In general, it seems reasonable to ask whether there are long-term patterns of change. And the article makes the case that overall sales were still down in Q4 last year in addition to the percentage of takeout still being higher than pre-pandemic.
I'm a bit surprised to be honest. Restaurants seem as busy as ever but I admittedly don't eat out a lot unless I'm traveling and obviously don't personally have hard data other than what's in articles like this. There seems to be a pretty consistent pattern that the "new normal" is mostly not radically different from the "old normal" but there are definitely some shifts at the margins.
> in addition to the percentage of takeout still being higher than pre-pandemic.
There's an interesting game theory problem here.
At least in my area, higher-end restaurants didn't offer takeout pre-pandemic. If you wanted to eat their food you had to go sit at their table.
But having started offering takeout during the pandemic, it's hard for any one restaurant to stop offering takeout and risk losing business to competitors that continue to offer takeout.
I must say that I don't really understand takeout for higher-end restaurants for the most part. The food is probably on its way to getting cold by the time you get it home and the recipes weren't really designed with takeout in mind. But I generally don't mind cooking; I understand that's not true of a lot of people.
For that reason most of the high end restaurants in my area have separate menus for take out. Usually it's just their regular menu limited to the dishes that travel best, but often times they'll have dishes that are exclusively for their takeout menu (you can still ask for them when dining in)
We have three young kids, so getting a babysitter and going out to a nice restaurant requires advance planning and adds a fair bit to the cost. With takeout we can enjoy an almost-as-nice meal with much less trouble.
I also generally don't mind cooking, but it's a lot harder to prepare a nice meal while also taking care of kids.
In the US, tipping culture needs to die instead of the current increase to try and make up for down sales. Any time I can, I do take out so I don't have any expectation to tip for somebody bringing my food to the table.
I own two restaurants and several years ago ate out at upscale restaurants four times a week. One thing the article doesn't touch on is that the labor shortage has decreased the quality of service, which makes it less desirable to eat out. I have gone to several restaurants where the employees are on AirPods (one employee was even listening as they served me.) Many of the best servers and bartenders I know left the profession during the pandemic and have not come back. One may wonder if this due to the lack of pay keeping up with inflation but the team I have makes $35 to $42 an hour, which is up substantially from before the pandemic.
At least in the UK, a stressful and busy but ultimately friendly job was converted into playing restriction police. I'm not surprised that a ton of people just decided to sack the job off after that.
Where are masking and vaccination being required outside of healthcare settings in the US or Europe? In fact, I just got back from a European event and the organizers were advised by their lawyer that they couldn't require vaccinations given the current rules in the host country.
(That said, I'm sympathetic to people with health issues that mean they feel they can't really participate in reopened society.)
I noticed a few incidents of weird service as things reopened but not so much the unprofessionalism you describe as somehow failing to sell things to paying customers (eg arriving slightly early and asking for a drink and being told no because of some silly reason). But my memory of those things is failing so perhaps it’s happening less.
$35-$42 an hour means absolutely nothing when median home prices are pushing past a million bucks in areas and you have no benefits like healthcare, retirement accounts, etc.
Good point. Brand new homes within 10 minutes of my places of business 485K. Single family homes from the early 2000s start around 425K. You can buy from fixer uppers for around 300K. Townhomes start around 250K and go to around 350K.
* Having AirPods in doesn't mean not listening. I just wear mine and have them on transparent. For particularly loud settings I use live listen.
* I would love if my server was allowed creature comforts like being able to listen to music or podcasts. Working in a restaurant that has the same 20 terrible songs on repeat is miserable. Service jobs are miserable, people suck, the less "masking" the employees do the better.
If the cost of labor is too high just get rid of the labor. It will be a hit with young people. The last thing I want is having someone waiting on me, if people weren't already used to it we wouldn't invented it again because it's weird. The best restaurant experiences I've had are seat yourself, get your own drinks, order on the website from the QR code at the table, and pick up your food from the window.
It's about the impression they make. To earn good tips, servers should be 100% focused and attentive to their customers. AirPods, even if not in use, imply that they are not paying full attention.
I would rather go the opposite route and adopt the model in Japan and other countries so we can finally be rid of tips. Restaurants all over the world exist without tips. The US is not a special case
I don't care about the staff asking me how my day is. I don't care how their day is going. I don't care about how "attentive" the staff is. I don't care if the staff has AirPods in. Replace the check ins with a call button. Familiarity with the menu for questions is all the interaction needed. Wait staff can be reduced, since they are just hanging out in the back unless called or serving food.
