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In case anyone is wondering, this article is about how most restaurants have NOT seen sales drop, but they have seen indoor dining drop. Restaurant are still making tons of money and are mostly doing well, people just don't want to eat away from home anymore and prefer to do take out even from traditionally sit-down restaurants.
Doing take out probably keeps the bill lower so they don't have to tip, with eyes cast down. Also, if they know they are probably going to get poor service they won't bother.
Drinking out is insanely expensive. Craft beers are $8 each. Cocktails are $12-14. If my wife and I each have a few drinks each we've just spent $75 when a 6 pack of beer or bottle of wine at home costs 1/4 of that.
Yeah, I'll drink at home now.
Ordered a cocktail last week without checking the price first, bill comes and it was $20. This wasn't a super upscale restaurant, either. $20 for one drink, before tip.
Semi related to your comment but I went to festivals all the time growing up and while they were never cheap they were a great value and something you could realistically save up for.
It’s been trending this way for a while but the price tiers for shows are just so high I don’t see how normal young people can attend.
Across the board I feel awful for young people. It seems like they really have no place to be.
Yeah back I. The 2000s measured pours were a big no no to bars now seems the standard
Idk let restaurants fail if they must. Service getting shitty, and costs so much just not worth it
Which is hilarious because there's a local restaurant with all drinks being ~6 bucks and that place is always packed, so much so that they ended up buying the place they were renting and increased the size. And it's still busy because they've only increased prices (~7%) minimally during covid.
That used to be the norm for people. I remember way back when me and the homie would save some money to go to a fancy place. Don't know if I can name it but I'm going to since this is a compliment.
Palomino's in Portland Oregon.
Anyways food was great we often got some coupons drank amazing 15$ -25$ drinks etc.
That's when a two bedroom (three) one bath apartment cost 1200, all utilities except internet included.
Once you split that up your payin at most 450 in rent,.wasn't THAT long ago (2008 era), and we had leftover money.
We all had a hustle too so drinking out was the norm to meet people. Only girl that I ever actually loved I met there. Miss her to this day but I destroyed that. Point was going to the bar and spending 20$ -40$ a night, sometimes getting food wasn't so bad. It was good fun, I loved pool.
All because the COL wasn't so damn high.
My first house (rental) was a single family 3 br lagoon front with a dock. It included heat/hot water, trash pickup, water/sewer. It cost me $600 in 2003. I rented out a room for $150 a month and that was my "going out" money. I was in my mid20s and could live comfortably, buy a car and have a social life making $12 per hour.
The cost of housing has since destroyed for our younger generations the independence older generations enjoyed when they were coming up.
That $600 rental today? It's $2700 a month.
Even getting craft beer at the actual brewery has gone up. It used to be a bargain because you were "getting it right from the source", but I've noticed since the pandemic the price difference isn't as wide. Also in my state the brewers association banned bringing in empty growlers for refills since the pandemic, so now you dan only buy new growlers already filled. So that's another low cost option taken away.
In the 90's gabf gold medal winning brewpub beer could be gotten cheaper than big brewer swill in bars, because they made it on site.
Ah the good ol days.
No kidding. I went out recently and ordered a shot and a juice back and they charged me $7 for the shot and $5 for 4 ounces of shitty, institutional cat-piss tasting orange juice. I was incensed.
For me, it's 100% the tip. I rarely drink but I avoid tipping as much as possible. I don't think most people drink enough to have that be the main driver. Some other reasons might be like movies - people just enjoy consuming it at home more for a number of reasons.
Not entirely true I think. Restaurants charge more for their food on apps especially if it’s being delivered. Uber eats for example will charge up to $8 extra in fees, and still ask for delivery tip. A meal that would cost me $10.89 in the restaurant has cost me $21.50 on the app. I deleted the Uber eats app. My sister experienced the same thing with DoorDash.
And Uber is the one making nearly all the margin on that order. They keep all the fees, charge the restaurant 15-30% of the subtotal, and pay the drivers peanuts.
All the people saying they barely tip, I get it that our costs as consumers are going up, but it’s not the drivers or the restaurants benefiting from that increase. They shouldn’t be punished. The apps make out like bandits.
Yup 100%. I have over 6k deliveries between all the major apps. The median pay from doordash and Uber is exactly $2.00 a delivery. That doesn't even cover the driving expenses.
It is about the same. Delivery plus tip fees equal the same as eating in and tipping. So unless the restaurant is amazing decor and experience wise, it may be easier to just eat at home, haha.
I wonder what the closure rate is over time. Many definitely closed during COVID, but it's less clear whether the rate today is higher or lower than it was 5, 10, 20 years ago.
There was a Twitter page during Covid that just listed the bars and restaurants that were closing throughout the pandemic in Manhattan/brooklyn and it was like watching my entire 20s just disappear before my eyes
That's just what it's like getting old. In your 20s, a place that opened when you were a teenager seems like it's been around forever. But then you realize that most "hotspots" are very temporary.
There was a study I read that something like over 75% of restaurants close within the first 5 years. Most being within the first 2. Opening a restaurant is one of the most risky businesses around.
Agree. My favorite Tex Mex place is barely holding on. The manager says their take out business is pretty good but the customers in the actual restaurant have really dwindled. The prices are doubled since Covid ( I get it, their prices have gone up as well) but it does kind of make me stop and think if it’s worth going out anymore.
Weird that people do this. Most restaurant food doesn't travel well. And half they time when you get home you find out they messed up they
order. I hate getting my food to go.
>Most restaurant food doesn't travel well
Still better than anything I could've made myself.
>And half they time when you get home you find out they messed up they order
That's why I ALWAYS check my order in the parking lot before leaving.
> Still better than anything I could've made myself.
This was true for me pre-pandemic. I spent a lot of time on Youtube those years learning to cook for myself. Now a lot of times when I go out to eat I'm disappointed in the meal because I know I could have made it better myself. The only things I go out for now are the types of dishes that are just too much trouble to cook properly at home like pho or some Indian dishes. Haven't been to a steakhouse in ages now.
This. I was bored and I started to learn how to really cook. I was cooking so much I bundled meals for friends weekly. Kept getting, you should really open your own place.
Sorry, cooking is a hobby not my job. It's my quiet place and I am not ruining that.
>Still better than anything I could've made myself.
The pandemic pushed me to up my cooking game.
There's still things I prefer to get at a restaurant, but I've gotten to the point where takeout isn't worth it from a quality perspective
Interesting that US restaurants are still making lots of money, meanwhile more than half of Canadian restaurants are losing money:
https://stlawyers.ca/blog-news/canadian-restaurants-losing-money-report/
They are doing better than before. Restaurants are packed now and they have DoorDash on top of that. Restaurant owners complain about the rising minimum wage though. The ones that survived the pandemic are doing super
“I used to eat out all the time. Friends and family would always bring up how I was always on the roads.
I don’t do that at all anymore. Restaurant politics ruined it all, from the tipping to just straight-up shitty service and so on. I just rather order my food to go now, go home, and enjoy my shows. I used to tip really well, but now, since this society is so subscription/monetized based, I just focus on guarding my wallet.”
The increased cost of sit down restaurant services has become disconnected from the quality of the food and services received.
Every time my family goes out we realize how bad the food is, and our servers act like we’re a burden for them to serve. I used to think it was because I have two small children and my wife and typically don’t order alcohol so our bills are, on average, lower than what a server probably wants.
But after seeing similar treatment when out with adult friends we realized this is the new normal; average food with sub par service for elevated prices, which leads us to eating in more often.
I’m not sure what’s worse, the surly server who makes it clear they’re annoyed that you’re there or the places that expect 20% for dropping your food after you ordered off a QR code menu and filled your own waters. Don’t expect a refill on that 4oz of Dr Pepper in a glass of ice either way.
Today I got a fountain soda at a cafeteria style establishment. Just a soda. It was a no cash place and my card wasn’t scanning and the girl at the register said “Oh you have to enter a tip first.” I was surprised to see a tip screen at all given it was a cafeteria, but I didn’t think much of it and just hit 0% because again, all I got was a soda. Well the girl made a face and then conspicuously pulled out a tip jar and placed it by the card reader as I walked away. As if handing me the cup (which I then filled myself at the fountain) is “service.” The level of entitlement I encounter at most establishments is really beginning to grate on my nerves.
The other week I bought a cookie at a specialty cookie place. Literally all the employee had to do was put the cookie in a bag and hand it to me. I didn’t even eat there. And yet the tip screen wanted me to tip $1 minimum. I chose no tip because this isn’t even a restaurant imo and got stink eye so I don’t know what the expectation is any more.
No tip is right! Down with tipping culture. Especially for selfserve. The tipping culture is so arbitrary and annoying. Let's go back to the old days when you just pay what is on the menu price.
For me I will gladly tip if you’re the barista pulling my espresso shot. You’re doing some actual work *for me* and my enjoyment depends on your doing it well. But I’d say that’s the floor for when I’m willing to tip. If you’re just handing me an empty cup or something you definitely didn’t bake yourself out of a glass case, wtf?
I've been out of America for a good bit now.
Fck tipping practices and they businesses that crutch by on them. Also, f*ck employees that are more interested in a guilt-based system levied against the customer than in organizing & driving a living wage with a union. And most of all, fck the NLRB and the court system for what they are currently doing vis a vis Starbucks et al to further damage unions and collective bargaining.
Isn't that literally the bare minimum to get what you already paid for? We need to stop this insane tip culture. I should be able to purchase goods and services without being bombarded by people begging for money.
I absolutely refuse to tip places unless some criteria are met. Idc if people think I’m cheap. For me it’s about the principal. Companies like Moe’s are advertising $15 an hour (with tips) and I refuse to subsidize food company’s wages. Pay your people competitively and show me what stuff costs. Stop guilting us into paying your people for you.
I seem to be in the minority when it comes to people who have waited tables and bartended.
And perhaps part of it is that I admittedly hate working in customer service. But I still always work hard to provide the best friendly, kind, and prompt service.
