Yelp Report Reveals Scary Truth About Restaurants That Have Closed
As if lockdown policies weren’t restrictive enough on their own, business shutdowns from the coronavirus pandemic have resulted in a frightening number of both temporary and permanent closures, according to an Economic Average report by Yelp.
The report points out that industries such as retail, beauty and fitness have suffered a great deal during the left’s push to keep things shut down, but the restaurant industry reflects the highest percentage of permanent business closures. According to the report, as of July 10, there were 26,160 total restaurant closures. A whopping 15,770 of those closures, or 60 percent, are permanent.
While some mega store chains, such as Walmart, were deemed “essential,” small-business owners — some of whom have worked their whole lives to keep family legacies — just weren’t lucky.
Make no mistake, the country’s battle with the pandemic appears to be slowly tipping back into America’s favor. But that doesn’t mean life will go back to “normal,” as too many businesses were dealt fatal blows because of the left’s reckless promotion of lockdowns.
For our Q1 2020 #YelpEconomicAverage report, we share several indicators that track how the coronavirus pandemic has affected local businesses around the country: https://t.co/6bC1EEJjXx. pic.twitter.com/iRC98i8QOC
— Yelp (@Yelp) April 28, 2020
According to Yelp, over 175,000 business closures in the United States were reported in April, and only 24 percent have reopened since.
Though most states have seen a “plateau” of temporary closures, overall permanent closures have steadily increased since the peak of the pandemic in March.
By state, Yelp shows that California has a permanent business closure count of over 14,000, followed by Texas at 6,500 and Florida at 5,300.
Of note, Texas and Florida have adopted more lenient reopening measures than a deep blue state such as California. That speaks volumes about how destructive the coronavirus has been, with or without any extra government meddling.
Digging a little deeper, by metro, Los Angeles stands at about 5,600 permanent closures, followed by New York City at 5,100 and Chicago at 2,400.
Las Vegas, according to the report, is not only experiencing a decrease in tourism, but is suffering from the “highest rate of permanently closed businesses” with a current count of 861.
The winner, winner, chicken dinner of combined total temporary and permanent business closures goes to L.A. at a whopping 11,342.
Democratic governors — such as Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, New York’s Andrew Cuomo and California’s Gavin Newsom — don’t appear to be considering the long-term damage that lockdowns have brought to business industries.
They insist on enforcing lockdown measures, seemingly at any and all costs.
And those costs already are steep. One could easily surmise that the longer lockdown policies are pushed on the economy, the more damage they could do.
But the larger concern emanating from the Yelp report centers on one key word: permanent.
Even if the coronavirus completely disappeared tomorrow, all of those closed businesses aren’t magically coming back. The economy isn’t some engine that can roar back to life at the flip of a switch after lying dormant for so long.
One of the left’s favorite rallying cries is, “Businesses are replaceable; human lives are not.”
In the most literal sense, that’s true.
However, just because something is “replaceable” does not mean it can or will be replaced.
This Yelp report makes that painfully obvious, no matter how much Democratic leadership decides to remain willfully ignorant.
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