From Daily Reckoning:

Smaller and local shops could not afford to hire extra employees for such ridiculous jobs and needed to serve everyone who showed up. Only the well-heeled places could afford such antics.

They watched their bottom lines swell even as their competitors were crushed. It was the perfect embodiment of Milton Friedman’s dictum that big business is often the biggest enemy of genuine capitalism. They far prefer industrial cartels of the sort created during the lockdowns.