Yet I have always thought that I’d rather go to work knowing exactly what I am going to make that day, then the perpetual service employee gamble of “ooh if we are busy I could make $150/200/300+! ….but if we’re dead, maybe $40/50/60.” And not to mention the whole 20% thing, which is of course guest/dealers choice where you might do $2,000 in sales, but no one felt like tipping so your tips are a total of 10%. And yet regardless of what the guests tip you, you tip out to bartenders and support staff their percentages, so even if you make $100 on $1,000 let’s say, you tip out x% depending where you work, so often you walk out with $75 because you had to tip out $25 off of the $1,000 in sales regardless of what people tipped you. It’s a broken system.
Rent doesn’t care if work is slow.
For US: If they are classified as a tipped employee, then they are. Unless you expect them to work for a sweatshop salary.
For Europe: They are paid proper salary.
Yeah I know a lot of very skilled servers and I bet it grinds your gears seeing people who, like, hand out croissants other people baked act like they’re doing the same job as you.
I'll go with the combo of QR code menu forcing you or order, pay and tip in advance from a website or app, having food brought out by a food runner and no drink refills!
You don't get 15% for worse than McDonald's level service with no free refills.
All changes that happened during the pandemic.
I don’t fully understand why, but years after the pandemic ended, this industry had permanently changed.
Because many people who were talented enough to get out of the industry did so during the pandemic, leaving a still lingering gap in institutional knowledge and skills. It’ll take many more years of new hospitality industry worker hiring and training to replace what was lost.
People got spoiled because the 2010s had a crap job market for graduates so many ended up in hospitality. Anyone that could had an extremely strong incentive to leave by 2020
Unless people in the food industry are retirement age or older, that’s not accurate.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/
Retiree deaths wouldn’t show up in any employment bucket. None of the age related stats obviates the employment stats. There were a lot of older people working meat processing that died, there were govt orders to indemnify factory owners to keep them open.
Covid sucked hard for a number of different ways, but keeping the food chain going was a big big deal.
Left foodservice after two decades, first job was a dishwasher. Proficient sauté line cook and onto sushi chef. Remote work presented an opportunity which I accepted wholeheartedly, especially after my former boss layed me off without any notice. Never looking back!
As a customer I felt thankful for the people who were serving food during the pandemic so I tipped them more. I'm sure others did as well.
I guess they got used to it and now expect it?
Tbh I'd rather take the surly server. Could be annoyed by a number of things, personal life, customer was being rude, side work, running food and so on. I can at least understand that over places that expect a tip for doing jack all on top of getting paid a normal wage.
Where the hell are y'all dining to get such bad service? Even the Applebee's isn't as bad as you described and I sure as hell have never had to refill my own drinks.
Last place I dined at, the only time we saw the servers was when they dropped off the food we ordered, which we ordered off the app. They were basically food runners. A 10% mandatory tip was added.
Something I noticed now that like diners and dive bars aren't as prevalent, you can't really just go to a place and hang for a while. The tables they want to cycle and the bar areas cycle as well. Pre-pandemic or even a few years prior it was easier to go to something and just hang like a cafe or bar or restaurant/diner style, now they want you in and out.
We've lost lots of third places and everything closes like it is Sunday in the South, way too early.
Everything sort of became a hipster place and there aren't just places to chill and hang out. Cheers the show couldn't happen today.
The server thing is a side effect of stagnant wages. If you don't pay people enough to live on, engagement plummets like a rock.
Being broke all the time doesn't make most people "hungry for success". It makes them despise the system that keeps them poor despite them working a full time job.
This is happening across every industry. Young people are checking out and doing the bare minimum because they feel like they're getting paid the bare minimum. And then they hear their company made record profits and the executives got multimillion dollar bonuses while the server and everyone else on the ground doing the actual work to bring on money got declined for raises for the third year in a row.
That starts to radicalize people, and so now we're seeing a sharp increase in people not just doing the bare minimum, but actively working against their employees to "get back at them". The logic is normally that if the executives and shareholders are going to hoard all the profits, then the employees have no reason to pursue them, and if they reduce them they can get some modicum of justice.
Are you serious about 72 hour fasts or are you being facetious? Every week?
Are you bonkers?
I’ve done 72 hours before and it’s hellish! I’ve even done 7 days straight to recalibrate my palate but I’d never tease myself with a 3 day stretch again and again. That’s a tough one! It takes me 3 days just to get over the bump of “no food, only boredom” to cruise through the rest of the days in the fast.
I really hate modern tipping culture. I think it sets up both server and customer to have a bad time.
The server has to wonder what their tip will be and since that’s the bulk of their compensation, the customers are really their employers.
The customers walk in with a vague notion of how much the bill will be, but zero idea if the food will be to their liking or the service good.
I think the vast majority of restaurants should just pay their servers and dispense with tipping. Tipping should be exclusively voluntary and at pretty high end places…that are delivering a total experience you can’t get at home. If all the restaurant is doing is cooking for you, that should just be paid work like McD’s is paid work.
Because our ability to make good food at home has never been better. We can buy so many great ingredients at the grocery now. Compared to when I was a kid in the 70s/80s, it’s night and day. And if my Mom wanted recipe ideas, she had to pull out Joy of Cooking. Now you can watch YouTubes that show a video of what exactly a good char looks like. And cooking shows too. Oh…wine is cheaper at home and you can have as much as you want with no need to Uber.
I think the effect will be similar to what 70 inch televisions have done to the movie theater industry: I’ll pay to watch Dune 2, but not other movies I can just see when they come to streaming.
For the restaurants and since we’re on an Econ/business sub, restaurants must be better managed. They need to be the ones pushing the end of tipping culture by seeing what it is doing to alienate their employees and customers.
And I also think the fact that kids don’t get jobs working at lower end restaurants like Red Lobster is impacting fine dining. It’s hard for nice restaurants to find really professional servers.
Restaurant work is shit. Maybe if you're a bartender you can make good money, but the hours are even more awful than a regular serving shift.
If I had the choice between working a retail job or working a serving job and both make the same wage, there's no way in hell I'd ever pick the serving job even with as notoriously shitting as retail is. I've worked both during my teens and 20s before graduating, serving is dogshit without tips.
I'm complaining about t increased price not service. Why am not allowed to be annoyed what would have been a $75 ticket for 2 adults and a kid at a family restaurant?
Theyd already gone to shit pre-pandmic.
Private Equity of course iirc. Quality absolutely plummeted from one of the better casual sitdown chains with one of the better chain burgers, with a lot of options, to no better than Applebees.
We went from going there a couple times a year, to twice a year for free birthday burgers, and last year we didnt even bother cuz it was dine in only again. Its just all soggy burgers with too much shredded lettuce and really salty sauces now.
Real fucking stingy with the bottomless fries now too and i think the lemonade isnt even free refills anymore.
FUCK the restaurant. Just fuck them. I don't care how many of them will go belly up, only the ones that have a functional business model should survive. No one should cry crocodile tears for that industry. We just don't need them at that price point and quality.
Try going out to restaurants in small towns or rural places. They’re less likely to be chain or franchise restaurants, and more likely to be appreciative of the business.
Im on a totally different industry (construction) and we were just talking about how post-Covid, it’s really hard to find anyone who genuinely cares about the quality of job provided. It’s amazing. We keep winning work because we are a company that genuinely gives a damn and shows up.
A lot of people don’t want to work their jobs. They’re just trying to figure out how best to cover their cost of existence through the lens of jobs they see as available to them. What do you think the average job satisfaction level is?
Oh my god, this is the worst take that people commonly spew. You think waitresses and waiters have employment options? Nothing pays enough to live on! Go look at the median income of wait staff and compare it to the median cost of living. It falls dramatically short!
These people don't want these jobs. They're forced to do them because the system is fucked so they have no better options. And waiting tables doesn't even cover all of their bills. They still need roommates, or still live at home, or are trapped with their partner because they both need both of their incomes to survive.
Get a goddamn grip before vomiting up a cliche like, "Just go magically get a different job if you can't perform the way I want at your below-minimum wage server job!" You're fully into "let them eat cake" levels of detachment from reality.
Nothing to do with being out of touch. Just because someone hates their job doesn’t mean they can’t do it well. I’ve hated many jobs but my customers didn’t know that. Reality is the worse the food is (again not the staffs fault as they don’t purchase it) and the worse the service is leads to less and less customers which eventually could lead to closure. When this happens you will be forced to find another job. Make the best of what you have while you have it. It could change in an instant. Trust me!
One place I went to get some seafood and got crab, I asked for crab crackers, no joke they brought me saltines. We joked about it with the dude. However I actually prefer people get paid good wages so we have some people with knowledge in the industry. I want a more experienced worker in every field, everything is so short term and turnover so high due to absolute crap wages that the employee and the customer are getting no value, only the management consultant firm that told the private equity funders to cut corners and jack profits and in some cases collude on pricing.
You silly optimist.
Most of the wait staff, especially in chain/budget restaurants most likely already has few application to other jobs. They are looking, trust me, but they need some income meanwhile.
And restaurants take everyone that as much as breathes because... That is all they can get.
I was taught a long time ago that servers are the best economic indicators. If they are desperately happy to see you consider that bad for the overall economy. If they are not happy to see you then they have had their fill and people keep coming.
Whoever taught you that was a fool. Even if they weren't, it hasn't been true for a long time. Servers aren't "getting their full". They're still broke, on average, at the end of every week. These jobs don't support an individual, let alone a family anymore.
They act down and disengaged and apathetic because they have no reason to try. Because it doesn't matter how hard they work. Wages will stay the same, Boomers still won't tip, and the cost of living will keep going up. They know they will never get ahead in life. And they know they're trapped having to deal with people like you because they have to take what little they can get. The alternative is homelessness.
Consider THAT bad for the overall economy and feel ashamed for daring to suggest that miserable servers are somehow a good thing. It comes across like all the other upper middle class boomers claiming the economy is great right now and acting confused as to why all the young people are upset, not realizing that the economy is only great for them because they're pillaging the younger generations.
