Not sure if 100% serious, but this is definitely a fact. The NYT featured them prominently in an article discussing the impact of the remote, wfh setup and its effect in San Francisco, and Sweetgreen and other similar places basically have left the downtown areas and opened up outposts in suburbia or more outlying areas as crowds simply disappeared. My partner works in midtown Manhattan, and was back just a few months after the initial lockdown, and by her accounts, a ton of lunch places have closed down, which leads to more and more employees choosing to brown bag it, which compounds the problem for all these places catering to lunchtime crowds. For her, if she doesnt feel like bringing food from home, her options are quite limited and she will often just power through and not even bother trying to choose from slim pickings with much higher menu prices, which is yet another thing pushing people away from the what limited options remain.

People who doubt the narrative of a doom loop fail to see the real BIG picture. It's not just about workers, plunging commercial real estate value, and crime. So many aspects of city downtowns are being affected. Of course NYC will never cease to be, but people seem to conveniently forget that the city had some SERIOUS fiscal issues in the 70s and it took a lot of effort and work to get above from that.