Myrtle Beach Mayor Brenda Bethune told local press today that the City of Myrtle Beach will continue its current shut down through May 15th.
The shut down includes all hotels, attractions, and dine in restaurants according to Mayor Brenda Bethune.
The order applies to all current reservations made through May 15th.
Tourists who have current reservations arriving before May 15th will need to call their resort and reschedule.
Bethune plans to allow her Better Brands beer distributorship to continue to operate fully during the pandemic.
According to Forbes, More than 110,000 eating and drinking establishments closed in 2020.
It should come as no surprise then that many restaurants were forced to shutter in 2020, but the numbers are still shocking. More than 110,000 eating and drinking establishments in the United States closed for business—temporarily or permanently—last year, with nearly 2.5 million jobs erased from pre-pandemic levels, according to the National Restaurant Association. And restaurant and foodservice industry sales fell by $240 billion in 2020 from an expected level of $899 billion.
“Every restaurant segment has been impacted by the pandemic, but the sales and employment losses have been felt disproportionately by full service restaurants, which had much more challenging pivots to off-premises service,” says Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of the research and knowledge group for the National Restaurant Association. “The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is helping thousands of restaurants keep their employees on staff and their doors open, but our industry is uniquely affected and has unique challenges that PPP isn’t always going to meet. Ultimately, recovery for restaurants will take industry-specific support through dedicated grants, tax relief, and other stimulus support at the federal, state, and local levels.”
The group released its 2021 State of the Restaurant Industry Report on Tuesday, shining a light on the decimation of the restaurant industry since the outbreak of COVID-19. The report examines shifts and trends for labor, menus, and service (on- and off-premises), based on a survey of 6,000 restaurant operators and consumer preferences from a survey of 1,000 adults as of December 1, 2020.
The restaurant and foodservice industry had been projected to provide 15.6 million jobs in 2020, representing 10% of all payroll jobs in the economy. Since the pandemic started, 62% of fine dining operators and 54% of both family dining and casual dining operators said staffing levels are more than 20% below normal.