> Endemic means that a disease has a constant presence with a population;

 
That's not what it means.
 
It means that a disease is present at a low level in a population, i.e. R0 =< 1. Once an endemic disease starts spreading in an uncontrolled fashion, it becomes an epidemic or a pandemic.
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AIDS is still considered an epidemic disease, for instance. Rabies is considered endemic to certain animals in North America because it's there, it just doesn't spread out of control all the time.

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Covid is too contagious to ever be endemic. At best we'll get measles-like oscillating waves of infection. It's going to kill 250K+ Americans per year in perpetuity and there are plenty of people living their lives with that bit of risk calculus in mind.

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> these same people have to start working to start their lives and, again, are qualified to do nothing other than basic service industry jobs.

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This is a bizarre way of looking at the workforce when over half of all young people go to college.
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No one owes the restaurant industry, or the restaurant patron, their labor. Nobody. If restaurants close because they can't make money paying their workers what they want to make, fuck 'em. There's a labor shortage, and that's life.
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A lot of the people who asked for better restaurant wages pre-pandemic and were told "GO GET A BETTER JOB IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT!" did exactly that - they went and got better jobs.
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> I don't know why you're so hostile to the idea, but COVID did not permanently kill late-night dining.

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Of course it didn't. It certainly did negatively impact it in a great way, though. Just like it impacted everything else. And it's going to keep impacting it for a long time.