COVID-19 restaurant closures (2020-2021)
The pandemic shut down dining across the U.S. Thousands of restaurants closed permanently, many without formal announcements.
Local license and permit records were often the first public signal of a closure.
License datasets became a standard tool for tracking restaurant openings and closures.
Shows how a license lapse is an early, imperfect signal of a quiet closure — the same mechanism at work in West Roxbury.
