Has COVID-19 killed restaurants? Not by a long shot

In the fiercely competitive world of restaurants, Danny Isaacs' career took off like a rocket. Shortly after graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in 2018 at age 20, he landed a plum job as a sous-chef at a Long Island yacht club in Long Island, New York. Half a year later, Isaacs moved up to executive chef at another nearby yacht club. Then COVID-19 hit. As the disease engulfed the state, the club closed. Isaacs was the first one laid off.

"My options were very, very slim. The only things that were open were hospitals, other institutional facilities," Isaacs recalled.  So in late August of last year, just as the pandemic was shuttering restaurants across the U.S., he took a chance, maxed out his credit cards and bought a food trailer. Within a few months the truck, dubbed "Bacon You Crazy," had a regular circuit: barbershops on weekdays, feeding the overnight shift at a hospital a couple of weeknights, and bars and breweries on weekends, when they were desperate to serve food on the premises to meet state pandemic restrictions on alcohol sales.