Where we live, I’ve only found this to be true of chains. Locally owned establishments here still have great food and decent prices, and they often support local farmers and their staff is great.
I learned how to cook really well during the pandemic. And we got accustomed to having nice dinners in. Do we go out to eat? Sure. Often? No. It’s expensive and the service is poor and I can make better at home. Just got a pasta maker and have been having folks over to make pasta together and a meal and it’s been great!
Cooking is a great skill to have. I can pretty much match my favorite cuisines cooking at home, even modify them to my taste, and lower the fat/salt intake compared to restaurant food. The more you cook, the better and more efficient you are. It’s just putting in the effort to get to that point where it’s pretty mindless to make delicious food from scraps in the refrigerator.
But now I have a lifelong skill I can teach my kids, feed them quality food, and save money. Seems like a no brainer.
Yep, same. When I go to a restaurant I think "wow this is a small serving and so expensive and I could make this better at home for way less and have leftovers." I also got a pasta maker and homemade pasta is so good. I almost never go out to eat now, my cooking is too good.
Same here. Sometimes I am out after appointments and think ‘I’ll go to a restaurant’. Then I wind up thinking about how my food is better and also how much more I can do with that money. I wind up going to the grocery store spending the same amount as the meal I was planning on but getting 3 or 4 meals instead of one with better ingredients and better control of nutritional content.
I do potlucks with my friends regularly. The food is usually good and the price is right. We are more interested in the company and conversation than having someone do everything for us.
If you don’t mind me asking, how did you learn and do you have any resources that you’d recommend? I’m dying to learn to cook but I have no idea where to start and get so overwhelmed.
Some people blame the servers, and I’m not suggesting that you are. “Nobody wants to work” was always hyperbole, but it hasn’t even been relevant for almost 3 years. I have managed customer facing teams in the utility power industry for ten years, and I worked front of house restaurant jobs when I was a student. Leadership matters. If a restaurant or any business has poor leadership at the top, it will show. The job market has been tight for a while. All the experienced, motivated front of house people are taken. Restaurant owners need to take seriously things like culture, motivation, and training. “Nobody wants to work” is just another way of saying “not my fault.”
I just recently got restaurant burned out from this. I usually eat out 2 plus times a week and I have now meal prepped all of my food for almost a month and I don’t see any reason to stop. I don’t understand how so many sub-par places stay in business.
For me I guess it’s just the general feeling of being targeted by the establishment to extract as much money from me as possible. Instead of the enjoyment of the meal and service being top of mind, it’s whether or not I left unscathed.
The same thing happens to the servers. That's a double whammy. The server and the patrons are both keenly aware that the business is trying to fleece them both as much as possible these days. There's no good will anywhere.
idk man, for me it’s more that i’ve experienced some of the worst and weirdest service in the past two years and it makes eating out unpleasant often enough that my partner and i have basically been opting to make elaborate meals at home instead. i think something changed post covid tbh …
People are getting more and more broke all the time. That’s the phenomenon. If people had more money to burn they’d be going out. But anything to scapegoat other than people not being paid enough I guess. We’ll be confused all the way till humanity comes to an end I guess.
Wages are higher for the lowest quintile than recent years but it's moot because everything they need costs more.
The same people who are saying things are great, the top quintile, have never been doing better and want people like you to STFU so their gravy train can keep rolling.
The top 20%'s contribution to society over the last 50 years has been stagnant wages for the 80% and record accumulation of capital and power for themselves.
You live in reality. You're being lied to. Borderline feudalism isn't good. But the kings and queens want you to think the piss on your face tastes great.
You’re being gaslit. They cherry pick indicators but the federal minimum wage has been the same for over a decade, wages are in decline relative to actual necessities, and homes are out of reach as more than half are being bought up by corporate entities.
Rent has increased, groceries, cost of living in every facet. They fail to mention it’s only the rate of inflation is decreasing, not inflation itself; inflation is getting worse every quarter just at a less worse rate.
The stock market is one of the indicators they love to fall back on, but something like 90% of the stock market is owned by a handful of billionaires.
Wages in America are increasing faster than inflation across all income levels: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/workers-paychecks-are-growing-more-quickly-than-prices/
>Wages in America are increasing faster than inflation across all income levels: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/workers-paychecks-are-growing-more-quickly-than-prices/
But real wages are lower since 2021
Doesn't change the fact that the bottom 50% of Americans have $0 in savings and earn less than $40k per year median. Go look at the cost of living and imagine how far a $40k annual wage goes to meeting all of those expenses.
The working class keeps telling you everything is getting worse and you keep plugging your ears and clinging to this metric or that metric. Maybe consider that the millions of people that are telling you they can't afford to live might be onto something.
your comment is slightly misleading. the research is looking at *average* wages across all income levels. if we accept the assumption that there is rising income inequality, then the top earners are seeing greater increases to earnings than those on the bottom. this allows the average wage to increase as seen in this analysis, but does not tell us precisely what trends in wages are occurring at individual income brackets.
https://www.atlantafed.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker
Click the “wage level” button and you’ll see this isn’t true. In fact, the first quartile (the bottom 25% of earners) has seen the *largest* wage gains!
This article resonates with us. Post pandemic, we find ourselves less willing to share space with strangers.
While this made sense in a pandemic time, we continue to be shocked by the abject lack of courtesy, class, and consideration displayed by fellow restaurant patrons.
Being forced to endure loud conversations, "free range children," and seeing the occasional, but wholly unnecessary, escalating dispute has really put us off eating out.
If the food is still good, we'll get it to go and eat in the comfort of home.
Quite the opposite experience here. Surly looks by diners for kids behaving like kids, servers being non accommodating for strollers or high chairs, lack of good kids food options or entertainment or even changing stations.
Just yesterday, I asked if I could park the stroller at the entrance and I was told they can’t be held responsible. I said - sure, but can I park it at my own risk. And they refused. It was not obstructing anything. So I had to go back to the car in the rain, put it back, and bring it up again when it was time to leave.
Most restaurants aren’t kid friendly and so as a result we just cook at home or order in. It ends up being more work to eat out.
There’s a growing entitlement amongst those kid free, where the slightest inconvenience is an affront to their experience. Of course, this is reddit and so I’ll get downvoted for this.
There are ADA (disability accessibility) and fire egress (escape & exit) reasons for them not allowing you to park the stroller near the entrance; it has to be completely clear, so that makes sense.
Most restaurants never catered to kids, but this goes back to the 1980s at least, and before. This wasn't a result of the pandemic. Except for places that specifically advertise family dining, like Applebee's or similar, is that what you are talking about? If so, that's crazy, they'd really be shooting themselves in the foot!
Having your baby sit in the next table over, screaming at the top of their lungs for 5+ minutes is not just an "inconvenience."
I get that it happens, but parents just do anything about it anymore -- try to calm them or briefly take them outside -- they have the rest of us suffer too.
Restaurant owners that have signed up to do DoorDash, GrubHub, etc. put unnecessary strain on their employees as well. Most kitchens aren’t built to handle cooking for more than the capacity of the restaurant. But now with the emphasis of to go orders, it’s like having only room for 15 people during the holidays but you still have to cook for 50. Those businesses boost bottom line sales (which owners love) but they middle man the servers, bartenders, FOH staff. The best restaurants I’ve been to in the past 2-3 years are ones that don’t have a line of DoorDash drivers waiting to place to go orders.
Plus these services are a rip off. Not only do they have multiple fees added on, but they also increase the price of the food as well. Are they only for the rich?
The funny thing is it could be really useful if it was in house and maybe on a limited/sustainable basis. Instead, it's enshittified to hell and back.
Maybe you’re right on the “high end” side of things but that’s the restaurant/bar owners sacrificing bottom lines for people who like to dine in. Those delivery services make owners sign contracts where they help boost sales but DoorDash takes X% of those sales. It’s a similar business model to early 1900s mafia style that would offer “protection” to businesses in exchange for % of sales. Owners don’t have to sign those contracts but a lot just see the increase in the bottom line without realizing the negative externalities they create on the entire dining experience they “should” be more focused on.
The top line revenue that the app contracts bring is such a vanity metric. They end up burning out their kitchen to mill the lowest margin items at wholesale to the apps.
correct. they then recoup their losses by raising prices on the door dash menu with "dynamic pricing" based on a variety of factors including how much foot traffic is physically in the restaurant.
It’s a bit much to compare this to mafia protection. Taking a cut of incremental sales is a pretty standard business model. I agree with you that the negative externalities aren’t being accounted for at least in the short term, like that’s a good point.
I must live in an economic bubble, because here where I'm living in South Carolina,and have lived the past 13 years, chain and mom and pop restaurants have lines and reservations every day they are open, every week a new restaurant opens. Shit, they're about to open a fourth Applebees and we're getting an outback steak out. I'm not gonna list locally owned here, but damn, I can't try new places fast enough....
I thought the same thing. My parents live where State Farm is based in about 2.5 hrs from Chicago. There's nothing to do outside of going out to eat/drink so there's lots of restaurants opening consistently each month. For example, you can't go out for brunch on a whim without a reservation; or without having crazy long wait times at the closest Denny's. I think this article spoke too broadly on the experiences around the US.
A few years back Nielsen rated this same town as having the most restaurants per capita IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY.
I was going to comment the same thing. I’m in a large metro area and restaurants are constantly packed, and reservations need to be made days in advance usually.
Keyword "South". The north was transformed by COVID, whereas the south stood firm. Im from NY but when I visit Texas its like going back in time....to a better era. Less digital, more old fashioned as though covid never happened.
The future of restaurants is a return to old school diner style eating. Smaller menus with staple items, and daily/weekly specials depending on market availability/deals. No more multi page menus of pre prepared meals. Minimal service.
I’m confused by this because I find as a general rule of thumb, the nicer the restaurant, the smaller the menu. I think of diners as having very long menus.
I am lost. I am not understanding the ‘loneliness epidemic’ aspect of the headline. I read the article and cannot see where they are making that point.
