“The fullservice segment lost nearly 3.7 million jobs during the first two months of the pandemic, and it has yet to fully recover. As of April 2026, full service restaurant employment was still 187,000 jobs (or 3.3%) below pre-pandemic readings. Despite the slower growth in recent months, limited-service employment levels stand well above their pre-pandemic readings. As of April 2026, employment at snack and nonalcoholic beverage bars – including coffee, donut and ice cream shops – was 217,000 jobs (or 27%) above April 2020 levels. Employee counts at quickservice and fast casual restaurants were 88,000 jobs (or 1.9%) above pre-pandemic levels.” NRA.
Almost every Friday night I go to a full service restaurant and it is not unusual for the waitress to come back to the table 10 minutes after serving us to ask us how everything came out! One of these days I’m going to tell her that I won’t know for sure until the following morning but to be completely honest with you sometimes I need a couple of days to find this out! Both Food and Labor costs are way higher than before the pandemic so no surprise that folks are going to more limited service restaurants instead. Which explains why there employment levels are way up and full service is down! Also tipping expectations are completely out of control in the USA!
And that is all I’m going to say about that!
Drain the Cesspool 