We can get rid of pretending the restaurant under paying the wait staff is the diners problem to be made up for with tips, because they need to employ people to talk to you while you're eating.
Extremely high end Michelin star places don't really have check ins, they just monitor you and do their explainers while they serve you. That is nice service, but most restaurants aren't at that level at all, and the prices at a Michelin place are so high that there is no need for a tip for the service.
Absolutely, there is a balance between attentiveness and just being annoying. Good servers know the difference, and seem to be there when you need them and don't bother you when you don't.
Look, this is true from the server side because people suck and use eating out as an excuse to decide whether someone deserves to make minimum wage based on their "performance" but on the tipper side I could not give two shits. As long as I get the food you get 25%. Same with Uber. I think it's gross to make someone dance for their supper. If I want to pay someone to give me attention and make me feel good I'll buy a different service.
I've definitely noticed worse service at many restaurants, but less commented-on seems to be worse food quality (lower quality ingredients and less consistent preparation) and a worse atmosphere (piles of takeout supplies in the dining room, ramshackle outdoor seating areas that were hastily built 3 years ago and never upgraded to something more permanent, etc.) both of which I am also seeing at many places I used to frequent.
It started with the pandemic but stayed because of inflation. Eating out is becoming expensive. Restaurants need to pay a lot more to attract workers which gets reflected in the food prices. Restaurants who were able to transition to a take out model are able to keep prices lower as compared to a full service restaurants and customers don’t want to pay more. My favorite brunch spot for some eggs and coffee used to cost $50 for 2 even during the pandemic shutdowns (they are fully outdoors). Now, it almost touched $100. But my favorite breakfast burrito place used to cost me $13 for a loaded burrito and it now costs me $15. Guess which one gets more business from me now?
To make things work, the tip inflation has made it even worse. More tips for reduced service only encourages more people to order takeout. If I’m ordering at the counter, grabbing my order when it’s ready, eating it at a table and then cleaning up after myself when I’m done, if you ask for a 25-30% tip, I’m going to order takeout and tip 10% if I’m feeling generous.
You're probably right and as a sibling comment noted a lot of restaurants are short-staffed which has to make service worse on average.
At the margins, also, people don't just automatically reset to all their previous behaviors. There's probably at least some subset of people who are like (to your example), "You know? Making brunch at home during the pandemic was really not a big deal. Why am I spending all that money to wait for a table at a crowded restaurant again?"
ADDED: While there's something to be said for sitting at a table on a nice weekend morning and watching the world walk by in the city, throwing together a brunch at home is probably one of the easier and cheaper meals you can do.
No. Tips are for service, attentiveness, and a nice dining experience. And often servers are paid a lower hourly wage in expectation that tips will make up the difference.
Handing a bag of food across the counter does not qualify.
Definitely not outrageous for the west coast pre-pandemic prices. A nice breakfast plate in a popular city was easily $15/person. Add coffee, juice, etc. for two people and then gratuity and it's $50. I'm sure it's even worse now but I stopped going out years ago. I've heard you can't even get a burger and fries for less than $20 now.
For NYC it seems right -- each person has a $15 plate and a $4 coffee, that's $38 which then adds 8.875% = $3.37 for sales tax and $7.60 for 20% tip, for a total of $48.97.
Where they're getting $100 from though, I have no idea. Nobody's charging $30 for eggs or $8 for coffee unless you're at a top-end business hotel in Tokyo or something. Or the eggs come with caviar or they're accompanied with a small steak.
I’m in the Bay Area. The math is close. Pre pandemic we’d do two plates, two coffees and a fifth item (side of bacon or a single pancake or something else). It was $17 for a plate, $5 for a coffee and a few bucks for the side. Came down to around $50-55 depending on whether we ordered the side.
The same plate now costs $27, coffee is $7 and the sides are also similarly up priced. And that moves the needle up on the taxes and tips. This is a proper brunch spot, so it’s not just eggs.
Adding another anecdote for Seattle — a decent local breakfast spot (not upscale) has $15-$20 plates, with $4 for bottomless drip coffee (it’s not great). With 20% tip and 10% tax, it comes to around $30 a person.
I think $30 a person is pretty normal at a lot of decent places. You can definitely still get a good lunch for $15. But just not that normal. I do find $50 a person to be way more common than it should be if you go order a side and a drink as well.
