RESTAURANT APOCALYPSE: One in 5 restaurants in America could permanently close due to the coronavirus pandemic, putting millions out of work

• Close to 20% of restaurants across America could permanently close due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to a Wednesday UBS note.
• If one in five of the more than one million restaurants in the US close, it would result in roughly 200,000 locations permanently shuttering.
• The National Restaurant Association found that roughly 3% of restaurants in the US have already permanently closed, and 11% expect to do so in the next 30 days.
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UBS predicts that up to one in five restaurants in the US could close permanently due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In a note on Wednesday, UBS analyst Dennis Geiger noted that the National Restaurant Association said that roughly 3% of restaurants in the US have already closed permanently.

That would mean 30,000 restaurants have already shuttered, based on the NRA's estimate of more than one million restaurants in the US. According to Geiger, the carnage is far from over.

"[C]loser to 20% is possible considering the health & overleverage of independent owners and select franchisees across casual dining in particular," Geiger wrote in Wednesday's note.

If one in five American restaurants close, it would result in roughly 200,000 locations permanently shuttering. The industry employs roughly 15.6 million people in the US, according to the NRA.

The NRA surveyed more than 4,000 restaurant owners and operators last week. 11% said that they anticipate they will permanently close within the next 30 days.

A JPMorgan Chase Institute analysis of 597,000 small businesses from February to October 2015 found that half of restaurants had a cash buffer large enough to support more than 16 days of business. The other half would go out of business before 16 days were over if they were not bringing in money.

Roger Lipton, a restaurant industry analyst, investor, and advisor who recently penned a blog post about the upcoming "restaurant apocalypse," told Business Insider that the restaurant industry is facing an unexpected and unprecedented challenge.

"Any pundit who thinks that they're going to use a recent history - and by recent history, I mean the last 100 years, including the Depression - as a template for what is going to go on here? They're kidding themselves," Lipton told Business Insider on Monday.

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