Schadenfreude

There's another restaurant whose closing wouldn't break our hearts. It's where we met Coach Miller two years ago. Here's what it looked like yesterday (March 18) afternoon, three days after restaurants in Michigan were ordered to close their dining areas. 

The fast-food biz was already in trouble. 

"You're going to see a lot of bankruptcies," Bloomberg analyst Michael Halen says in the article. Some chains -- like Subway -- expanded by borrowing heavily when interest rates were low, and now carry a ton of debt that empty dining areas don't help pay off.

During those times of expansion fueled by low interest rates,  fast food restaurants sprouted like mushrooms on the lawn after a rain. Soon there were too many of them. An unlimited supply. And now you know the reason why. 

Port Huron has four Subways, including the one in the BP station on 24th Avenue and the one inside Walmart pictured up the page. There's four Burger Kings, counting the one in the already doomed Birchwood Mall that the Chinese virus might finally finish off, and the one in Marysville. There's four McDonalds, including the one in Marysville. That's about two too many per chain for a place this size. 

Too many fast food restaurants and they all start to lose their cheap appeal!

A thinning of the herd was long ago in order. It might happen, when the debt carried by companies like Subway becomes such a burden that their stock value shrinks to almost nothing, if it hasn't already. They'll have to reduce that debt somehow. 

Jane Chad Inc -- the company's name includes that of Jane, his wife,  that's also a band's name, but I digress -- owns four Subway restaurants. Fort Gratiot Township Walmart, 21 Mile Road at Garfield in Macomb Township, on Gratiot Avenue in New Haven, and the one on North Main Street in Yale, across the parking lot from Yale Family Dining, a locally owned place that's been there forever, that the corporation is trying its hardest to drive out of business. They're franchised places. Chad Her Husband bought the franchises, created the corporation, and sold shares. Shares whose value gets closer to worthless each day Wall Street posts more red numbers, and each day the pandemic shuts down more of normal everyday life. 

The Coach and Mrs. Coach have already sold their big house on the golf course in St. Clair that was way too much house for someone living off the income supplied by four Subways and football coaching gigs when he managed to not get fired from one. Its address is visible on the payroll check image in this Reddit thread and can also be found in their company's on-line profile. The place sold for about $100K less than what they originally asked for, after it had been on the market for seven months. Got out from under the mortgage, paid the house off, took the money and ran. 

So someone else had a bright and lively encounter with Dad Chad. We're not surprised, and can safely assume there are more folks who have, whose stories aren't getting told.

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