By June 2020, it was clear that the restaurant industry had already lost $120 billion as a result of lockdowns.  By the year's end, the pandemic could cost the sector $240 billion.

If a restaurant can even manage to hobble through the disaster, the long-term consequences of the shutdowns will include :

• a major shift from on-premises to off-premises dining
• the demise of small, family-owned restaurants
• menus being re-engineered to be smaller, with fewer shareable meals and more family meal boxes
• reorganized seating and the disappearance of communal tables; thus, maximizing the use of space and seating to boost profits will be a thing of the past
• technology that minimizes human interaction — in fact, one of the easiest technologies to implement is contactless payment, either done online when customers order delivery or via contactless cards or services like Apple Pay.  In addition, menus will be digitalized to avoid interacting with the wait staff.

This has, in more cases than not, been totally unnecessary to contain COVID.  Many people now connect the dots that as left-wing governors and mayors continue to destroy the food industry, this is yet another stab at free-market capitalism.  It is the fondest wish of Marxists like de Blasio and his ilk.  While they claim empathy for the people, they are directly and irrevocably damaging people's lives and futures.  The hypocrisy is rank.

Photo credit: Mikani, Creative Commons, Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Equally disturbing are examples of how the radical left has infiltrated the thinking of restaurant-owners.

Sometimes the essence of what has befallen America is demonstrated by a very small item in a magazine, but it speaks volumes to the miasma that has overtaken the U.S.

In the Dec. 2020/Jan. 2021 issue of Bon Appetit, there is an article titled "Brave New World: Boston Chef Irene Li may never reopen Mei Mei.  Maybe that's a good thing."

Clearly, it's a catchy lead, as the reader is stunned to read that closing a restaurant could bring glad tidings.

The piece continues:

Restaurant people are used to throwing themselves at a problem until the problem goes away, but the situation we're in is not one that can be solved with more hours of work.

Like too many other restaurants, Mei Mei could not sustain the impact of COVID and so they "voluntarily closed Mei Mei ... before the state ordered it."

Employees were furloughed, and takeout, groceries, and prepared foods were the fallback options.  In addition, they "launched a donor-funded initiative that delivered 40,000 pounds of groceries to immigrants and undocumented workers, and [they] started a GoFundMe to raise money for immigrant-owned restaurants."

Did you come to a screeching halt when you read about "undocumented workers"?

Then, at the end of June, the restaurant laid off 60 percent of the staff but focused on virtual classes, takeout, and prepared foods.

They were, however, fortunate to access Payroll Protection Program (PPP) money and to have an Economic Injury Disaster Loan, but they are "only doing about 20 percent of the pre-pandemic revenue."

And then this article segues to this gem of philosophy.

The movement for Black Lives Matter highlighted many of the industry's structural inequities.  I'm on Team Burn It Down and Create Something New.

Sure, I could bake banana bread, but I'd rather support an Afro-Latina-owned business.

Identity politics rules the day.  Acquiescing to a group that openly supports the dismantling of America is what this chef applauds and supports.

And finally, the chef asserts that she is "letting go of the restaurant incarnation of Mei Mei [so that] the essence of Mei Mei — our values, our commitment to community — can survive."

So, in the midst of a crisis brought on by left-wing administrations, given further impetus by the radical BLM, whose sole function is to destroy American capitalism, this chef is proud of her virtue-signaling, her capitulation to the mob, and her declaration that breaking U.S. immigration law is to be rewarded.

Lewis Carroll hit it on the nail when he had Alice say, "But I don't want to go among mad people."

"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You’'e mad."

Or, as Tim Burton put it in his 2010 Alice in Wonderland movie:

"I'm not crazy.  My reality is just different than yours."

Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com.