LogFAQs > #948120452

GastroFan posted...

Am I the only one that I know of who believes that, even before Covid, there were too many restaurants and too many stores?

Yes and no. It is very true that the retail and food service markets are generally very crowded, especially with establishments trying to chase current trends (a few years ago, something like 6 or 7 gourmet burger places opened within a year of each other here, a city of 350,000 people). That's why so many end up folding as the local industry evolves, leaving only the ones that do actually manage to stand out (or have enough capital to weather the rough early years) while the unsuccessful ones have their locations taken over by a new business (it's pretty much natural selection, really).

On the other hand, that constant turnover and evolution is what allows a population to shape their local business community to be optimal for them. In order to have the best local restaurant scene possible (to focus on food service), you need new businesses coming in with new ideas to shake it up with meaningful competition. Proponents of capitalism are always fond of praising the concept of the free market, but the fact of the matter is that a free market can really only work when that market is quite large. If there are only one or two restaurants occupying a given niche in an area, the lack of competitors means you don't really have the option of denying them business unless you also want to give up whatever they offer. Redundancy gives consumers choice, and that choice in turn allows them to shape their community, which is generally a good thing.

Now, the tragedy of Covid (or any other recession event, really) is not simply that small businesses are going under. Small businesses go under every day, Covid or no (something like 50% of new businesses don't make it past their first year). It's that businesses that the community has chosen to support and that had cemented a solid place in the local scene - meaning they would otherwise have survived - are dying, which is an irreplaceable loss in many cases. In time, the economic side of things will be rebuilt (commercial properties leased, people employed again, etc.), but the faces of neighbourhoods will be changing, which is sad. So... buy local and order take-out more often than you otherwise might, if you can. That's all any of us can really do until this blows over.

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