Trying something a little different here. There are a few themes I continually find myself coming back to in thinking about the future of restaurants. These links from the last few weeks touch on these themes. I am sharing them while I digest and try to synthesize them.
The Themes:
Remote Work and It’s Urban Impacts
Food & Alcohol Consumption Habits
Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation
The Generational Wealth Gap
AI and Automation
Please come back to the office, please: The Future of the Office Is Cozy.
Or maybe it’s Instagram worthiness?
Or is the Return to Office just DEAD? Or maybe you should just work from a restaurant since hospitality, design, cozy nooks, food, and drinks were kinda our thing first.
This is getting closer to how ghost kitchens could actually contribute to the restaurant ecosystem, but I’d rather they just do prep. I like the idea of Prep as a Service sponsored by Travis Kalanick and the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund.
But also, they don’t want to be called Ghost Kitchen anymore please.
And maybe automation by robot isn’t is close as we think (featuring a ‘humans are underrated’ cameo by Elon Musk).
In related news…Restaurant wages rise faster than prices.
31.2% increase in Non-Alc Drinks in Off-Premise. Anecdotal sidebars: My local wine/liquor store transitioned 2 full doors of there beer fridge to non-alcoholic wine/beer/cocktails/adaptogenics(?) and I got a very thoughtful email from a guest who loved an event we were doing but said he would not go as there was not a non-alcoholic offering along with the menu, just wine and cocktails.
And White Claw introduces Non-Alc Seltzer, which I’d always understood to be… seltzer.
Eating & DRINKING less. GLP-1 meds (Ozempic, etc) + less drinking will meaningfully impact the restaurant P&L.
720 cars per hour in a Chick-fil-a drive thru. Drive thru’s seem to be the big early winner in our increasingly automated and isolated world.
There’s a lot happening at McDonald’s. New Stores, New Concepts, New Buns.
Brand Affinity among younger people reflects economic uncertainty.
Writing is the process by which you realize that you do not understand what you are talking about. Of course, you can learn a lot about something without writing about it. However, writing about something complicated and hard to pin down acts as a test to see how well you understand it. When we approach our work as a stranger, we often discover how something that seems so simple in our heads is explained entirely wrong.
Shane Parrish, Founder of Farnam St. and Author of Clear Thinking
Thank you!
Eli