I tried to think of a restaurant in NY that might sell eggs in the morning. I don’t live there so probably I’m biased towards places that might be better known to/targeted at tourists. I looked up the menu for Balthazar and they indeed have $28 eggs (Benedict) and $7 (bowl of) coffee. I guess that’s a bit expensive but could also be the price at a ‘favourite brunch place’.
Yeah, Balthazar is 100% a Soho tourist trap, I've never known anyone here who would actually eat there unless it was paid for by your company or something. (Not that the food is bad, it's just overpriced to take advantage of tourists, not a place locals go.)
A normal, nice popular brunch spot in "trendy" Williamsburg is Egg Shop. Their egg plates are all still $14–16, and coffee is still $3–4:
Yeah, I thought that might be the case. Basically all of the restaurants I’ve heard of in NY don’t do brunch, unsurprisingly. I looked up some breakfast menus at a few reasonably upscale downtown hotels and they had eggs of some kind around $20-$30, but I guess that’s probably not super representative either. I wouldn’t normally go to a local hotel restaurant where I live (though in other places where there are fewer non-hotel options I guess I might).
If it helps, I travel frequently between the Bay Area and NYC, and NYC is noticeably cheaper to eat out in than Bay Area. Maybe it’s the density of restaurants and the competition?
So many complaints. In Helsinki a weekend brunch in the range of 20€-24€ will not have warm entrees, except maybe some eggs and some weenies. 30€ or more will get you an acceptable selection of warm foods.
Altho to be fair, VAT is included and tips are unnecessary.
Maybe the math all works out w.r.t. coastal brunches.
I think you're spot on about the role of tips and inflation. The article brings up patrons saving on marked up alcoholic beverages, but fails to mention the rise in expected tip percentages driven by larger defaults in point-of-sale systems. Tips are effectively a premium paid to eat in a restaurant instead of getting the food to go, and it's only natural that fewer people will be willing to pay that premium as it increases and is introduced in types of restaurants where it wouldn't have traditionally been charged. Couple that with inflation dwarfing wage growth over the last two years, and people are only going to be more sensitive to price differences.
Even after the eggpocalypse, a dozen eggs is still $3.99 at the grocery store. And they only take a few minutes to fry up. Pot of coffee, maybe a buck. I like going out to brunch as much as the next person, but I've done a lot more cooking at home rather than either dine in or take out these days.
I definitely agree on cooking at home more myself. Though for eating out for me used to be more for meeting people or spending time with your partner. I still do that, but instead of meeting at a brunch spot, you do a takeout and hang out elsewhere.
Our family went to a restaurant yesterday, and they put on a 20% gratuity by default, and then presented a credit card bill with a line for a secondary tip and suggested amounts based on percentage (18%, 20%, 25%) -- effectively tips of 42%, 44%, and 50%
The first tip (the default 20%) was hidden on the detailed receipt. The credit card receipt had no indication there was already a tip applied.
I was struck by the dark pattern here.
Further, the service was so-so. We had to ask for water three times before we got refills, kids screaming the entire time. Dinner out is meant to be relaxing and enjoyable, not a quest to demand something you're already paying for.
When I spoke to a co-diner, the explanation was "well they are short on staff." OK, so if they are short on staff and couldn't refill glasses with water, how did that justify a 20% gratuity?
Also, if they are short on staff, and the smaller set of staff are sharing a tip, doesn't that even out a lower tip?
This has happened over and over and our default response is not to complain, or write bad reviews, but just to stop dining out. We cook at home, with high-quality ingredients, and enjoy the time together.
54 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 110 ms ] thread"It got darker after the sun set, and will therefore never be light again."
I'm a bit surprised to be honest. Restaurants seem as busy as ever but I admittedly don't eat out a lot unless I'm traveling and obviously don't personally have hard data other than what's in articles like this. There seems to be a pretty consistent pattern that the "new normal" is mostly not radically different from the "old normal" but there are definitely some shifts at the margins.
There's an interesting game theory problem here.
At least in my area, higher-end restaurants didn't offer takeout pre-pandemic. If you wanted to eat their food you had to go sit at their table.
But having started offering takeout during the pandemic, it's hard for any one restaurant to stop offering takeout and risk losing business to competitors that continue to offer takeout.
I also generally don't mind cooking, but it's a lot harder to prepare a nice meal while also taking care of kids.
Working during the restrictions was traumatic.
At least in the UK, a stressful and busy but ultimately friendly job was converted into playing restriction police. I'm not surprised that a ton of people just decided to sack the job off after that.
(That said, I'm sympathetic to people with health issues that mean they feel they can't really participate in reopened society.)
