The recession has taken a bite out of the Big Apple’s restaurants.
During the second quarter of the year, the number of independently owned restaurants in the city shrank by 1 percent — or about 430 — compared with the second quarter of 2008, a new study by market researcher NDP Group found.
“We’re in for a rough ride,” said Bonnie Riggs, of NDP, which has been tracking the restaurant business nationally for 30 years.
“Our forecast is for the market weakness to continue for at least another nine months before it improves.”
The declining number of independent restaurants in the city mirrored a national trend, with 4,000 fewer in business — also a 1 percent drop-off — during March, April and May of this year compared with the same period in 2008.
Nationally, the number of diners going out to eat slipped 2.6 percent, the largest decline since 1981, NDP found. The marketing firm doesn’t plan to release local statistics for restaurant customers until later in the year.
“What we’re seeing now is most similar to what we saw in the early 1980s, and it took two years to recover back then,” Riggs said.
New York City, with the largest stock of eateries, had the most closings of any metropolitan area, with the shuttering this year of a batch of high-profile restaurants, including Rockefeller Center’s Rainbow Room, Payard Bistro on the Upper East Side and Brooklyn’s Garden Café.
Riggs said fast-food restaurants nationwide felt the smallest decline, with the number of customers dropping 2 percent. Fine dining dropped 14 percent.
The large drop in customers going to high-end restaurants hits New York hardest because of the high concentration of top-notch restaurants among the 34,400 in business here during the second quarter of the year, Riggs said.
A drop in the restaurant business comes as the city’s unemployment rate hit 9.3 percent this month, the worst since 1992.
Despite the tough economic times, the city’s restaurant business has fared better than many other industries, said Andrew Ritchie of the New York State Restaurant Association.
“People are still investing in restaurants and think it’s a profitable business,” Ritchie said.
“People love to eat out, and New York City is the dining capital of the world.”