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Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

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Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#191

Post by irrational »

>The craziest thing to me in all this is, I love food. Like, obsessed. Who’s with me? My point is: if eating is literally one of our favourite things ever, are we willing to pay adequately for it? Do we value it sufficiently? Honestly, seems to me like, if there’s one industry that should be profitable, it’s restaurants. One, we have to eat. Two, we love to eat!

I'm wondering if there is some personality differences at play here. The author loves food and probably eats out regularly. I like food, but I see it as more of a means of sustaining life than something to be enjoyed (I typically eat the exact same thing every single day). I only go out to eat about once a month. Am I an anomaly, or is part of restaurants' problem that a significant part of the population is not in love with food?

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#192

Post by trophycase »

alexashka wrote: post #180
supernova87a wrote: post #137

I'll make another observation about the landscape of restaurants. You may notice that in Europe, Asia, the demographics of restaurants are noticeably different from the US. There are far more hole-in-the-wall mom-and-pop restaurants in those places compared to the US, running a small and seemingly profit-thin but subsistence restaurant for the neighborhood. Think of a suburban neighborhood in Madrid or Rome, where a…

I want small restaurants as much as I want shoe makers instead of automated Nike factories. The way forward is not by enabling people who can serve 500 people/day to exist when we can have a robot serving 5,000. We want automation, we want people doing what they choose to do because we've automated away things they had to do, such as work for a living. The way to get there is more automation. Restaurant cooks/servers…

Work is what gives life meaning for many people. You can't just say we'll automate most productive tasks then expect everyone to be mozart or do yoga all day or something. That's not a future I want.

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#193

Post by GeoAtreides »

alexashka wrote: post #180
supernova87a wrote: post #137

I'll make another observation about the landscape of restaurants. You may notice that in Europe, Asia, the demographics of restaurants are noticeably different from the US. There are far more hole-in-the-wall mom-and-pop restaurants in those places compared to the US, running a small and seemingly profit-thin but subsistence restaurant for the neighborhood. Think of a suburban neighborhood in Madrid or Rome, where a…

I want small restaurants as much as I want shoe makers instead of automated Nike factories. The way forward is not by enabling people who can serve 500 people/day to exist when we can have a robot serving 5,000. We want automation, we want people doing what they choose to do because we've automated away things they had to do, such as work for a living. The way to get there is more automation. Restaurant cooks/servers…

Even in The Culture there were restaurants, some people just like making and serving food

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#194

Post by Aeolun »

triceratops wrote: post #50

> Drinks for instance cost us more than at the grocery store — but we can’t exactly go get 20 cases of pop per day, so we don’t have much choice. I didn't understand this. It may not be feasible to buy 100 cases of pop at a regular grocery store, but isn't Costco/Sam's Club set up for that? I do think it comes down ultimately to real estate prices. Major metros in North America have gradually become unaffordable for…

This doesn't make sense in the first place. Don't suppliers charge lower rates to restaurants exactly because they'd otherwise just go to the supermarket?

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#195

Post by throwaway17_17 »

sokoloff wrote: post #84
throwaway17_17 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just a ridiculous exaggeration. There are at a minimum (the number of reported and taxed restaurant workers) 302,000 in NYC. There have been 13,500 deaths in NYC. That is less than .5 percent of the number of restaurant workers in the city.

One percent of 300K is 3K. Your figure is “less than 5 percent”, not “less than 0.5 percent”.

Thanks, whisky has apparently made my math skills suffer this evening.

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#196

Post by aaronbrethorst »

bobthepanda wrote: post #163
supernova87a wrote: post #137

I'll make another observation about the landscape of restaurants. You may notice that in Europe, Asia, the demographics of restaurants are noticeably different from the US. There are far more hole-in-the-wall mom-and-pop restaurants in those places compared to the US, running a small and seemingly profit-thin but subsistence restaurant for the neighborhood. Think of a suburban neighborhood in Madrid or Rome, where a…

Where I live in Seattle, there is a lot of new dense neighborhoods going up. And many of these large apartments have ground-level retail, which is supposed to be that urban planning magic sauce for walkable neighborhoods. The problem is, most of these retail spaces are actually vacant, despite massive job and housing growth. But why? Because the retail spaces are simply too large. These spaces are big enough to seat…

South lake union? Gonna be even more of a ghost town with the amazon ‘wfh til October’ directive.

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#197

Post by sleavey »

Something's up. In Germany in a normal city I can get a döner the same size as the one in the photo for €3 ($3.50?). It's not sourdough nor high quality protein but that can't explain the $7.50 difference.

Edit: as the commenter below reminded me, it's actually more like €4-5 but my point stands.

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#198

Post by anovikov »

bobthepanda wrote: post #163
supernova87a wrote: post #137

I'll make another observation about the landscape of restaurants. You may notice that in Europe, Asia, the demographics of restaurants are noticeably different from the US. There are far more hole-in-the-wall mom-and-pop restaurants in those places compared to the US, running a small and seemingly profit-thin but subsistence restaurant for the neighborhood. Think of a suburban neighborhood in Madrid or Rome, where a…

Where I live in Seattle, there is a lot of new dense neighborhoods going up. And many of these large apartments have ground-level retail, which is supposed to be that urban planning magic sauce for walkable neighborhoods. The problem is, most of these retail spaces are actually vacant, despite massive job and housing growth. But why? Because the retail spaces are simply too large. These spaces are big enough to seat…

Almost reminded me the picture from the early Middle Ages when whole population of the Roman city now fit in a market square...

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#199

Post by moltar »

If we want convenience and scale, we need more cafeteria style restaurants. Everything is cooked in bulk, you walk in and choose visually what you want. This is very popular in post Soviet countries.

There doesn’t need to be a compromise on quality and taste either. Maybe presentation only. Won’t be able to get an instagram shot out of the cafeteria portion.

Analogous to that are food markets in South East Asian countries. Each stall just does one thing. You walk thru the market and just grab what you want. It’s like micro services of food.

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#200

Post by causality0 »

>Let’s aim for 19%

I love the cojones in this post. The argument isn't "pay more so we can pay our staff more, so we can buy better ingredients, so our restaurants can be cleaner." No, it's literally "pay more so we have a bigger profit margin and as a side effect we might not go under when the next economic collapse happens."

The author literally wants society to agree to a massive price-fixing scheme where instead of them competing with other restaurants we all just agree to sacrifice some other part of our budgets so we can afford to pay more for the same dining experience we're getting now.

According to the census bureau in the last ten years spending at restaurants has grown twice as fast as ALL other retail spending. Fast-casual dining is experiencing a 9% yearly growth rate. There are too many people in the market. So the question is, where is this cut in the number of restaurants to create a 19% margin going to come from?

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