News Summary September 12, 2017
Today's Main Story: Restaurants Face Long Recovery From Hurricane Irma, 1 Million People Employed in Florida Foodservice
While Hurricane Irma didn’t have quite the devastating impact on Florida that many people feared it would when they went home for the weekend on Friday, the widespread storm still had a major impact on the restaurant industry, closing thousands of locations amid power outages and flooding throughout Florida and north as far as Charleston, S.C. Recovery from such a storm will take time. Rob Gould, vice president of communications for Florida Power and Light said that residents and businesses on Florida’s West Coast could be without power for weeks because the utility needs a wholesale rebuild of its electric grid. The longer power is out, the longer many restaurants will remain closed, which could endanger inventories, potentially prolonging their closures. Florida is a major restaurant market, with 39,000 restaurants that employ more than 1 million people and generate nearly $42 billion in annual sales, according to the National Restaurant Association.
In other news, Maine’s traditional industries would take a hit from higher taxes if the Trump administration makes good on a threat to withdraw from a trade deal with South Korea, a major market for the state’s lobster and blueberry industries. The president hasn’t acted yet, but he recently told his advisers to prepare to withdraw from the pact. Each year the United States imports goods from South Korea worth nearly $28 billion more than what it exports to that country. That imbalance is more than double what it was when the agreement went into effect in 2012. U.S. negotiators had intended the pact to have the opposite effect. “Lobster companies could be in jeopardy if this [pact] is stopped,” said Tom Adams, CEO of lobster wholesaler Maine Coast of York, one of a half-
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