The Bay Area may spend more on eating out than any other metropolitan area in the country, but restaurants here are closing at nearly twice the national average, say researchers who track America's dining habits.
Despite a flurry of high-profile, chef-driven restaurant openings in recent months, the Bay Area lost 290 dining spots from spring 2009 to spring 2010, most of them independent and full-service, said the NPD Group, a leading market research company from Chicago.
Frank Klein, a national restaurant consultant based in Palo Alto, suspects that the Bay Area is losing more restaurants because it has a higher concentration of them than other regions. "With the prolonged economic downturn, it's been survival of the fittest," he said.
Analysts, who in the last two years have seen the restaurant business steadily decline throughout the country, expect it to get worse. Dinner service has particularly taken a hit – and it's not just the recession scaring away diners. The perceptions that restaurant fare is more fattening and less healthful than homemade food and the recent spate of affordable, prepared supermarket meals are keeping people home.
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Photo by Stephen Lam, Special to the Chronicle