I'm not a waiter and I don't need any sympathy, just making an observation.
Staff does it for you but complains about those who don't and make the Staff’s lives harder. I think you're barking up the wrong tree.
* Having AirPods in doesn't mean not listening. I just wear mine and have them on transparent. For particularly loud settings I use live listen.
* I would love if my server was allowed creature comforts like being able to listen to music or podcasts. Working in a restaurant that has the same 20 terrible songs on repeat is miserable. Service jobs are miserable, people suck, the less "masking" the employees do the better.
If the cost of labor is too high just get rid of the labor. It will be a hit with young people. The last thing I want is having someone waiting on me, if people weren't already used to it we wouldn't invented it again because it's weird. The best restaurant experiences I've had are seat yourself, get your own drinks, order on the website from the QR code at the table, and pick up your food from the window.
It's why "food halls" are doing so well.
I don't care about the staff asking me how my day is. I don't care how their day is going. I don't care about how "attentive" the staff is. I don't care if the staff has AirPods in. Replace the check ins with a call button. Familiarity with the menu for questions is all the interaction needed. Wait staff can be reduced, since they are just hanging out in the back unless called or serving food.
We can get rid of pretending the restaurant under paying the wait staff is the diners problem to be made up for with tips, because they need to employ people to talk to you while you're eating.
Extremely high end Michelin star places don't really have check ins, they just monitor you and do their explainers while they serve you. That is nice service, but most restaurants aren't at that level at all, and the prices at a Michelin place are so high that there is no need for a tip for the service.
To make things work, the tip inflation has made it even worse. More tips for reduced service only encourages more people to order takeout. If I’m ordering at the counter, grabbing my order when it’s ready, eating it at a table and then cleaning up after myself when I’m done, if you ask for a 25-30% tip, I’m going to order takeout and tip 10% if I’m feeling generous.
At the margins, also, people don't just automatically reset to all their previous behaviors. There's probably at least some subset of people who are like (to your example), "You know? Making brunch at home during the pandemic was really not a big deal. Why am I spending all that money to wait for a table at a crowded restaurant again?"
ADDED: While there's something to be said for sitting at a table on a nice weekend morning and watching the world walk by in the city, throwing together a brunch at home is probably one of the easier and cheaper meals you can do.
Handing a bag of food across the counter does not qualify.
Where on earth is this? This seems incredibly expensive even by East/West Coast standards.
Where they're getting $100 from though, I have no idea. Nobody's charging $30 for eggs or $8 for coffee unless you're at a top-end business hotel in Tokyo or something. Or the eggs come with caviar or they're accompanied with a small steak.
The same plate now costs $27, coffee is $7 and the sides are also similarly up priced. And that moves the needle up on the taxes and tips. This is a proper brunch spot, so it’s not just eggs.
I think $30 a person is pretty normal at a lot of decent places. You can definitely still get a good lunch for $15. But just not that normal. I do find $50 a person to be way more common than it should be if you go order a side and a drink as well.
A normal, nice popular brunch spot in "trendy" Williamsburg is Egg Shop. Their egg plates are all still $14–16, and coffee is still $3–4:
https://www.eggshopnyc.com/menus/#breakfast-lunch
Altho to be fair, VAT is included and tips are unnecessary.
Maybe the math all works out w.r.t. coastal brunches.
There's also been a large uptick in restaurants' costs in terms of raw materials.
The first tip (the default 20%) was hidden on the detailed receipt. The credit card receipt had no indication there was already a tip applied. I was struck by the dark pattern here.
Further, the service was so-so. We had to ask for water three times before we got refills, kids screaming the entire time. Dinner out is meant to be relaxing and enjoyable, not a quest to demand something you're already paying for.
When I spoke to a co-diner, the explanation was "well they are short on staff." OK, so if they are short on staff and couldn't refill glasses with water, how did that justify a 20% gratuity?
Also, if they are short on staff, and the smaller set of staff are sharing a tip, doesn't that even out a lower tip?
This has happened over and over and our default response is not to complain, or write bad reviews, but just to stop dining out. We cook at home, with high-quality ingredients, and enjoy the time together.
The portion sizes often seem to be simultaneously decreasing, too.
The quality of the ingredients is also often noticeably less than it used to be.
On top of all of that, the service from the staff is also often terrible these days.
I end up paying far more, getting a much smaller quantity of food, what little I do get is inferior, and the overall experience is unpleasant.
It's not just getting the same for more money. It's now about getting far less for more money.