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The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants

bfi.uchicago.edu

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Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants

#61

Post by renewiltord »

renewiltord wrote: post #31
simonw wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I do think it's about time we apply just an ounce of shame to people who uber-eats every meal they eat from restaurants clearly designed for eating-in" Help me out here. What negative effect does that behavior have on the world such that people should feel shame for doing it? (I'm still Covid cautious enough that I avoid dining indoors in places where I share air with strangers. This is a huge lifestyle limitation,…

It’s the age old story of change aversion. I imagine one can post-hoc rationalize an argument for the decrease in third spaces and ensuing loneliness or some nonsense that will quote statistics of the quality of “50% of all Americans live paycheck to paycheck”.

Hahaha I bullseye’d that.

Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants

#63

Post by shigawire »

dylan604 wrote: post #59
infecto wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we really need to define it? In America and Britain a sit down restaurant is defined as one where you are seated by a host and order via waitstaff.

I guess we do, because I am not familiar with that specific definition What about those "sit down" places where you load up a QR code, order from that site, pay from that site, but have a server bring your food? are they still a "sit down" place?

Most would say no I'd guess in the US.

To me "sit down" implies you are seated by a host and waited on.

Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants

#64

Post by muirbot »

the-rc wrote: post #37
relaxing wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The correct answer is right there in the abstract. It’s not even 200 words. You don’t even have to read tfa.

True... I didn't make clear that I had tried to take a wild guess after reading only the first sentence in the abstract.

I think that’s pretty clear

Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants

#65

Post by colonial »

alwa wrote: post #36

How much of this is the COVID-correlated normalization of delivery apps [0]? Anecdotally I do sometimes notice people eating quickly or taking out, but what I really notice is the nonstop flurry of app delivery folks darting in and out of the pickup area... Seems consistent with the study's observations, too: > As a result, we think the growth in take-out or delivery is the primary driver of the jump in short visits.…

What I'd like to know are the demographics of the people using the delivery apps.

Everyone I know refuses to touch them due to the massive extra costs piled on top, but whenever I swing by somewhere in-person to get takeout, I have the same experience as you - there's always at least a few bags on the "Doordash shelf" or equivalent. Who's burning all this money?!

Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants

#66

Post by TriangleEdge »

I get recruitment emails for a startup some people from Uber are making called Cloud Kitchens. Basically kitchens that can scale based on demand. The company provides ingredients and the kitchens make the food. Share resources make it more productive. I think restaurants themselves are unproductive.

Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants

#67

Post by xg15 »

I wonder if there are also cultural/regulatory differences here.

I'm in the EU, and of course we had the forced shift to takeout as well, during covid. But while homeoffice as a concept stayed, restaurants very quickly went back to in-house dining when it was over.

Seeing a takeout-only restaurant with a repurposed dine-in area here in 2025 would be beyond weird and would probably just give everyone covid flashbacks.

Interesting to see that the specifics of what has stayed from the covid time and what has reverted could be different from country to country.

Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants

#68

Post by contingencies »

satvikpendem wrote: post #42
deathanatos wrote: post #19

> The restaurants’ productivity growth rates are strongly correlated, however, with reductions in the amount of time their customers spend in the establishments, particularly with a rising share of customers spending 10 minutes or less. The frequency of such ‘take-out’ customers rose considerably during COVID, even at fast food restaurants, and never went back down. The magnitude of the restaurant-level relationship…

Ghost restaurants, essentially. Incidentally, I wonder what Travis Kalanick and his company CloudKitchens is up to now that he doesn't run Uber anymore.

Basically it seems after expanding to >30 countries then realizing COVID growth would not continue, rationalizing operations, and figuring out the model of ghost kitchens is limited in growth potential with significant customer and platform backlash TK's been trying to automate the production side using the "former self driving team" of Uber at a Cloud Kitchen subsidiary called Lab37. https://www.lab37.us/ However, the (2023) pictures of their system show they are not very advanced, and news appears to have halted.

Why am I monitoring this? I personally spent 9 years actually doing mechatronic R&D in the food prep, packaging and logistics automation space in China with more aggressive footprint and automation goals and am currently raising for US based go to market on a far higher density platform that sidesteps the last mile delivery providers entirely. Email in profile.

Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants

#69

Post by j_timberlake »

deathanatos wrote: post #19

> The restaurants’ productivity growth rates are strongly correlated, however, with reductions in the amount of time their customers spend in the establishments, particularly with a rising share of customers spending 10 minutes or less. The frequency of such ‘take-out’ customers rose considerably during COVID, even at fast food restaurants, and never went back down. The magnitude of the restaurant-level relationship…

The timing is perfect for drone delivery to make a big impact here. Meals could arrive fast enough to stay hot, so the quality of the food goes up while reducing delivery times too.

I don't get why companies can't figure out how to make this profitable.

Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants

#70

Post by 6stringmerc »

j_timberlake wrote: post #69
deathanatos wrote: post #19

> The restaurants’ productivity growth rates are strongly correlated, however, with reductions in the amount of time their customers spend in the establishments, particularly with a rising share of customers spending 10 minutes or less. The frequency of such ‘take-out’ customers rose considerably during COVID, even at fast food restaurants, and never went back down. The magnitude of the restaurant-level relationship…

The timing is perfect for drone delivery to make a big impact here. Meals could arrive fast enough to stay hot, so the quality of the food goes up while reducing delivery times too. I don't get why companies can't figure out how to make this profitable.

Because drones are noisy and irritating in reality and nobody wants them flying around their neighborhood and they don’t scale and they can potentially scare animals and and and…
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