New York lost a net 1,928 restaurants and bars in a year, and the outer boroughs took the biggest hit

New York's restaurant and bar scene shrank faster over the past year than it did in any year of the pandemic, and this time the damage is concentrated outside Manhattan.

The state counted 48,928 privately owned food-service and drinking places, the federal category that covers restaurants, bars, cafes, caterers and similar businesses, in the first quarter of 2026. That is a net 1,928 fewer than the 50,856 a year earlier, a 3.8% drop, according to preliminary figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, which counts nearly every employer through unemployment insurance filings. "Net" means closings minus openings. Over the same period, the number of such places nationwide rose 1.9%.

Worse than the pandemic

In the same BLS data, the worst pandemic-era drop for New York was 1,681 places, in the second quarter of 2020 compared with a year earlier. The first quarter of 2021 was down 1,631. Bloomberg reported that the latest decline is the biggest in at least 36 years of BLS records. It is also the fourth quarter in a row that the state's count came in below the year before, after drops of 323, 470 and 453 places in the second, third and fourth quarters of 2025.

The boroughs, not Manhattan

County-level figures in the same release show where the losses landed (first quarter of 2026 compared with a year earlier):

• Queens: 5,407 places, down 367 (6.4%); jobs down 1,853 (3.5%)
• Brooklyn: 5,837 places, down 380 (6.1%); jobs down 1,189 (2.1%)
• The Bronx: 1,714 places, down 103 (5.7%); jobs down 293 (1.8%)
• Staten Island: 848 places, down 48 (5.4%); jobs down 557 (6.7%)
• Manhattan: 9,475 places, down 204 (2.1%); jobs up 3,166 (1.8%)

Jobs here are March employment counts. Across the five boroughs, the city lost a net 1,102 eating and drinking places, about 4.5%, while food-service employment slipped by just 726 jobs, to 307,554.

Marco Shalma, who runs the Bronx Night Market and other food festivals, pulled the same federal data for his newsletter New York Eats Here. He noted that the citywide loss nearly matches the pandemic year, but that in 2020 Manhattan took the hit while the other boroughs held up. Now the pattern is reversed. Because the city lost more places than jobs, he argued that the closures are mostly small, owner-run rooms, with surviving larger restaurants absorbing their few workers.

Why owners say they are closing

Owners interviewed by Bloomberg described a stack of rising costs rather than one cause. The Manhattan Chamber of Commerce found that employee health insurance for New York-area service businesses rose 12.9% last year, utilities 8.5%, business insurance 7% and wages 3.4%. An East Harlem burger spot, CakeBurgers, told the outlet it turned off its air conditioning after its gas and electric bill reached $1,400 a month, and the owner of Scarpetta said he closes some of his other restaurants on Sundays to hold down costs.

Melissa Fleischut, who leads the New York State Restaurant Association, told Bloomberg that members describe "death by a thousand cuts." A spokesperson for Mayor Zohran Mamdani told the outlet that the administration is working to cut fines, fees and paperwork for small businesses, including through a "Mom and Pop Czar" for businesses with fewer than 10 employees.

The first-quarter figures are preliminary, and BLS can revise them.