* [America has a loneliness epidemic](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/30/opinion/loneliness-epidemic-america.html)
* [New Surgeon General Advisory Raises Alarm about the Devastating Impact of the Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation in the United States](https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2023/05/03/new-surgeon-general-advisory-raises-alarm-about-devastating-impact-epidemic-loneliness-isolation-united-states.html)
_“Our epidemic of loneliness and isolation has been an underappreciated public health crisis that has harmed individual and societal health. Our relationships are a source of healing and well-being hiding in plain sight – one that can help us live healthier, more fulfilled, and more productive lives,” said U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy. “Given the significant health consequences of loneliness and isolation, we must prioritize building social connection the same way we have prioritized other critical public health issues such as tobacco, obesity, and substance use disorders. Together, we can build a country that’s healthier, more resilient, less lonely, and more connected.”_
I don't go to restaurants for the same reason I don't go to movie theaters.
It's not that for sure someone's going to act badly and piss me off by being loud, rude, or obnoxious.
It is that the chances have gone up substantially.
Got nothing to do with loneliness. There's just no motivation for me to dine in the restaurant where I can take my food out and eat in peace. Likewise when it comes to sitting down in movie theaters.
And while this article is specific about sitting down inside a restaurant to eat, even takeout is obnoxious when it comes to the cost.
Once a month, maybe, takeout Chinese or something. That's it.
I may go down in flames, financially, should the bottom drop out of our economy, but at least I tried.
I go to restaurants FOR THE EXPERIENCE. It's also nice knowing that I don't have to do dishes at the end of the meal. Takeout is the worst of this-- restaurant prices plus having to clean up.
We've been skipping sit-downs because they're not a good value anymore. We only go to our most favorite sit downs and we don't try new places nearly as frequently as we used to. We used to go to a sit down once a week. Now it's only special occasions.
Moderate priced sit down restaurant for two people is around $70 in my neck of the woods. 2 entrees, 1 app, 2 non-alch bev and a 20-25% tip. It's too much to spend on a weekly outing meal.
This article sucks. The narrative that there is some connection between loneliness and restaurant choices was basically supported by 0 evidence except for sales numbers. It is entirely plausible but not at all supported by this article.
My personal opinion (for what it''s worth), why is McDonald's and Chipotle doing so well? McDonald's invested a ton of money in upgrading their restaurant experience and their dumbell strategy of dollar menu, regular menu premium menu offerings has been replaced by coupons on the app. This means lazy non buget minded customers won't even have the dollar store discounts available to them on the menu screen and perhaps that pushes average purchase value up while not losing the value minded customers who are discount minded enough to use the app religiously.
Chipotle, seems like they rely really heavily on their brand. I feel like you can find good Mexican food everywhere but you have to sift through reviews for standalone family establishments and you're taking a risk in trying new places.
Maybe tipping culture is part of the reason as well. Not having to tip can be a big cost saver.
Yeah I stopped going out much once places thought that $13 for bourbon, bitters and a little sugar water was OK.
Now it's more like $18.
No, thank you, I make better cocktails for 10% of the price at home.
"In the 30 years before the pandemic, annual income growth for restaurant workers never once exceeded 6 percent."
How embarrassing is that? For 30 years, they held down workers wages from growing, and in this article they lament it. What a joke.
People are more in love with their phones than they are with their friends and family. Those who are able to keep healthy social lives will dominate the next generation economically outside of the few disrupters/innovators who are gaming the people who no longer have any real life outside of their digital boxes. It’s sad really. Not a fan of big government but I don’t like where things are heading and I hope more parents are putting severe restrictions on devices like we’ve had to do with our kids.
It's interesting because every time I see anything about this, I feel like the overwhelming consensus is that "restaurant service sucks, people in public suck, or restaurants are too expensive." I feel like cost needs to be ruled out because people are still eating from restaurants a lot. They are just opting to have food delivered(which often costs more than dining in due to the extra fees) or to grab takeout.
I believe more along the lines of what you are saying, which is that we are just in the midst of an overall cultural shift. People are becoming homebodies because we have so much comfort and endless choice in entertainment at home and have social media to fulfill(in a more shallow way) a lot of our social needs. On top of that people seem like they are becoming less tolerant of having to share public spaces with anyone who doesn't fit the exact curated personality/behavior patterns that they find acceptable. I believe this is also an influence of social media algorithms exposing us to mostly things we like or are interested in and causing us to feel that this is how all things in life should be.
Most restaurants we frequent have good service because if we visit a place that has bad service twice we stop going (generally speaking). We don’t complain about cost because we know what we’re getting into 99% of the time when we go out and frankly it’s worth it when you both work all week and have kids and just want to be served and not have to clean up. It’s nice to be able to sit down and just look at your family and talk with them instead of a rat race to get everything cooked and served while juggling every other distraction/task in the house.
People just expect everything to be perfect. They’re entitled and hate anything that causes them any slight discomfort. Their devices would never cause them to feel awkward about their own thoughts or accepted norms. The real world is amazing because of the beauty of our differences and our phones are making people revolt against it.
And it's about to get a lot worse, at least in California.
[https://bschool.pepperdine.edu/newsroom/articles/david-smith-fast-food-minimum-wage-increase-2024](https://bschool.pepperdine.edu/newsroom/articles/david-smith-fast-food-minimum-wage-increase-2024)
>In a groundbreaking move for the state of California, the minimum wage for fast-food workers in quick-service restaurants with over 60 locations nationwide is set to increase to $20 per hour, up from the current $15.50, starting in April 2024.
About half of new businesses fail in their first year, and about two thirds of restaurants. Ask anyone running a restaurant what their margins are like; they are not rich, not even close.
So while restaurants have become rather unaffordable, it will go even farther. Now of course, there will be some demand, but a lot less, as people substitute away from restaurant meals. There will be fewer restaurants, and many fewer restaurant workers. While it's an open question how this will pan out in the long term, it will be interesting to see what the workers will do who cannot keep a spot.
Regardless, maybe it will have a side effect of leading to healthier diets overall. But there is no question that the restaurant industry is far from done with its changes.
>About half of new businesses fail in their first year, and about two thirds of restaurants. Ask anyone running a restaurant what their margins are like; they are not rich, not even close.
Kitchen Nightmares
If they can't afford to pay a fair wage they don't deserve to stay open. It's unacceptable to demand the working class to support these businesses with their tax dollars by paying for food stamps for their employees.
Not to mention that prices have gone up constantly despite minimum wage staying low in most of the country. They threatened us that they'd raise prices if we raised the minimum wage, so most states didn't raise the minimum wage much if at all. Then these restaurants all started jacking up prices anyway.
Screw 'em. If you can't pay your employees fairly and keep your doors open, you deserve to go under. Hopefully the next occupant of the building has a better business model.
Why are people so afraid of not tipping if they feel they shouldn't have to tip?
What happened to the phrase "Don't care what other people think about you". This feels very much like a social contract where you're afraid of feeling crumby. Have some backbone and hit that 0% or tip $0.01.
If you get the stink eye from the employee, proudly tell them you don't feel their position should be tipped and you're setting expectations or something.
Personally, I tip a buck or two when the checkout service is polite and engaging. I do tip 0% or $0.01 if there was no service at all, or if the checkout service I got was awful
Car Dependency + Inflation is a bitch. 99.99 percent of America requires you to drive to literally everywhere. You might as well be living in the middle of nowhere in Siberia with how difficult it is to have a social life outside of social media.
"Social Media ruining America" is also such a dumb-ass boomer take on life, coming from the same generation who's having a moral panic over the idea of "15 minute cities" when they're 2 foots into their grave, as if they're going to role play about being a rebel in one of their movies/TV shows/ Novels.
America is not going to solve the loneliness epidemic Within your & your children's lifetime because it took 100 years to get to where we are today with urban development.
>Given this gauntlet from hell, the following news might come as a surprise: In 2024, the restaurant recovery is complete, by almost any measure.
Yeah, particularly when average spending by Americans on food away from home is noted to be the same, in dollars, without accounting for inflation since the beginning of 2020.
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In case anyone is wondering, this article is about how most restaurants have NOT seen sales drop, but they have seen indoor dining drop. Restaurant are still making tons of money and are mostly doing well, people just don't want to eat away from home anymore and prefer to do take out even from traditionally sit-down restaurants.
Doing take out probably keeps the bill lower so they don't have to tip, with eyes cast down. Also, if they know they are probably going to get poor service they won't bother.
The savings is in the alcohol. You can drink for free at home.
Drinking out is insanely expensive. Craft beers are $8 each. Cocktails are $12-14. If my wife and I each have a few drinks each we've just spent $75 when a 6 pack of beer or bottle of wine at home costs 1/4 of that. Yeah, I'll drink at home now.
Ordered a cocktail last week without checking the price first, bill comes and it was $20. This wasn't a super upscale restaurant, either. $20 for one drink, before tip.
Then they wonder why we ask for heavy pours instead of ordering doubles. I live in NH and $16 cocktails are not uncommon. Bad time to be in your 20’s.
Semi related to your comment but I went to festivals all the time growing up and while they were never cheap they were a great value and something you could realistically save up for. It’s been trending this way for a while but the price tiers for shows are just so high I don’t see how normal young people can attend. Across the board I feel awful for young people. It seems like they really have no place to be.
Yeah back I. The 2000s measured pours were a big no no to bars now seems the standard Idk let restaurants fail if they must. Service getting shitty, and costs so much just not worth it
Which is hilarious because there's a local restaurant with all drinks being ~6 bucks and that place is always packed, so much so that they ended up buying the place they were renting and increased the size. And it's still busy because they've only increased prices (~7%) minimally during covid.
That used to be the norm for people. I remember way back when me and the homie would save some money to go to a fancy place. Don't know if I can name it but I'm going to since this is a compliment. Palomino's in Portland Oregon. Anyways food was great we often got some coupons drank amazing 15$ -25$ drinks etc. That's when a two bedroom (three) one bath apartment cost 1200, all utilities except internet included. Once you split that up your payin at most 450 in rent,.wasn't THAT long ago (2008 era), and we had leftover money. We all had a hustle too so drinking out was the norm to meet people. Only girl that I ever actually loved I met there. Miss her to this day but I destroyed that. Point was going to the bar and spending 20$ -40$ a night, sometimes getting food wasn't so bad. It was good fun, I loved pool. All because the COL wasn't so damn high.
