I work at my parent’s restaurant that has been passed down in our family for three generations now. Despite being a staple of our large coastal community, we struggled like everyone else in the food service industry during the COVID-19 pandemic. At first it started with the forced lockdowns and our unexpected switch to delivery and carry-out business at a time when we had just finished expanding our large indoor dining room. The last thing on my mind in the months leading up to the first lockdown was having to rely on deliveries and take-orders to literally survive, let alone stay in the black for the ensuing 24 months, which proved to be impossible anyway. I would say that we are incredibly lucky to be in the position we are in now to say that we survived the biggest crisis this business has faced since the early 1970s, but not all of the beloved family restaurants in our community shared our fate. Many of us struggled in part from basic supply chain shortages through 2020 and 2021. My brother is a building contractor supplier and struggled to maintain stock of steel rebar tie wire, let alone keeping multiple options available for his regular clients who rely on him to supply them many different kinds and sizes of rebar tie wire. He said it was really hard to find 14 gauge black annealed rebar tie wire for eight months before he had to look at a market on the other side of the country to fulfill orders he had backed up from the year prior. Now he said that the rebar supplies have gone back to levels similar to that of before the pandemic.