NRA Predicts Foodservice Industry Will Lose $240 Billion in Sales by 2021

The National Restaurant Association released a sobering report on Friday detailing the staggering losses the foodservice industry has seen since March and offering a grim outlook for the months ahead.

In May, the industry lost an estimated $40 billion, bringing the the industry’s total lost revenue to $120 billion since March, when the coronavirus crisis forced dine-in restaurants across the country to close or transition to exclusively off-premise services. 

Now, states across the country are slowly beginning to reopen, but restaurant owners surveyed by the NRA are far from optimistic about their prospects for recovery in the near future. 75 percent of surveyed operators said their businesses are unlikely to become profitable within the next six months. That pessimism agrees with the NRA’s own assessment, which predicts the industry will lose $240 billion in sales by the end of 2020.

Other key statistics from the report:

• 8 million restaurant employees remain unemployed.
• 34 percent of restaurants open only for takeout and delivery say they do not have enough customers to justify reopening for dine-in.
• 55 percent of restaurants temporarily closed say they do not have enough customers to justify reopening. 
• 76 percent of restaurants that are open in some capacity are rehiring.
• 27 percent of restaurants that are temporarily closed are rehiring.

In the previous two surveys released by the NRA since the coronavirus pandemic reached the U.S., an estimated 3 percent of all restaurants were reported to be closed permanently. The NRA did not update that figure for the newest report.