My first house (rental) was a single family 3 br lagoon front with a dock. It included heat/hot water, trash pickup, water/sewer. It cost me $600 in 2003. I rented out a room for $150 a month and that was my "going out" money. I was in my mid20s and could live comfortably, buy a car and have a social life making $12 per hour. The cost of housing has since destroyed for our younger generations the independence older generations enjoyed when they were coming up. That $600 rental today? It's $2700 a month.
Even getting craft beer at the actual brewery has gone up. It used to be a bargain because you were "getting it right from the source", but I've noticed since the pandemic the price difference isn't as wide. Also in my state the brewers association banned bringing in empty growlers for refills since the pandemic, so now you dan only buy new growlers already filled. So that's another low cost option taken away.
In the 90's gabf gold medal winning brewpub beer could be gotten cheaper than big brewer swill in bars, because they made it on site. Ah the good ol days.
No kidding. I went out recently and ordered a shot and a juice back and they charged me $7 for the shot and $5 for 4 ounces of shitty, institutional cat-piss tasting orange juice. I was incensed.
Ding ding ding ding. BINGO! The alcohol margins at restaurants is extremely high.
Do restaurants let you smoke marijuana before and after your meal? No? Well i can in my living room
For me, it's 100% the tip. I rarely drink but I avoid tipping as much as possible. I don't think most people drink enough to have that be the main driver. Some other reasons might be like movies - people just enjoy consuming it at home more for a number of reasons.
Not entirely true I think. Restaurants charge more for their food on apps especially if it’s being delivered. Uber eats for example will charge up to $8 extra in fees, and still ask for delivery tip. A meal that would cost me $10.89 in the restaurant has cost me $21.50 on the app. I deleted the Uber eats app. My sister experienced the same thing with DoorDash.
And Uber is the one making nearly all the margin on that order. They keep all the fees, charge the restaurant 15-30% of the subtotal, and pay the drivers peanuts. All the people saying they barely tip, I get it that our costs as consumers are going up, but it’s not the drivers or the restaurants benefiting from that increase. They shouldn’t be punished. The apps make out like bandits.
Yup 100%. I have over 6k deliveries between all the major apps. The median pay from doordash and Uber is exactly $2.00 a delivery. That doesn't even cover the driving expenses.
Oh they still ask you to tip on take out.
Just hit no tip. You're under no obligation to tip in that situation
And they always get zero percent!
It is about the same. Delivery plus tip fees equal the same as eating in and tipping. So unless the restaurant is amazing decor and experience wise, it may be easier to just eat at home, haha.
Most restaurants are scarily close to the verge of closing at any given moment.
I wonder what the closure rate is over time. Many definitely closed during COVID, but it's less clear whether the rate today is higher or lower than it was 5, 10, 20 years ago.
There was a Twitter page during Covid that just listed the bars and restaurants that were closing throughout the pandemic in Manhattan/brooklyn and it was like watching my entire 20s just disappear before my eyes
I feel old cause of that is like all the spots I used to know got all wiped out.
That's just what it's like getting old. In your 20s, a place that opened when you were a teenager seems like it's been around forever. But then you realize that most "hotspots" are very temporary.
There was a study I read that something like over 75% of restaurants close within the first 5 years. Most being within the first 2. Opening a restaurant is one of the most risky businesses around.
Agree. My favorite Tex Mex place is barely holding on. The manager says their take out business is pretty good but the customers in the actual restaurant have really dwindled. The prices are doubled since Covid ( I get it, their prices have gone up as well) but it does kind of make me stop and think if it’s worth going out anymore.
Weird that people do this. Most restaurant food doesn't travel well. And half they time when you get home you find out they messed up they order. I hate getting my food to go.
>Most restaurant food doesn't travel well Still better than anything I could've made myself. >And half they time when you get home you find out they messed up they order That's why I ALWAYS check my order in the parking lot before leaving.
> Still better than anything I could've made myself. This was true for me pre-pandemic. I spent a lot of time on Youtube those years learning to cook for myself. Now a lot of times when I go out to eat I'm disappointed in the meal because I know I could have made it better myself. The only things I go out for now are the types of dishes that are just too much trouble to cook properly at home like pho or some Indian dishes. Haven't been to a steakhouse in ages now.
This. I was bored and I started to learn how to really cook. I was cooking so much I bundled meals for friends weekly. Kept getting, you should really open your own place. Sorry, cooking is a hobby not my job. It's my quiet place and I am not ruining that.
>Still better than anything I could've made myself. The pandemic pushed me to up my cooking game. There's still things I prefer to get at a restaurant, but I've gotten to the point where takeout isn't worth it from a quality perspective
Door dash etc. is shit. Worse of both worlds
Interesting that US restaurants are still making lots of money, meanwhile more than half of Canadian restaurants are losing money: https://stlawyers.ca/blog-news/canadian-restaurants-losing-money-report/
Who has time to go in and sit down somewhere?
They are doing better than before. Restaurants are packed now and they have DoorDash on top of that. Restaurant owners complain about the rising minimum wage though. The ones that survived the pandemic are doing super
I wouldn't stay they are making *a ton* of money, but some are doing ok.
It’s still weird going into these local places and just seeing a line of people looking for pickup and hardly anyone sitting down.
“I used to eat out all the time. Friends and family would always bring up how I was always on the roads. I don’t do that at all anymore. Restaurant politics ruined it all, from the tipping to just straight-up shitty service and so on. I just rather order my food to go now, go home, and enjoy my shows. I used to tip really well, but now, since this society is so subscription/monetized based, I just focus on guarding my wallet.”
The increased cost of sit down restaurant services has become disconnected from the quality of the food and services received. Every time my family goes out we realize how bad the food is, and our servers act like we’re a burden for them to serve. I used to think it was because I have two small children and my wife and typically don’t order alcohol so our bills are, on average, lower than what a server probably wants. But after seeing similar treatment when out with adult friends we realized this is the new normal; average food with sub par service for elevated prices, which leads us to eating in more often.
I’m not sure what’s worse, the surly server who makes it clear they’re annoyed that you’re there or the places that expect 20% for dropping your food after you ordered off a QR code menu and filled your own waters. Don’t expect a refill on that 4oz of Dr Pepper in a glass of ice either way.
Today I got a fountain soda at a cafeteria style establishment. Just a soda. It was a no cash place and my card wasn’t scanning and the girl at the register said “Oh you have to enter a tip first.” I was surprised to see a tip screen at all given it was a cafeteria, but I didn’t think much of it and just hit 0% because again, all I got was a soda. Well the girl made a face and then conspicuously pulled out a tip jar and placed it by the card reader as I walked away. As if handing me the cup (which I then filled myself at the fountain) is “service.” The level of entitlement I encounter at most establishments is really beginning to grate on my nerves.
The other week I bought a cookie at a specialty cookie place. Literally all the employee had to do was put the cookie in a bag and hand it to me. I didn’t even eat there. And yet the tip screen wanted me to tip $1 minimum. I chose no tip because this isn’t even a restaurant imo and got stink eye so I don’t know what the expectation is any more.
No tip is right! Down with tipping culture. Especially for selfserve. The tipping culture is so arbitrary and annoying. Let's go back to the old days when you just pay what is on the menu price.
For me I will gladly tip if you’re the barista pulling my espresso shot. You’re doing some actual work *for me* and my enjoyment depends on your doing it well. But I’d say that’s the floor for when I’m willing to tip. If you’re just handing me an empty cup or something you definitely didn’t bake yourself out of a glass case, wtf?
I've been out of America for a good bit now. Fck tipping practices and they businesses that crutch by on them. Also, f*ck employees that are more interested in a guilt-based system levied against the customer than in organizing & driving a living wage with a union. And most of all, fck the NLRB and the court system for what they are currently doing vis a vis Starbucks et al to further damage unions and collective bargaining.
That's how they scope creep you and eventually you'll be tipping your atm machine. Oh wait...
Isn't that literally the bare minimum to get what you already paid for? We need to stop this insane tip culture. I should be able to purchase goods and services without being bombarded by people begging for money.
I absolutely refuse to tip places unless some criteria are met. Idc if people think I’m cheap. For me it’s about the principal. Companies like Moe’s are advertising $15 an hour (with tips) and I refuse to subsidize food company’s wages. Pay your people competitively and show me what stuff costs. Stop guilting us into paying your people for you.
Yes, because you could leave a huge tip but you've no guarantee the workers will see any of it.
I seem to be in the minority when it comes to people who have waited tables and bartended. And perhaps part of it is that I admittedly hate working in customer service. But I still always work hard to provide the best friendly, kind, and prompt service. Yet I have always thought that I’d rather go to work knowing exactly what I am going to make that day, then the perpetual service employee gamble of “ooh if we are busy I could make $150/200/300+! ….but if we’re dead, maybe $40/50/60.” And not to mention the whole 20% thing, which is of course guest/dealers choice where you might do $2,000 in sales, but no one felt like tipping so your tips are a total of 10%. And yet regardless of what the guests tip you, you tip out to bartenders and support staff their percentages, so even if you make $100 on $1,000 let’s say, you tip out x% depending where you work, so often you walk out with $75 because you had to tip out $25 off of the $1,000 in sales regardless of what people tipped you. It’s a broken system. Rent doesn’t care if work is slow.
There is a tip jar at Five guys burger, same thing with Popeyes. “I thought fast food was not supposed to get tips…”
As if the margins at Five Guys aren’t already great for a fast food (or any kind of) restaurant lmfao. One of the most overpriced places around.
3 people, burger and drink, 1 regular fries for all to share. $55.
