Restaurant Stocks in Freefall: Why Investors Are Fleeing the Dining Sector

The sizzle's gone cold on restaurant stocks—Wall Street's dumping table scraps while diners tighten belts. Here's why your portfolio might need a palate cleanse.

Labor Crunch Meets Margin Squeeze

Minimum wage hikes and food inflation are gutting profits faster than a bad Yelp review. Chains that survived COVID now face 20%+ labor cost spikes—with zero pricing power to offset it.

Delivery App Bloodbath

Third-party platforms taking 30% cuts turned growth into a loss leader. Ghost kitchens? More like ghost profits. Meanwhile, crypto-native food startups bypass middlemen entirely—chef-to-consumer NFTs, anyone?

The Recession Appetizer

Consumers treat casual dining like discretionary income—which vanished faster than a Bitcoin maximalist's patience with altcoins. When $15 burgers get cut from budgets, earnings estimates get carved up next.

Bonus jab: At least restaurant stocks provide something rare in finance—transparent accounting. (Looking at you, crypto projects with 'creative' tokenomics.)