RESTAURANT REALITIES

Seemingly daily the Herald and Wellington’s The Post feature stories on restaurant closures. Their proprietors are always quoted saying it reflects the depressed economy.

Doubtless that’s a factor but the same phenomenon would be ocurring even if we were in an economic boom.

Prior to 1980 restaurants were virtually non-existent.

The practice then was to eat at home, dinner being virtually an all-day preparation task by the wife/mother of the household. People entertained one another over a home-cooked meal.

That was feasible as once married and starting a family, back then very few such women worked in outside employment, their days being fully preoccupied in household chores.

Then seemingly overnight it all changed in the mid 1980s.

The economic boom and optimism brought about by Rogernomics, following Labour’s adoption to the letter of the NZ Party’s policies, saw in its wake restaurants spring up everywhere. Eating out regularly became the norm and entertaining at home virtually ceased.

But note this. Over the subsequent 40 years, regardless of the state of the economy, the average life of a New Zealand restaurant has been 18 months. Here’s why.

First, restaurants go in and out of fashion. But there’s a much more significant reason. That is the percentage of the population, perhaps as big as a third, who have an overwhelming urge to be self-employed above any other option.

Opening a restaurant is the ready fallback to that desire, assuming no other skill.

Of course those who have, for example, learnt a trade or profession, be they a plumber, electrician, lawyer or doctor and who have the same self-employment craving, can readily satisfy that impulse.

But for folk with no particular skill training, establishing a restaurant or coffee shop seems the obvious answer.

So don’t read too much into the daily media reporting of restaurant closures. As said, the depressed economy is undoubtably a factor but regardless, it would be happening anyway.