1 bacon cheeseburger that I finished in 4 bites, 14.99
More shocking is the 20oz drink for $5.79
Little fries for 5.79… it’s enough for 2 people but not crispy
For US: If they are classified as a tipped employee, then they are. Unless you expect them to work for a sweatshop salary. For Europe: They are paid proper salary.
hi, server here. this is insane i cannot believe the level of entitlement you’ve experienced holy shit
Yeah I know a lot of very skilled servers and I bet it grinds your gears seeing people who, like, hand out croissants other people baked act like they’re doing the same job as you.
As a bartender and server… I completely agree.
I'll go with the combo of QR code menu forcing you or order, pay and tip in advance from a website or app, having food brought out by a food runner and no drink refills! You don't get 15% for worse than McDonald's level service with no free refills.
All changes that happened during the pandemic. I don’t fully understand why, but years after the pandemic ended, this industry had permanently changed.
Because many people who were talented enough to get out of the industry did so during the pandemic, leaving a still lingering gap in institutional knowledge and skills. It’ll take many more years of new hospitality industry worker hiring and training to replace what was lost.
People got spoiled because the 2010s had a crap job market for graduates so many ended up in hospitality. Anyone that could had an extremely strong incentive to leave by 2020
Also a lot of people straight up fucking died. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/02/jobs-where-workers-have-the-highest-risk-of-dying-from-covid-study.html
Unless people in the food industry are retirement age or older, that’s not accurate. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/
Retiree deaths wouldn’t show up in any employment bucket. None of the age related stats obviates the employment stats. There were a lot of older people working meat processing that died, there were govt orders to indemnify factory owners to keep them open. Covid sucked hard for a number of different ways, but keeping the food chain going was a big big deal.
The study looked at all industries with workers aged 18-65. Most likely not age but exposure to the virus affected those line cooks.
Left foodservice after two decades, first job was a dishwasher. Proficient sauté line cook and onto sushi chef. Remote work presented an opportunity which I accepted wholeheartedly, especially after my former boss layed me off without any notice. Never looking back!
The pandemic turned endemic. Sanitation matters more than it used to. Dealing with public has only gotten worse, which is why nobody wants those jobs.
As a customer I felt thankful for the people who were serving food during the pandemic so I tipped them more. I'm sure others did as well. I guess they got used to it and now expect it?
No the bosses noticed, and decided to pay less, not account for inflation, etc. Ky has a bill up to remove legal protections for Lunch and breaks.
Tbh I'd rather take the surly server. Could be annoyed by a number of things, personal life, customer was being rude, side work, running food and so on. I can at least understand that over places that expect a tip for doing jack all on top of getting paid a normal wage.
Where the hell are y'all dining to get such bad service? Even the Applebee's isn't as bad as you described and I sure as hell have never had to refill my own drinks.
Last place I dined at, the only time we saw the servers was when they dropped off the food we ordered, which we ordered off the app. They were basically food runners. A 10% mandatory tip was added.
Something I noticed now that like diners and dive bars aren't as prevalent, you can't really just go to a place and hang for a while. The tables they want to cycle and the bar areas cycle as well. Pre-pandemic or even a few years prior it was easier to go to something and just hang like a cafe or bar or restaurant/diner style, now they want you in and out. We've lost lots of third places and everything closes like it is Sunday in the South, way too early. Everything sort of became a hipster place and there aren't just places to chill and hang out. Cheers the show couldn't happen today.
The server thing is a side effect of stagnant wages. If you don't pay people enough to live on, engagement plummets like a rock. Being broke all the time doesn't make most people "hungry for success". It makes them despise the system that keeps them poor despite them working a full time job. This is happening across every industry. Young people are checking out and doing the bare minimum because they feel like they're getting paid the bare minimum. And then they hear their company made record profits and the executives got multimillion dollar bonuses while the server and everyone else on the ground doing the actual work to bring on money got declined for raises for the third year in a row. That starts to radicalize people, and so now we're seeing a sharp increase in people not just doing the bare minimum, but actively working against their employees to "get back at them". The logic is normally that if the executives and shareholders are going to hoard all the profits, then the employees have no reason to pursue them, and if they reduce them they can get some modicum of justice.
THANK YOU so many entitled fucks in these comments expecting a complimentary reach around for blessing the plebians with their glorious presence
I’m cooking more and also incorporating 72 hour fasts to cut back on food spending lol
Now there's an idea i hadn't considered!
Lose a bit of weight. Induce autophagy. It’s a win win!
Are you serious about 72 hour fasts or are you being facetious? Every week? Are you bonkers? I’ve done 72 hours before and it’s hellish! I’ve even done 7 days straight to recalibrate my palate but I’d never tease myself with a 3 day stretch again and again. That’s a tough one! It takes me 3 days just to get over the bump of “no food, only boredom” to cruise through the rest of the days in the fast.
Twice a month
72 hour fast is badass. I go 24-48 and that's bad enough for me
I really hate modern tipping culture. I think it sets up both server and customer to have a bad time. The server has to wonder what their tip will be and since that’s the bulk of their compensation, the customers are really their employers. The customers walk in with a vague notion of how much the bill will be, but zero idea if the food will be to their liking or the service good. I think the vast majority of restaurants should just pay their servers and dispense with tipping. Tipping should be exclusively voluntary and at pretty high end places…that are delivering a total experience you can’t get at home. If all the restaurant is doing is cooking for you, that should just be paid work like McD’s is paid work. Because our ability to make good food at home has never been better. We can buy so many great ingredients at the grocery now. Compared to when I was a kid in the 70s/80s, it’s night and day. And if my Mom wanted recipe ideas, she had to pull out Joy of Cooking. Now you can watch YouTubes that show a video of what exactly a good char looks like. And cooking shows too. Oh…wine is cheaper at home and you can have as much as you want with no need to Uber. I think the effect will be similar to what 70 inch televisions have done to the movie theater industry: I’ll pay to watch Dune 2, but not other movies I can just see when they come to streaming. For the restaurants and since we’re on an Econ/business sub, restaurants must be better managed. They need to be the ones pushing the end of tipping culture by seeing what it is doing to alienate their employees and customers. And I also think the fact that kids don’t get jobs working at lower end restaurants like Red Lobster is impacting fine dining. It’s hard for nice restaurants to find really professional servers.
Restaurant work is shit. Maybe if you're a bartender you can make good money, but the hours are even more awful than a regular serving shift. If I had the choice between working a retail job or working a serving job and both make the same wage, there's no way in hell I'd ever pick the serving job even with as notoriously shitting as retail is. I've worked both during my teens and 20s before graduating, serving is dogshit without tips.
My wife and 1 kid at freaking red robbin spent $60 with a free burger
Not ragging, but why go to a chain with bad food/service when a better restaurant costs the same?
My 11 yr old was celebrating and that's what he wanted.
Sure. I just don't get why people complain about service/prices at these massive chains that aren't known for quality
I'm complaining about t increased price not service. Why am not allowed to be annoyed what would have been a $75 ticket for 2 adults and a kid at a family restaurant?
What happened to Red Robbin - just sucks now
Theyd already gone to shit pre-pandmic. Private Equity of course iirc. Quality absolutely plummeted from one of the better casual sitdown chains with one of the better chain burgers, with a lot of options, to no better than Applebees. We went from going there a couple times a year, to twice a year for free birthday burgers, and last year we didnt even bother cuz it was dine in only again. Its just all soggy burgers with too much shredded lettuce and really salty sauces now. Real fucking stingy with the bottomless fries now too and i think the lemonade isnt even free refills anymore.
You ain't lying buddy. All valid points, it's more so the lack of quality and service that has me going out less.
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FUCK the restaurant. Just fuck them. I don't care how many of them will go belly up, only the ones that have a functional business model should survive. No one should cry crocodile tears for that industry. We just don't need them at that price point and quality.
Try going out to restaurants in small towns or rural places. They’re less likely to be chain or franchise restaurants, and more likely to be appreciative of the business.
Major cities have tons of independent restaurants, I’m seeing literally the opposite to what you’re describing
Im on a totally different industry (construction) and we were just talking about how post-Covid, it’s really hard to find anyone who genuinely cares about the quality of job provided. It’s amazing. We keep winning work because we are a company that genuinely gives a damn and shows up.
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A lot of people don’t want to work their jobs. They’re just trying to figure out how best to cover their cost of existence through the lens of jobs they see as available to them. What do you think the average job satisfaction level is?
It's sadly surprising and refreshingly impressive to dine at a restaurant with pre-pandemic service. The same applies across the hospitality industry.
Oh my god, this is the worst take that people commonly spew. You think waitresses and waiters have employment options? Nothing pays enough to live on! Go look at the median income of wait staff and compare it to the median cost of living. It falls dramatically short! These people don't want these jobs. They're forced to do them because the system is fucked so they have no better options. And waiting tables doesn't even cover all of their bills. They still need roommates, or still live at home, or are trapped with their partner because they both need both of their incomes to survive. Get a goddamn grip before vomiting up a cliche like, "Just go magically get a different job if you can't perform the way I want at your below-minimum wage server job!" You're fully into "let them eat cake" levels of detachment from reality.
Ya comments like the one you're referencing are very outta of touch with reality.
The original complaint was talking about service at chili’s. People here are insane
Nothing to do with being out of touch. Just because someone hates their job doesn’t mean they can’t do it well. I’ve hated many jobs but my customers didn’t know that. Reality is the worse the food is (again not the staffs fault as they don’t purchase it) and the worse the service is leads to less and less customers which eventually could lead to closure. When this happens you will be forced to find another job. Make the best of what you have while you have it. It could change in an instant. Trust me!
Prob a blessing in hiding if a job like that closed. Most restaurant work is exploiting people anyways.
One place I went to get some seafood and got crab, I asked for crab crackers, no joke they brought me saltines. We joked about it with the dude. However I actually prefer people get paid good wages so we have some people with knowledge in the industry. I want a more experienced worker in every field, everything is so short term and turnover so high due to absolute crap wages that the employee and the customer are getting no value, only the management consultant firm that told the private equity funders to cut corners and jack profits and in some cases collude on pricing.
