When restaurants are the scenes of mass shootings

Gunmen have turned the most unlikely of settings into sites of horrifying carnage, as the recent tragedies in a Uvalde, Texas, grade school and a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket readily attest. Fortunately for foodservices, the shooters haven’t chosen restaurants as their stage, or at least not recently. But as this week’s edition of Restaurant Rewind vividly shows, the business hasn’t always enjoyed such luck.

Host Peter Romeo, the editor at large for Restaurant Business, recounts the three shootings he’s covered in his 38 years as a restaurant reporter, including what at the time was the nation’s highest-casualty event, the murder of 23 customers of a small town’s cafeteria.

“My goal here isn’t to scare anyone,” Romeo says.  “Rather, it’s to dash this notion that mass shootings are other institutions’ problem.”

Listen as he recalls the Luby’s shootings and two other gun tragedies that erupted in restaurants.

It’s proof, he concludes, that restaurants need to take precautions now to lessen their potential exposure.