Update: Decline in Restaurant Traffic

There are some sectors that will be hit hard over the next several months: hotels, airlines, restaurants, movie theaters, sporting events, and convention centers.   People will probably avoid these places as part of social distancing.

Thanks to OpenTable for providing this restaurant data:

Click on graph for larger image.

This data shows the year-over-year change in diners as tabulated by OpenTable for the US, the states of Washington and New York, and a few impacted cities (Seattle, San Francisco, and Boston).

This data is updated through March 17, 2020.

The US was off 84% YoY as of yesterday.

As of yesterday, San Francisco was off 100% YoY, Boston was off 100% YoY, and Seattle was off 100%.  Going forward, restaurants are closing in many states (except take out and pick up)

As of March 17th, 13 states and D.C. were off 100%,  Soon it will be all states.

Clearly the US will need to help the employees (and owners) of these impacted sectors.