The Fed Reserve Chair Jerome Powell testified in front of Congress this week. The update comes after the S&P 500’s worst week since March 2020, including its fall into a bear market and the biggest Fed hike since 1994.

With this new economic pressure, the restaurant industry continues to face rising menu prices and a double-digit slow down in retail restaurant traffic with consumers now dining out an average of 1.1 times less per week according to Foodable Labs.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, joins a growing chorus of Wall Street voices, including Roubini Macro Associates’ Nouriel Roubini and several banks warning of tougher times ahead.

“I think that a recession is inevitable at some point. As to whether there is a recession in the near term, I think that is more likely than not,” Musk told Bloomberg in an interview early Tuesday at the Qatar Economic Forum.

Musk’s comment lines up with an email he reportedly sent to company executives earlier this month, where he spoke of a “super bad feeling” about the global economy and said 10% of Tesla jobs needed to go, knocking shares of the company at the time.

Could we see the first slowing of labor in the restaurant industry as a variety of white-collar jobs are now being hit with the hiring freeze and slowdown in many leading companies in the finance, retail, and automaker sectors?

Goldman Sachs now sees a 30% chance of an economic slowdown over the next 12 months, from a previous 15% on worries the Fed will “feel compelled to respond forcefully” to high inflation. The restaurant sector could feel some of the deepest cuts as consumer spending could slow dramatically in the third and fourth quarters of this year.

In this podcast, we talk with Larry Reinstein of LJR Hospitality and break down some of the key trends facing the industry and how operators can address a fast-changing economic landscape in the areas of management, labor, future technology and consumer habits.