COVID-19 Shown Families How Much They are Able to Save
This will hurt the economy more than the fear of contagion
I’ve been in lockdown since early March, despite the shelter at home being removed long time ago. Why? Because there is no real reason for a responsible person to risk his health and the other’s people one just to enjoy the old habits. I’ve entered the US in early 2020, thanks to a new job and after a few weeks in the office, I found myself working from home while I was following the Italian COVID crescendo through the stories told by my family and friends there.
Before everything went crazy (while the illness was confined in China) I was skeptical about the risk scientists were talking about… the mortality rate was low, the infection rate was high but it seemed just some powerful flu… I was so wrong… After few months the world went in lockdown, people lost jobs, people died and we have been forced to stay at home and learn how to live in a different way.
You can find many articles saying that life will never be the same, and I agree with them, but not because of the same reasons. The big issue restaurants, bars, and entertainment is facing is not the short-term fear of contagion, they are worried about the loss of decades of spending habits that have been disrupted by 6 months of lockdown.
People lost the habit of spending for non-essential things
Things that have been abruptly removed from everyone’s habit? Breakfast in a Patisserie during weekends, dinners in restaurants, happy hours in fancy gardens, stopping by for a coffee, playing soccer-tennis-whatever with friends, having a pic-nic, wine tasting events, going to movie theaters and concerts… Most of these things were feeding an intricate network of food-related jobs that were providing pleasure to people and that became habits after decades of careful marketing and promotions.
Every person I’ve talked so far noticed how much more she/he is saving now
There is no way to ignore what is happening, even people that do not keep track of their budget see that they are having more cash at the end of the month, they are spending way less than before, and the feeling is addictive. It fuels hopes for a new car, for a new house, and for pleasures that are not food-related. This pandemic is destroying decades of hard work made by advertisements… a long, slow influence that instilled in our heads the fact that it was normal to spend 8$ a day on a Starbucks or to spend 20$ every weekend for a cappuccino & croissant. Now we are all realizing that we can live without them and that the compound effect of those savings materializes in hundreds of dollars at the end of the month.
If I owned a restaurant I would be scared of the long-term effect of this change. A lot.
