Friends of mine opened a brewery two years ago. The first six months they concentrated on brewing, and customers were free to bring their own food, or have pizza delivered from nearby places.
Then they decided to invest in a kitchen and sell their own pizza, wings, sandwiches, etc. Looks like that decision will end up saving their business. Once the state shutdown bars, they ramped up their kitchen. Now they are selling curbside food and six packs on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. They are so busy, you have to place your order 24 hours ahead of time. Last Saturday we got a lasagna dinner for four, salads, garlic bread for $48 and a six pack of beer for $18.
ETA: for the two of us, the dinner for four fed us two dinners and three lunches. The six pack lasted me four days, thanks to me drinking vodka chasers.
My wife and I were discussing this subject this morning, and came up with another possibility. We were wondering if the increase in working from home might be interpreted (companies) as evidence they really don’t need all that middle management? I’ve long contended we have far more management than needed in many fields, and it seems this might act as a real time demonstration of that. Just spitballing though.
It would be a tremendous boon to public health if we’d all wear masks when we had any symptoms of a possible illness. This is the norm in some countries (Japan, Korea, China), and we’d all get sick a lot less if everyone would do it.
I find it unlikely that that will happen. Hell, it’s hard to get people to wear face masks during this pandemic because it’s become the newest front in the culture war.
I’m glad to hear they are doing well, the brewing industry became over-saturated in my part of the world and a lot of them are struggling from too much supply. The change to restaurants has been interesting, I keep hearing about 5 star restaurants selling takeout, something that would have been unheard of a few years ago. I wonder how many of these changes will become permanent?
Several years ago, a new restaurant opened near me. A small place, with maybe 8 tables - although based on the menu and location it would probably get a lot of takeout business. The menu was mostly sandwiches and other light fare.
I took one look at the menu and thought “Too bad, they’ll be out of business in 6 months. To be clear, most everything on the menu sounded delicious and well-thought out from the perspective of “How will this taste?”.
But almost every sandwich featured a different type of cheese - cheddar, Swiss, American, provolone, Gouda, Muenster and pepper jack were all included. They offered pulled beef AND pulled pork AND pulled chicken sandwiches on the everyday menu. They had beef burgers and turkey burgers and bison burgers and veggie burgers. There were dozens of menu offerings that had one or more unique ingredients.
The menu was designed with no thought at all to the economics of stocking the kitchen. They didn’t last long.
In contrast, someone in the same neighborhood opened a small Japanese takeout place. She started very simply with things that could be made with a limited amount of ingredients, mostly variations on California roll and tuna /eel based sushi, and she expanded the menu every few weeks as the business grew. Truth is, she didn’t last that line either, but she lasted longer than the guy with the sandwich shop.
Having done a few online meetings, I can think of a lot of situations where they would work way better than a physical meeting. We used to have these really large coordination meetings on some of the construction projects I worked on. There were usually over 20 - 25 participants and everyone had to come at sit through the whole thing. It was always surprising how much coordination was needed between far flung trades and it was important not to leave any questions hanging.
They were a pain in the ass logistically though. It was difficult to schedule all the parties.
Every time the speaker or subject changed, the whole room had to play musical chairs.
It was difficult for everyone to view a drawing or blueprint at the same time.
A lot of participants were inactive for large portions of the meetings, I would do other work during large sections of the meeting, then someone would ask -“Hey, Ann - what’s the dimension on the back box for xx device” and I’d answer then they’d proceed to resolve the other issues dependent on the size of that device, which were usually of no concern to me.
Zoom and the other apps I’ve been using would be perfect for this type of meeting. No one would have to travel and everyone could be on time. Everyone could see and hear each other equally. Everyone could see the materials being presented. People could sort of background the portions of the meetings that were irrelevant to them and do other things until they were needed or or until someone had a question for them.
Although I’m no longer working, I fully expect that after doing these meetings remotely a few times, no one would ever do them in person again.
[QUOTE=pullin;22300211 the increase in working from home might be interpreted (companies) as evidence they really don’t need all that middle management? [/QUOTE]
Working from home is going fine right now for a lot of people.But the emphasis is on “right now”.
I wonder how long they can keep it going.
Many people who previously went to the office every day, but are now working at home for the first time, are doing pretty well…for now. But most of them are just taking home their regular routine work. They are not doing the more complex things…like starting new projects, finding new clients, hiring new staff who need training.