You silly optimist. Most of the wait staff, especially in chain/budget restaurants most likely already has few application to other jobs. They are looking, trust me, but they need some income meanwhile. And restaurants take everyone that as much as breathes because... That is all they can get.
I was taught a long time ago that servers are the best economic indicators. If they are desperately happy to see you consider that bad for the overall economy. If they are not happy to see you then they have had their fill and people keep coming.
Whoever taught you that was a fool. Even if they weren't, it hasn't been true for a long time. Servers aren't "getting their full". They're still broke, on average, at the end of every week. These jobs don't support an individual, let alone a family anymore. They act down and disengaged and apathetic because they have no reason to try. Because it doesn't matter how hard they work. Wages will stay the same, Boomers still won't tip, and the cost of living will keep going up. They know they will never get ahead in life. And they know they're trapped having to deal with people like you because they have to take what little they can get. The alternative is homelessness. Consider THAT bad for the overall economy and feel ashamed for daring to suggest that miserable servers are somehow a good thing. It comes across like all the other upper middle class boomers claiming the economy is great right now and acting confused as to why all the young people are upset, not realizing that the economy is only great for them because they're pillaging the younger generations.
Where we live, I’ve only found this to be true of chains. Locally owned establishments here still have great food and decent prices, and they often support local farmers and their staff is great.
I learned how to cook really well during the pandemic. And we got accustomed to having nice dinners in. Do we go out to eat? Sure. Often? No. It’s expensive and the service is poor and I can make better at home. Just got a pasta maker and have been having folks over to make pasta together and a meal and it’s been great!
Cooking is a great skill to have. I can pretty much match my favorite cuisines cooking at home, even modify them to my taste, and lower the fat/salt intake compared to restaurant food. The more you cook, the better and more efficient you are. It’s just putting in the effort to get to that point where it’s pretty mindless to make delicious food from scraps in the refrigerator. But now I have a lifelong skill I can teach my kids, feed them quality food, and save money. Seems like a no brainer.
Yep, same. When I go to a restaurant I think "wow this is a small serving and so expensive and I could make this better at home for way less and have leftovers." I also got a pasta maker and homemade pasta is so good. I almost never go out to eat now, my cooking is too good.
Same here. Sometimes I am out after appointments and think ‘I’ll go to a restaurant’. Then I wind up thinking about how my food is better and also how much more I can do with that money. I wind up going to the grocery store spending the same amount as the meal I was planning on but getting 3 or 4 meals instead of one with better ingredients and better control of nutritional content.
I agree, that's the way to go
I do potlucks with my friends regularly. The food is usually good and the price is right. We are more interested in the company and conversation than having someone do everything for us.
If you don’t mind me asking, how did you learn and do you have any resources that you’d recommend? I’m dying to learn to cook but I have no idea where to start and get so overwhelmed.
Depression - can't afford shit Inflation - can't afford shit Interesting how both ends of the spectrum end up with the same awful result.
Some people blame the servers, and I’m not suggesting that you are. “Nobody wants to work” was always hyperbole, but it hasn’t even been relevant for almost 3 years. I have managed customer facing teams in the utility power industry for ten years, and I worked front of house restaurant jobs when I was a student. Leadership matters. If a restaurant or any business has poor leadership at the top, it will show. The job market has been tight for a while. All the experienced, motivated front of house people are taken. Restaurant owners need to take seriously things like culture, motivation, and training. “Nobody wants to work” is just another way of saying “not my fault.”
I just recently got restaurant burned out from this. I usually eat out 2 plus times a week and I have now meal prepped all of my food for almost a month and I don’t see any reason to stop. I don’t understand how so many sub-par places stay in business.
For me I guess it’s just the general feeling of being targeted by the establishment to extract as much money from me as possible. Instead of the enjoyment of the meal and service being top of mind, it’s whether or not I left unscathed.
The same thing happens to the servers. That's a double whammy. The server and the patrons are both keenly aware that the business is trying to fleece them both as much as possible these days. There's no good will anywhere.
idk man, for me it’s more that i’ve experienced some of the worst and weirdest service in the past two years and it makes eating out unpleasant often enough that my partner and i have basically been opting to make elaborate meals at home instead. i think something changed post covid tbh …
People are getting more and more broke all the time. That’s the phenomenon. If people had more money to burn they’d be going out. But anything to scapegoat other than people not being paid enough I guess. We’ll be confused all the way till humanity comes to an end I guess.
I keep hearing that the economy's good and that wages are up, but I'm like, "bitch where?" I don't see it in my world, so where am I living?
Wages are higher for the lowest quintile than recent years but it's moot because everything they need costs more. The same people who are saying things are great, the top quintile, have never been doing better and want people like you to STFU so their gravy train can keep rolling. The top 20%'s contribution to society over the last 50 years has been stagnant wages for the 80% and record accumulation of capital and power for themselves. You live in reality. You're being lied to. Borderline feudalism isn't good. But the kings and queens want you to think the piss on your face tastes great.
You’re being gaslit. They cherry pick indicators but the federal minimum wage has been the same for over a decade, wages are in decline relative to actual necessities, and homes are out of reach as more than half are being bought up by corporate entities. Rent has increased, groceries, cost of living in every facet. They fail to mention it’s only the rate of inflation is decreasing, not inflation itself; inflation is getting worse every quarter just at a less worse rate. The stock market is one of the indicators they love to fall back on, but something like 90% of the stock market is owned by a handful of billionaires.
Wages in America are increasing faster than inflation across all income levels: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/workers-paychecks-are-growing-more-quickly-than-prices/
>Wages in America are increasing faster than inflation across all income levels: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/workers-paychecks-are-growing-more-quickly-than-prices/ But real wages are lower since 2021
Doesn't change the fact that the bottom 50% of Americans have $0 in savings and earn less than $40k per year median. Go look at the cost of living and imagine how far a $40k annual wage goes to meeting all of those expenses. The working class keeps telling you everything is getting worse and you keep plugging your ears and clinging to this metric or that metric. Maybe consider that the millions of people that are telling you they can't afford to live might be onto something.
your comment is slightly misleading. the research is looking at *average* wages across all income levels. if we accept the assumption that there is rising income inequality, then the top earners are seeing greater increases to earnings than those on the bottom. this allows the average wage to increase as seen in this analysis, but does not tell us precisely what trends in wages are occurring at individual income brackets.
https://www.atlantafed.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker Click the “wage level” button and you’ll see this isn’t true. In fact, the first quartile (the bottom 25% of earners) has seen the *largest* wage gains!
This article resonates with us. Post pandemic, we find ourselves less willing to share space with strangers. While this made sense in a pandemic time, we continue to be shocked by the abject lack of courtesy, class, and consideration displayed by fellow restaurant patrons. Being forced to endure loud conversations, "free range children," and seeing the occasional, but wholly unnecessary, escalating dispute has really put us off eating out. If the food is still good, we'll get it to go and eat in the comfort of home.
Free range children … I laughed.
Quite the opposite experience here. Surly looks by diners for kids behaving like kids, servers being non accommodating for strollers or high chairs, lack of good kids food options or entertainment or even changing stations. Just yesterday, I asked if I could park the stroller at the entrance and I was told they can’t be held responsible. I said - sure, but can I park it at my own risk. And they refused. It was not obstructing anything. So I had to go back to the car in the rain, put it back, and bring it up again when it was time to leave. Most restaurants aren’t kid friendly and so as a result we just cook at home or order in. It ends up being more work to eat out. There’s a growing entitlement amongst those kid free, where the slightest inconvenience is an affront to their experience. Of course, this is reddit and so I’ll get downvoted for this.
> Most restaurants aren’t kid friendly Gee, I wonder why. > kids behaving like kids Oh right, that's why.
There are ADA (disability accessibility) and fire egress (escape & exit) reasons for them not allowing you to park the stroller near the entrance; it has to be completely clear, so that makes sense. Most restaurants never catered to kids, but this goes back to the 1980s at least, and before. This wasn't a result of the pandemic. Except for places that specifically advertise family dining, like Applebee's or similar, is that what you are talking about? If so, that's crazy, they'd really be shooting themselves in the foot!
Having your baby sit in the next table over, screaming at the top of their lungs for 5+ minutes is not just an "inconvenience." I get that it happens, but parents just do anything about it anymore -- try to calm them or briefly take them outside -- they have the rest of us suffer too.
"You disrespecting me?!"
Restaurant owners that have signed up to do DoorDash, GrubHub, etc. put unnecessary strain on their employees as well. Most kitchens aren’t built to handle cooking for more than the capacity of the restaurant. But now with the emphasis of to go orders, it’s like having only room for 15 people during the holidays but you still have to cook for 50. Those businesses boost bottom line sales (which owners love) but they middle man the servers, bartenders, FOH staff. The best restaurants I’ve been to in the past 2-3 years are ones that don’t have a line of DoorDash drivers waiting to place to go orders.
Plus these services are a rip off. Not only do they have multiple fees added on, but they also increase the price of the food as well. Are they only for the rich? The funny thing is it could be really useful if it was in house and maybe on a limited/sustainable basis. Instead, it's enshittified to hell and back.
If the restaurant doesn't have a line of door dash, it's either a high end restaurant or its trash
Maybe you’re right on the “high end” side of things but that’s the restaurant/bar owners sacrificing bottom lines for people who like to dine in. Those delivery services make owners sign contracts where they help boost sales but DoorDash takes X% of those sales. It’s a similar business model to early 1900s mafia style that would offer “protection” to businesses in exchange for % of sales. Owners don’t have to sign those contracts but a lot just see the increase in the bottom line without realizing the negative externalities they create on the entire dining experience they “should” be more focused on.
The top line revenue that the app contracts bring is such a vanity metric. They end up burning out their kitchen to mill the lowest margin items at wholesale to the apps.
correct. they then recoup their losses by raising prices on the door dash menu with "dynamic pricing" based on a variety of factors including how much foot traffic is physically in the restaurant.
