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The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants

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

#121

Post by bongodongobob »

jdeibele wrote: post #72

I've noticed at several Thai restaurants in the Portland area that we are the only or almost only customers in the restaurant. There's a steady stream of Door Dash, Uber Eats, etc. drivers picking up orders. I haven't noticed it as much with other restaurants. Maybe Thai (and other Asian) dishes hold up well because the topping is typically kept separate from the rice?

Idk, think it's probably just cost and food quantity, at least where I am. I can order $30 worth of Thai and have 2 days worth of food while for the same price I get one ghost kitchen burger with fries.

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

#122

Post by bongodongobob »

krunck wrote: post #28

Eating in American restaurants where there is constant pressure to shovel in the food and leave, is a waste. You feel like you're on an assembly line. What's the point then? On top of that they have the gall to ask for 25% tips. For what? Pressuring me to leave? I enjoy visiting Eastern Europe(and Europe in general) where a party can sit at a table at 7pm, dine, drink, talk, and relax and remain there until close at…

Where? NYC? The densest cities in the country? If you get outside the metropolises it's not like that at all. That's just a reflection of demand and population density.

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

#123

Post by walthamstow »

UltraSane wrote: post #85
tayo42 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eating out seems less popular in the the US right now. Everything is more expensive and there's the 18-25% tip that gets applied. Going out to even a basic lunch with my wife is close to 50 usually for the meal. Takeout I can tip the delivery person a little less. And keep left overs a little easier. Take out is only for being lazy, I'd still just cook and meet or beat in quality any restaurant except ones that mignt…

most restaurants are absolutely terrible value for money.

Especially if you're anything above a 7/10 home cook

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

#124

Post by cco »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #62

People switched away from cash during COVID. Lots of people who might have been unbanked or lightly banked went all-in as everything went digital. Now restaurants (historically a pretty cash-heavy industry) have fewer cash transactions. Possibly related?

Oh now that is an interesting observation. A long standing dirty secret.

Very maybe!

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

#125

Post by bongodongobob »

erulabs wrote: post #45
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,…

Ghost kitchens instead of community gathering places. 100 year old bar space used to stack outgoing uber-eats orders instead of for people to meet and chat. More plastic waste used on packaging. Fewer home-cooked meals. More time spent in front of the TV instead of in your community. A disrespect for expensive and supply-limited food - delivery sushi in particular strikes me as a culinary crime. It's really not that…

Restaurants were never community gathering places. I've been on this planet for more than 40 years and this is rose colored bullshit, sorry dude. You're forgetting that home cooked meals also include mac and cheese and frozen green beans and tater tots. Whatever past you're pining for is a fantasy, or pre world war 2.

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

#126

Post by aprilthird2021 »

colonial wrote: post #65
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?!

I was shocked when I went to college and we lived in a shared house for the summer to intern in the bay area, and I realized some people legit don't know how to cook anything, not even eggs or rice.

I tried to share my food with them but they didn't want it (admittedly I'm not Gordon Ramsey or anything). They were happy eating either frozen meals or doordash (back then it was cheaper) every dinner.

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

#127

Post by bsder »

walthamstow wrote: post #123
UltraSane wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most restaurants are absolutely terrible value for money.

Especially if you're anything above a 7/10 home cook

It's funny that they say productivity is up when all of my local restaurants seem to be slower than ever ... but I digress.

> Especially if you're anything above a 7/10 home cook

I'd move your assessment down to a 5/10 home cook.

Most restaurants are using ingredients of sufficiently low quality that it is now pathetically easy to beat them on that axis. Using even slightly better ingredients than average puts you ahead of 90% of restaurants, nowadays--even for something as stupidly easy as a salad.

I'm super lazy, but local restaurants have gotten both so expensive and so slow that I'm always weighing whether to hit the local grocery store, grab some ingredients and throw something together at home.

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

#128

Post by bsder »

khazhoux wrote: post #79
pcthrowaway wrote: post #62

People switched away from cash during COVID. Lots of people who might have been unbanked or lightly banked went all-in as everything went digital. Now restaurants (historically a pretty cash-heavy industry) have fewer cash transactions. Possibly related?

I think the move away from cash coincided with COVID but was not related much. The convenience of digital simply made cash useless (mostly).

You missed the point.

The point is that a lot of restaurants used to not report a lot of cash transactions.

If almost everybody is using digital, the restaurant no longer has the option to underreport as there is an indelible transaction record (generally with an outsourced third party handling your credit cards).

So, some amount of the "productivity increase" is simply the underreported cash transactions now coming onto the books.

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

#130

Post by msravi »

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…

In India, these are called "cloud kitchens." A single cloud kitchen could be listed on a food delivery app under multiple brands - one brand for chinese cuisine, one for italian, etc.
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