Data from OpenTable, one of the largest online reservation services in the world, shows in real time how people are responding to the pandemic and how it’s affecting small businesses.

The data reveals a 76 per cent drop in diners in Toronto restaurants on March 16 this year compared to the same day a year before. A 66 per cent drop in diners in Montreal. A 73 per cent decrease in Calgary.

The company, founded in San Francisco in 1998, is asking diners to support local restaurants through the crisis by ordering home delivery.

“Many operate on thin margins and fear staff layoffs and shut downs,” Andrea Johnston, COO of OpenTable, wrote in a statement that accompanied the release of the data.

The data also shows that in Montreal, as well as some cities around the world, people continued to congregate well into the second week of March, when diners began to drop off dramatically in nearly all cities where OpenTable is used. The first presumptive case of COVID-19 in Ontario had been confirmed about six weeks earlier.

In New York and Dublin as of March 16, the number of people eating out fell 77 per cent and 71 per cent respectively from the same day a year before.

The industry here will be hit even harder with the announcement Monday from the provincial government that eat-in restaurants should close.

It’s a pattern in cities across the world as businesses bare the brunt of declining consumer demand.

Retail shopping fell 20 per cent in China since the crisis began there, according to news reports, and the industry will be hit here as stores including Nordstrom and Anthropologie close their doors temporarily.

The federal and Ontario governments have instituted numerous measures to limit social interactions that will flatten the curve of new cases, which Brett House, Scotiabank’s deputy chief economist, says is needed to contain the economy’s free fall.

As well, federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau announced $10 billion in business loans and the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, which regulates banks, changed lending rules to free up cash.

“OSFI is essentially removing the requirement that banks have to hold additional security buffers of capital for a rainy day,” says House. “It’s a declaration that rainy day is here and they want to ensure the banks are able to fully lend out the capital they have at their disposal to keep activity going.”

The federal government is expected to announce new fiscal measures that could also put much-needed cash in consumer’s pockets, which House says is vital for stabilizing the economy.

He says those changes could include increasing tax credits such as the GST rebate or increasing the Canada child benefit, or letting small businesses defer their payroll taxes, says House.

“The focus needs to be on getting cash directly into the hands of people who need it who are living close to the edge,” says House, “who don’t have a rainy-day fund, who need to pay rent, who need to pay mortgage payments, who need to pay grocery bills.”

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The bank has recommended an additional fiscal stimulus of one percentage point of GDP, which is equivalent to around $20 billion.

A recession looks inevitable, say experts.

“A recession is typically defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth,” says Wei Wang, an associate professor at the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University, noting we’re not there yet. “I think we will be very likely in a recession soon if the virus cannot be contained.”

“Some parts of demand are sort of destroyed,” House says. “An airplane flight that takes off, if no one sits in that seat, you can’t get that seat back again, that value is lost.” But he says the circumstances now are very different than 2008, when the crisis came out of the financial sector.

“There aren’t big parts of the economy that are broken,” says House. “We’re shutting down activity to stop the spread of the virus but once we reach the point where outbreak is considered under control, some of the demand that is being deferred now will come back. And we should see that contribute to a bit of a rebound.”

The Conference Board of Canada released a statement Tuesday that the country “teeters on the brink of recession” but wrote “encouragingly, given the historically tight labour markets and the short-term nature of the economic shocks, businesses are expected to retain workers as much as they can, and employment should recover along with the economy.”

Both Wang and House agree that increasing cash flow and deferring payments is key.

Restaurants should make immediate adjustments, including cuts to inventory and material purchases, says Wang. They should negotiate with landlords and suppliers to delay payments, he says, and potentially lay off non-essential employees if necessary.

Then, Wang said, restaurant owners should increase their lines of credit with their banks and take money out immediately to ensure they have a cash runway to see them through a few months.

“Right now, cash is king,” Wang said, adding that he hopes the federal government will step in to guarantee the loans of essential businesses that are hit the hardest.

House agrees.

“I think what markets are looking for is some kind of reassurance that the outbreak is being brought under control and that policy measures to ensure that businesses keep operating, that households are still able to keep meeting their expenses and that credit markets continue to function, are going to be put in place and are fully effective,” says House.

“I think those two things are the things that are really critical to ensuring we minimize the economic impact over the remainder of the year.”