Likely. A lot of consumer facing companies have issued warnings that working and middle class spending is cratering because people don’t have money to spend. I won’t be surprised if a lot of fast food restaurants go under or at least shrink considerably due to a collapse in market demand.
Comment on Papa Johns is closing 300 locations
DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Can someone explain if this is going to be common? The poverty line is just going to go up indefinitely so will this just be the normal?
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 3 weeks ago
InvalidName2@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
If anybody DOES explain whether it’s going to be common, take that person’s words with an appropriately large amount of skepticism. At the end of the day, “common” is a pretty ambiguous and subjective qualifier, and no matter how smart someone is, they aren’t psychic.
From a near(ish) term perspective: The USA is said to be experiencing a K-shaped economic recovery, and to some degree, the economy is bifurcating.
One simplistic way of viewing this is: Businesses that resonate with upper middle class and higher income consumers are, by and large, doing quite well. Businesses that can operate on low margins (often b/c of operating on enormous scale, ability to race to the bottom or already there, limited/no ethical principles, etc) are doing okay.
For everything else, it’s volatile. In my opinion, a lot of this is due to unprecedented, senseless, and chaotic federal polices that are unpredictable and occurring at a pace too frenzied for all but the nimblest or luckiest (well-positioned) businesses to successfully adapt without a lot of pain.
A lot of these middle ground establishments won’t survive if they don’t change, navigating that change is hard. They’ll have to join the race to the bottom, be lucky, get bought out, partake in massive layoffs/closures, and things like that.
So, from that perspective, I would expect to see this happen more often than before to former big and recognizable names.
If by some chance there is a massive shift in federal policy sometime soon, that could obviously alleviate some of this. Hard to say though, the damage may already be done or worse things may be on the horizon (remember how COVID went down?).
Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 3 weeks ago
Thing is, Papa John’s is WAY overpriced. Last time I got a pizza there it was over $30.
Little Caesars is 1/3 the price and not really a lesser pizza. PJ’s just ain’t that good.
My local joint sells a pizza that’s 10x better than PJ’s for $20.
Then PJ’s tacked on major delivery fees to boot. Fuck em.