The realities of the COVID-19 pandemic — which has devastated the restaurant industry and irreparably altered the lives of everyone who works in it — has forced a painful, impossibly forward-looking conversation to the front of people’s minds: How will the restaurant industry rebuild?

It’s not a premature or needlessly pessimistic question; the restaurant industry has been held together by a frayed thread since long before the pandemic. Recent months have revealed how precarious the livelihoods are of a largely