Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants

bfi.uchicago.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 280 posts

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

#161

Post by bongodongobob »

dmurray wrote: post #160
bongodongobob wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another thing driving people back is actually IT departments. Managing remote devices is difficult and adds a lot of complexity. I did a couple years of contracting after COVID and a lot of these companies had to scramble to figure it out and now have weird hacked together hybrid AD/Intune/AAD setups that now are an unwieldy mess. Buying whatever laptops they could find on short notice has led to random makes and mod…

This doesn't seem right. Even the companies with the strongest RTO policies still allow many employees to work from home one day a week / if they are sick / if they are on call / in other extenuating circumstances. So those IT departments still have to manage a fleet of off-premises devices of approximately the same size. Maybe there are small savings from underprovisioning VPNs, or fewer support requests when people…

The issue isn't a laptop going home once a week, it's never being on the LAN at all after they are imaged. It has nothing to do with "VPN provisioning" or whatever you mean by that. The problem is that all the policies and tools implemented expected the devices to be on the LAN at least occasionally.

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

#162

Post by ncruces »

anovikov wrote: post #151
andrepd wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well were their wrong? Car-centric development has been an absolute disaster in dozens of different ways.

Surely horse-centric was a lot better.

Some people seem to think manure is cleaner than tailpipes.

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

#163

Post by distances »

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.

Drones were banned from cities already a good while ago, and I don't see that changing. Drone delivery could work on the countryside, but urban areas will be limited to delivery robots on wheels.

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

#164

Post by throw2728384 »

t-3 wrote: post #134
Scoundreller wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhhhh, balconies? Reach out of an open window like a reverse drive-through?

How are they going to get the right apartment, and even if they do, what if the food gets fumbled in the handover and someone is injured by falling meals?

DJI has those smart docking stations.

Maybe eventually each apartment will have one or it'll be subsidized by delivery platforms.

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

#165

Post by freddie_mercury »

mlsu wrote: post #101
colonial wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?!

There is a sizeable and growing group of people who legitimately do not know how to cook a meal for themselves. They actually go a to a restaurant for every meal, kitchen is unused basically. Eat at corporate cafeteria for lunch, doordash or get takeout for dinner. Premade salads and microwave prep meals is "cooking." Every meal.

This is extremely common almost everywhere in Asia. Many places still have SROs (which were outlawed in the US decades ago) which is essentially just a room and (nowadays) a bathroom. No kitchen so the only cooking tends to be instant noodles. Virtually every meal is eaten out or via delivery.

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

#166

Post by kharak »

dataviz1000 wrote: post #156

Simple. The overhead on takeout is far less than dine-in although the menu items cost the same. Dine-in costs include base waitstaff salary and workman's comp, cleaning crew and dishwashers, electricity, insurance, ect.. while takeout requires the very small cost of packaging. Something that always bugs me is restaurants that charge $2 or $5 surcharge for takeout. I'm saving the restaurant a ton of money by not using…

What about the additional costs for delivery and online platforms? Both only apply for delivery and are quite significant. Takeouts should reduce costs, but delivery has significant costs added to each order.

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

#167

Post by em500 »

dataviz1000 wrote: post #156

Simple. The overhead on takeout is far less than dine-in although the menu items cost the same. Dine-in costs include base waitstaff salary and workman's comp, cleaning crew and dishwashers, electricity, insurance, ect.. while takeout requires the very small cost of packaging. Something that always bugs me is restaurants that charge $2 or $5 surcharge for takeout. I'm saving the restaurant a ton of money by not using…

> Something that always bugs me is restaurants that charge $2 or $5 surcharge for takeout. I'm saving the restaurant a ton of money by not using the dining room, why would they discourage that?

My parents owned a small family restaurant in Europe when I was little. We never charged extra for takeout, but it was viewed as lower margin as dine in, largely for two reasons.

1. For takeout we usually missed out on the revenue on drinks and desserts, which have enormous margins (think multiples rather than percentages).

2. A lot of the extra labour for dine-in was internalized by the family. Now you might object that using the wife and kids as cheap labour is not an honest calculations of the margins, but with family labour you can (a) largely circumvent the tax wedge (high in Europe) and (b) the presumably undercompensated labour is ofset by higher profits which still stays in the family if the head of family is careful with money.

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

#168

Post by andrepd »

chii wrote: post #146
morsch wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh god we're going to get a new hellscape of drone noise which we won't be able to get rid of on account of the personal freedom granted by having second rate food delivered five minutes faster.

> hellscape of drone noise on the other hand, if it removed some traffic noise which is equal or worse than drone noises...

My, if only there was a better way to transport people in a city besides a 2-ton metal box moved my exploding fuel...

Perhaps some two-wheeled contraption, of the pedal-power sort?

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

#169

Post by [deleted] »

kharak wrote: post #166
dataviz1000 wrote: post #156

Simple. The overhead on takeout is far less than dine-in although the menu items cost the same. Dine-in costs include base waitstaff salary and workman's comp, cleaning crew and dishwashers, electricity, insurance, ect.. while takeout requires the very small cost of packaging. Something that always bugs me is restaurants that charge $2 or $5 surcharge for takeout. I'm saving the restaurant a ton of money by not using…

What about the additional costs for delivery and online platforms? Both only apply for delivery and are quite significant. Takeouts should reduce costs, but delivery has significant costs added to each order.

[deleted]

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

#170

Post by keming »

My first thought upon seeing the headline was that perhaps this could be due to a workforce that has abandoned or has been abandoned by other industries- providing an influx of enthusiasm, competition, variety, and desperation.

But, then I read:

> We document that, after remaining almost constant for almost 30 years, real labor productivity at U.S. restaurants surged over 15% during the COVID pandemic.

So I wonder if it’s a combination of workers getting better tips and more people buying takeout meals?

Post reply on HN