time to purchase discounted/used restaurant equipment.