I suspect that if these same people stay away from their office for,say, 6 months straight , their company will have very very serious problems. When changes happen and the old routine has to be changed, people need to meet with their co-workers and their boss. And that usually works best when they all know each other, after years of daily contact.
AIUI NFL owners vote each year whether or not to use the blackout rules that year. I had to look this up, but how it’s worked since the 1970s is that there can’t be TV coverage of a game within a certain radius of the arena if fewer than 85% of tickets for that game have been sold. I remember times when a local business or two stepped up and bought blocks of tickets so that the Bears could be televised locally.
At any rate, if team owners really want their arenas filled and people are concerned about virus transmission at games, the owners might try instigating blackouts again. Personally, I think it would be as effective (and more public relations savvy) to discontinue the blackout rues and lower the ticket price substantially to encourage people to attend games, but I suspect NFL owners wouldn’t agree.
I had a Facebook friend post the same Hong Kong Flu/ Woodstock thing and I felt compelled to do the math for her, which I’ll repeat here: the Hong Kong flu killed 185 people a day between 1968 and 1970. We’re losing 2000/day now.
I also agree with those who expect slight acceleration of trends already in place. We’ll find that it’s a lot easier to work from home than we thought, and we’ll see more of it. Less business travel, more teleconferences. Public transit will undergo routine disinfection. More movies may go direct to streaming services.
But sporting events are far from dead – we’ll probably see big football crowds this fall.
Well, my point wasn’t that the virulence of these diseases are necessarily comparable, but rather, that pandemic respiratory viruses do not, historically, result in major and permanent social changes, and that they tend not to loom all that large in collective memory after the fact. (This is basically true of Spanish flu as well, although most people have at least heard of that one.)
I think the long-term impact is directly connected to the virulence and lethality.
The flu pandemics of the past (mostly) had < 0.1% infection fatality rate. That makes for reasonably large numbers when it sweeps through the population, but the overall continuing perceived risk is small.
COVID appears to have an IFR around 1%, which is an order of magnitude worse than the flu, and as a result its generated a much stronger response, but probably still not scary enough for people to think “I need to change my whole way of life long-term” in the aftermath.
But imagine a viral respiratory pandemic as easily transmittable as COVID with 10% or 20% IFR. You’d see societal upheaval, and the crowded sporting arena probably would not reappear for a generation.
Smallpox never disappeared because smallpox is not a thing. It’s just “bad chicken pox,” and we still have chicken pox. Monkey pox is also the same disease. Since no one could tell him who had proven the smallpox virus causes smallpox, he must be right.
Polio also isn’t really a thing because some people are still paralyzed.
Of course vaccines cause autism and only people who hate Moms think otherwise.
COVID-19 will INCREASE antivaxxers. Big time. It’s already a very common belief that it’s a hoax put forward by Bill Gates and other liberals to force vaccines on people so microchips can be implanted in them.
True. I think that’s still consistent with my claims.
An IFR of a few percent isn’t enough to change long-term behavior. If it had an IFR of 10-20%, it would be a bigger deal.
I also really only see long-term changes lasting a generation. Adults don’t change their behavior because Grandma tells them about all the people who died of whatever when she was younger. People who lived through a disaster change their behavior.
Adults may not change, but the kids they raise won’t have to change, they’ll just be raised that way to begin with.
Who taught you to shake hands when you first meet someone? Your parents, most likely. If you don’t pass that along, or even better, actively tell your kids to do something else, like bow or something, they’ll never develop that habit.
Same with masks. If kids are told that of course you wear a mask in public if you’re sick, to them, that will just be normal. Same with any of the other behavior changes. If we change now because we see that it is needed, and then teach our kids to do these things because that’s just the way it’s done, the kids will never know anything different.
So, which changes will stick? Those that the parents of today decide will stick.
In Australia, things that are unlikely to change back:
Tele-medicine. Tele-medicine was artificially restricted by all insurance agencies in Aus, because of fear of fraud. Restrictions were relaxed for COVID-19, and are unlikely to go back.
Digital signatures, video witnessing, e-conveyancing.
Video AGM’s for listed companies.
These are all things that could have happened before, but they’ve happened now, and probably won’t change back.
