More closings than openings?

I was going to post this question in the Openings, Closings thread, but then I thought it doesn't really belong there since it's not about reporting a specific opening or closing.

Does it seem to anyone else that there are far more closings than openings? That was to be expected post-2008, but now in 2017, in the midst of what seems like a long, vigorous recovery, I'm surprised. Of course a number of possibilities present themselves. 1) My impression of that thread is wrong, i.e., the thread reports more openings than closings and I'm just a glass-half-empty guy so I only remember the closings. 2) The thread does report more closings than openings, but the thread is not a random sample; bad news is more "interesting" than good news and so gets reported more by LTHers. 3) There really are more closings than openings.

Just wondering if anyone has real data on this aspect of the restaurant business these days.

I'm not sure about that thread but someone recently linked me this article that suggests we are at the tail end of a restaurant bubble that will gradually burst.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thrill ... bble-burst

One of the stated possible reasons for this is that even new restaurants that start out with great buzz and lots of business have many obstacles to overcome, including rising rent costs as well as the difficulty of staying profitable while scaling up an operation as business increases, while working with already slim margins.

It's the third article in a three part series.

Sort of depends on which way you're looking at the glass. To me it seemed like 2016 showed no slowdown for openings. Whether the ratio of openings/closings differed from other years is anyone's guess. I can't find a unified source of information. I certainly see expansion of certain chains, we saw inroads from foreign chains (Jollibee) and in the better dining area, plenty of new spots (and reopened old ones) from Evanston down to the Loop (and West Loop). Just talking out of my butt though. So if your thesis is "more closings" you can find plenty of support, ditto for openings.

I think part of it is that openings are spread out randomly, but closings are more likely to happen at intervals of end of month, end of quarter, and especially end of year. So we see a cluster of closings, and fewer openings, but the openings keep coming.

What's so hard about assembling a restaurant team? Everything.

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/ ... ight-chefs

I had actually been having this same thought but I was surprised that in a very quick (and not very scientific) look at the 2016 openings and closings thread, there actually are almost twice as many openings reported than closings. I will admit that I didn't go through the whole thread, but looked at the first 5 or 6 pages and the last 5 or 6 pages (since closings seem to happen at the end of the year) and did a rough tally from those.

I think that closings hit harder because they are generally places that people have been and are known, while an opening for a restaurant in a part of town or suburb one doesn't go to much doesn't resonate quite as much.

Northcenter Joe wrote:I had actually been having this same thought but I was surprised that in a very quick (and not very scientific) look at the 2016 openings and closings thread, there actually are almost twice as many openings reported than closings. I will admit that I didn't go through the whole thread, but looked at the first 5 or 6 pages and the last 5 or 6 pages (since closings seem to happen at the end of the year) and did a rough tally from those.

I think that closings hit harder because they are generally places that people have been and are known, while an opening for a restaurant in a part of town or suburb one doesn't go to much doesn't resonate quite as much.

Thanks for doing this tally, Joe. I think you're on to something as to why closings tend to stick in the mind more than openings.