By Marco Shalma

Sorry, this one’s long.

I tried keeping it short, but the industry’s hanging on by dental floss and prayer, and I’m tired of pretending everything’s fine when everyone working in it knows it’s not. If you’ve ever run a shift, opened a spot, worked a line, dragged three cases of product across a sidewalk at 7 am, or watched a month’s profit get wiped out by one stupid fine, then sit down. You’re gonna feel this.

If you don’t care? Go look at brunch videos. This is for grownups.

New York’s hospitality industry isn’t dying. It’s getting suffocated slowly, quietly, by systems built for everything except actual hospitality.

The cooks are here. The ideas are here. The neighborhoods are here. The customers are hungry. The problem is the system strangling operators before they ever get a chance to breathe.