It is not about the restaurant it is about all the regulation and legislation required to start and run a small business. That is part of the problem with our jobless rate today. It is too expensive to comply with all the tracking, regulation, etc.
I can give an example of that and how it can keep a business from ever being started.
The lake I live on is a man-made reservoir. Since the level fluctuates there is a strip of land around it that is under control of the U.S. Army Corps of engineers. There were four locations around the lake that were designated as locations were marinas could be built. My ex-business partner and I at one time, in the past when we owned a marina on the lake, explored the idea of opening up another on the one last piece of land designated for a marina.
What we found was that feasibility and environmental impact studies had to be made first for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the EPA and also the State of Virginia (since that location on the lake is in Virginia) Each wanted a separate study done, they would not all accept a copy of just one. At the time a single study would have cost us slightly over $10,000.00, so in the end we would have paid over $30,000.00, and if just one of the three said no, we could not build. So that means we would have had to risk over $30,000.00 just for a possible chance to be able to open another marina. Even though the land was designated for a marina when the lake was built there had been so many regulations put in place since that meeting just the first one was a large and risky expense. We also found that what was allowed at the other marinas on the lake would not be allowed at a new one. Certain regulations had been added but the existing marinas were given a grandfather type clause and for as long as whatever it was that had become unacceptable could me kept in use the other marinas did not have to upgrade. So the cost of building a new marina would have turned out much higher than any of the others, and not only due to inflation over the years, and instead largely due to large numbers of regulations that would need to be met.
We gave up and it is now roughly 15-years later and no one has yet built a marina on that site.
One would have created jobs and increased the local tax base and drew more people to the area who would have spent money which would have helped the local economy. It would have also created work for many different various businesses who would have built what we intended to have and boat companies and outboard engine companies would have received more orders for what we would have stocked and sold, so those people in those areas would have benefited too along with their local economy and that of their State.
All that, and much more not mentioned, never happened, was lost, due to not only regulations but redundant regulations required by multiple governmental agencies/groups/State.
At some point the U.S. became regulation insane. There are far to many and some are overlapping ones and others are just redundant ones that are not needed.