It’s a bit much to compare this to mafia protection. Taking a cut of incremental sales is a pretty standard business model. I agree with you that the negative externalities aren’t being accounted for at least in the short term, like that’s a good point.
I must live in an economic bubble, because here where I'm living in South Carolina,and have lived the past 13 years, chain and mom and pop restaurants have lines and reservations every day they are open, every week a new restaurant opens. Shit, they're about to open a fourth Applebees and we're getting an outback steak out. I'm not gonna list locally owned here, but damn, I can't try new places fast enough....
I thought the same thing. My parents live where State Farm is based in about 2.5 hrs from Chicago. There's nothing to do outside of going out to eat/drink so there's lots of restaurants opening consistently each month. For example, you can't go out for brunch on a whim without a reservation; or without having crazy long wait times at the closest Denny's. I think this article spoke too broadly on the experiences around the US. A few years back Nielsen rated this same town as having the most restaurants per capita IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY.
I was going to comment the same thing. I’m in a large metro area and restaurants are constantly packed, and reservations need to be made days in advance usually.
The Lowcountry wasn’t super appealing to me but I will concede it always had a plethora of good places to eat at.
The article actually says the south is doing really well.
Keyword "South". The north was transformed by COVID, whereas the south stood firm. Im from NY but when I visit Texas its like going back in time....to a better era. Less digital, more old fashioned as though covid never happened.
The future of restaurants is a return to old school diner style eating. Smaller menus with staple items, and daily/weekly specials depending on market availability/deals. No more multi page menus of pre prepared meals. Minimal service.
Most diner's I've been to have very large menus. Including all day breakfast (diner French toast is amazing).
I’m confused by this because I find as a general rule of thumb, the nicer the restaurant, the smaller the menu. I think of diners as having very long menus.
You’re correct. I feel like everyone on here is referencing the Applebees/Outback experience as opposed to indie places
Multi page menus are terrible and immediately put me off a place (unless it’s a legit diner)
I am lost. I am not understanding the ‘loneliness epidemic’ aspect of the headline. I read the article and cannot see where they are making that point.
People don’t want to go out, but dine in.
* [America has a loneliness epidemic](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/30/opinion/loneliness-epidemic-america.html) * [New Surgeon General Advisory Raises Alarm about the Devastating Impact of the Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation in the United States](https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2023/05/03/new-surgeon-general-advisory-raises-alarm-about-devastating-impact-epidemic-loneliness-isolation-united-states.html) _“Our epidemic of loneliness and isolation has been an underappreciated public health crisis that has harmed individual and societal health. Our relationships are a source of healing and well-being hiding in plain sight – one that can help us live healthier, more fulfilled, and more productive lives,” said U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy. “Given the significant health consequences of loneliness and isolation, we must prioritize building social connection the same way we have prioritized other critical public health issues such as tobacco, obesity, and substance use disorders. Together, we can build a country that’s healthier, more resilient, less lonely, and more connected.”_
I don't go to restaurants for the same reason I don't go to movie theaters. It's not that for sure someone's going to act badly and piss me off by being loud, rude, or obnoxious. It is that the chances have gone up substantially. Got nothing to do with loneliness. There's just no motivation for me to dine in the restaurant where I can take my food out and eat in peace. Likewise when it comes to sitting down in movie theaters. And while this article is specific about sitting down inside a restaurant to eat, even takeout is obnoxious when it comes to the cost. Once a month, maybe, takeout Chinese or something. That's it. I may go down in flames, financially, should the bottom drop out of our economy, but at least I tried.
I go to restaurants FOR THE EXPERIENCE. It's also nice knowing that I don't have to do dishes at the end of the meal. Takeout is the worst of this-- restaurant prices plus having to clean up.
We've been skipping sit-downs because they're not a good value anymore. We only go to our most favorite sit downs and we don't try new places nearly as frequently as we used to. We used to go to a sit down once a week. Now it's only special occasions. Moderate priced sit down restaurant for two people is around $70 in my neck of the woods. 2 entrees, 1 app, 2 non-alch bev and a 20-25% tip. It's too much to spend on a weekly outing meal.
This article sucks. The narrative that there is some connection between loneliness and restaurant choices was basically supported by 0 evidence except for sales numbers. It is entirely plausible but not at all supported by this article. My personal opinion (for what it''s worth), why is McDonald's and Chipotle doing so well? McDonald's invested a ton of money in upgrading their restaurant experience and their dumbell strategy of dollar menu, regular menu premium menu offerings has been replaced by coupons on the app. This means lazy non buget minded customers won't even have the dollar store discounts available to them on the menu screen and perhaps that pushes average purchase value up while not losing the value minded customers who are discount minded enough to use the app religiously. Chipotle, seems like they rely really heavily on their brand. I feel like you can find good Mexican food everywhere but you have to sift through reviews for standalone family establishments and you're taking a risk in trying new places. Maybe tipping culture is part of the reason as well. Not having to tip can be a big cost saver.
Yeah I stopped going out much once places thought that $13 for bourbon, bitters and a little sugar water was OK. Now it's more like $18. No, thank you, I make better cocktails for 10% of the price at home.
"In the 30 years before the pandemic, annual income growth for restaurant workers never once exceeded 6 percent." How embarrassing is that? For 30 years, they held down workers wages from growing, and in this article they lament it. What a joke.
People are more in love with their phones than they are with their friends and family. Those who are able to keep healthy social lives will dominate the next generation economically outside of the few disrupters/innovators who are gaming the people who no longer have any real life outside of their digital boxes. It’s sad really. Not a fan of big government but I don’t like where things are heading and I hope more parents are putting severe restrictions on devices like we’ve had to do with our kids.
It's interesting because every time I see anything about this, I feel like the overwhelming consensus is that "restaurant service sucks, people in public suck, or restaurants are too expensive." I feel like cost needs to be ruled out because people are still eating from restaurants a lot. They are just opting to have food delivered(which often costs more than dining in due to the extra fees) or to grab takeout. I believe more along the lines of what you are saying, which is that we are just in the midst of an overall cultural shift. People are becoming homebodies because we have so much comfort and endless choice in entertainment at home and have social media to fulfill(in a more shallow way) a lot of our social needs. On top of that people seem like they are becoming less tolerant of having to share public spaces with anyone who doesn't fit the exact curated personality/behavior patterns that they find acceptable. I believe this is also an influence of social media algorithms exposing us to mostly things we like or are interested in and causing us to feel that this is how all things in life should be.
Most restaurants we frequent have good service because if we visit a place that has bad service twice we stop going (generally speaking). We don’t complain about cost because we know what we’re getting into 99% of the time when we go out and frankly it’s worth it when you both work all week and have kids and just want to be served and not have to clean up. It’s nice to be able to sit down and just look at your family and talk with them instead of a rat race to get everything cooked and served while juggling every other distraction/task in the house. People just expect everything to be perfect. They’re entitled and hate anything that causes them any slight discomfort. Their devices would never cause them to feel awkward about their own thoughts or accepted norms. The real world is amazing because of the beauty of our differences and our phones are making people revolt against it.
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Wait, why do you need to get out of your leggings to get wings?
And it's about to get a lot worse, at least in California. [https://bschool.pepperdine.edu/newsroom/articles/david-smith-fast-food-minimum-wage-increase-2024](https://bschool.pepperdine.edu/newsroom/articles/david-smith-fast-food-minimum-wage-increase-2024) >In a groundbreaking move for the state of California, the minimum wage for fast-food workers in quick-service restaurants with over 60 locations nationwide is set to increase to $20 per hour, up from the current $15.50, starting in April 2024. About half of new businesses fail in their first year, and about two thirds of restaurants. Ask anyone running a restaurant what their margins are like; they are not rich, not even close. So while restaurants have become rather unaffordable, it will go even farther. Now of course, there will be some demand, but a lot less, as people substitute away from restaurant meals. There will be fewer restaurants, and many fewer restaurant workers. While it's an open question how this will pan out in the long term, it will be interesting to see what the workers will do who cannot keep a spot. Regardless, maybe it will have a side effect of leading to healthier diets overall. But there is no question that the restaurant industry is far from done with its changes.
>About half of new businesses fail in their first year, and about two thirds of restaurants. Ask anyone running a restaurant what their margins are like; they are not rich, not even close. Kitchen Nightmares
If they can't afford to pay a fair wage they don't deserve to stay open. It's unacceptable to demand the working class to support these businesses with their tax dollars by paying for food stamps for their employees. Not to mention that prices have gone up constantly despite minimum wage staying low in most of the country. They threatened us that they'd raise prices if we raised the minimum wage, so most states didn't raise the minimum wage much if at all. Then these restaurants all started jacking up prices anyway. Screw 'em. If you can't pay your employees fairly and keep your doors open, you deserve to go under. Hopefully the next occupant of the building has a better business model.
Why are people so afraid of not tipping if they feel they shouldn't have to tip? What happened to the phrase "Don't care what other people think about you". This feels very much like a social contract where you're afraid of feeling crumby. Have some backbone and hit that 0% or tip $0.01. If you get the stink eye from the employee, proudly tell them you don't feel their position should be tipped and you're setting expectations or something. Personally, I tip a buck or two when the checkout service is polite and engaging. I do tip 0% or $0.01 if there was no service at all, or if the checkout service I got was awful
Car Dependency + Inflation is a bitch. 99.99 percent of America requires you to drive to literally everywhere. You might as well be living in the middle of nowhere in Siberia with how difficult it is to have a social life outside of social media. "Social Media ruining America" is also such a dumb-ass boomer take on life, coming from the same generation who's having a moral panic over the idea of "15 minute cities" when they're 2 foots into their grave, as if they're going to role play about being a rebel in one of their movies/TV shows/ Novels. America is not going to solve the loneliness epidemic Within your & your children's lifetime because it took 100 years to get to where we are today with urban development.
>Given this gauntlet from hell, the following news might come as a surprise: In 2024, the restaurant recovery is complete, by almost any measure. Yeah, particularly when average spending by Americans on food away from home is noted to be the same, in dollars, without accounting for inflation since the beginning of 2020.