Another issue is that many of these restaurants are now owned by private-equity groups that borrowed a lot of money for their acquisitions and are not seeing the cash flow they needed to come out even. TGI Fridays, Red Lobster, Hooters of America, and P.F. Chang’s were all purchased by private-equity groups in the last decade. TGI Fridays has 58% fewer restaurants than it did in 2019, and Hooters had 23% fewer, according to data from industry research firm Technomic.

“Wait, it’s the fault of greedy capitalists bleeding companies dry for short-term profits?”

“Always has been”