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Restaurants Shrink as Food Delivery Apps Get More Popular (bloomberg.com)
People are still eating restaurant food -- they're just not doing it at restaurants as much. From a report: Delivery apps from DoorDash, Postmates, GrubHub and UberEats have made ordering in easier, and have changed the way food chains think about their business. The number of food delivery app downloads is up 380 percent compared with three years ago, according to market-data firm App Annie, and research firm Cowen and Co. predicts that U.S. restaurant delivery sales will rise an average of 12 percent a year to $76 billion in the next four years. At Firehouse, revenue has increased 7 percent this year, mainly from orders placed online and through delivery apps, Fox said. More than half of his sales are for food eaten elsewhere.
[...] Some new restaurant owners are skipping tables and chairs altogether and just leasing kitchen space to prepare food for couriers. Those are called cloud kitchens or virtual restaurants because they have no dining rooms or wait staff and sell their meals through the internet and mobile apps like DoorDash or UberEats. Mark Chase, the founder of Restaurant Real Estate Advisors, a consulting group that helps restaurant entrepreneurs find space and negotiate leases, said that the majority of his clients are interested in the kitchen-only business model. "There is a general scaling down on seating space and scaling up on kitchen space, as people just want to eat at home, on the couch," Chase said.
[...] Some new restaurant owners are skipping tables and chairs altogether and just leasing kitchen space to prepare food for couriers. Those are called cloud kitchens or virtual restaurants because they have no dining rooms or wait staff and sell their meals through the internet and mobile apps like DoorDash or UberEats. Mark Chase, the founder of Restaurant Real Estate Advisors, a consulting group that helps restaurant entrepreneurs find space and negotiate leases, said that the majority of his clients are interested in the kitchen-only business model. "There is a general scaling down on seating space and scaling up on kitchen space, as people just want to eat at home, on the couch," Chase said.
I am no liberal sympathy-monger riding on the bandwagon of local / artisanal / anti-gentrification / etc that thinks that all technology is bad. But the issue of how local restaurants are surviving is one that has hit home more than others. Specifically, how a lot of small restaurants, "mom-and-pop" to shorthand it, are at the mercy of middlemen, essentially who are extracting the profit out of the industry.
Small restaurants have never been great at marketing, being super efficient in delivery, or getting rewarded with outsized profits for the service they provide, and now this layer of tech middlemen has come in to squeeze out the profit even more.
I read the story about how Doordash and their ilk (I forget the specific service mentioned in the story exactly, but similar ordering service) basically takes over a restaurant's phone number, publishes it and diverts and monitors their calls to make sure they're paying an agreed % cut of every order. Even if Doordash did essentially nothing value adding for that order. The customers don't know anything different -- they're just ordering from their favorite restaurant using a convenient method.
So basically the restaurant and its workers become a labor slave to Doordash because customer traffic has been channeled through Doordash, even though the restaurant has enough patrons to exist on its own. They pay a cut for people being able to press a button and have food appear, rather than walk down to the restaurant, or call the legit restaurant's phone number.
So, how is the small guy ever to overcome the power of tech companies in a situation like this? Or how can you ever turn a profit as a small company when tech talent is out there to squeeze you as soon as you do?
Pretty soon, I could imagine that we'll just become a country of order takers from some tech overlords, and be dominated by flavorless food dictated by corporate efficiency recipes. It's a little disturbing.
Fast food? Yeah I'll have that to go.
Mediocre chain establishment? I'll have that to go.
Trendy fashionista place that serves kale and rabbitfood with a side of pretentious? I won't even spend a dime there, but if I had to, it'd be to go.
Family-owned restaurant one has been visiting for the past 10 years? Nope, I'll make time to go there, have that glorious just-brewed tea, nod to the chef and without a word, food magically appears, to my taste, and eat while watching the kitchen do their thing.
Not every restaurant deserves going to. Those that do... treasure them and treat them well.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
What else would you call it? Its a place who's primary purpose is to serve food. Its not fine dining, or a particularly good restaurant, but its a restaurant.
No, its a lot of people of all ages. I can get out of work at around 7, find a restaurant, hope they have a seat, wait for 30 minutes until they do, then get seated and go through an hour long process to eat. Or I can go home, hop on an app on the subway and order dinner delivered, have it arrive 20 minutes after I get home, and eat in a quick 15 minutes and get on with my evening. And I don't need to deal with waiters, crowds, noise, and I can do whatever I want while waiting and eating- shower, watch tv, play games, etc. Almost none of that is possible in a restaurant. Its the same reason why movie theaters are losing to home movie watching.
They're not going to totally replace restaurants of course. Restaurants also serve the purpose of a place outside the house to meet, and many meals taste better hot out of the kitchen. But they'll definitely reduce the amount of dining in.
If there's any demographic divide, it will be urban/rural. The apps make more sense in urban/suburban areas with high restaurant density (especially in old east coast cities where apartment kitchens leave much to be desired).
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
It is also not a good idea to base a business on a lowering trend as well.
However it is difficult to determine what is a fad and what is a trend.
A lot of people didn't get Color TV's because they though it was Fad, but it was a trend.
A lot of people bought 3d TV's because they thought it was trend, but it was a Fad.
Mail Order was a fad which got killed by Box Stores, while Online Shopping (nearly the same thing) is a trend which is killing Box Stores.
The big Grocery Stores took over the Mom and Pop corner shop, but didn't do much against the convince stores.
Now Restaurants are pushing the idea of the experience, while Millennials just want the food. Especially for the low - mid range restaurants (Think many of the chain restaurants). Where the food quality is OK, but not worth the hassle of going to a restaurant, waiting for your turn, getting bugged by waiters. Having to sit and wait for your food, be sure you behave so you don't get kicked out...
Now this could just be a fad, as Millennial get older and more mature, will want to go for more of the experience. Or it could just be a trend, of wanting the restaurant food, at the home experience. Where you can just be relaxed.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Only if they're operating illegally- do you know what a pain in the ass it usually is to get approval from the local city, county and/or state health department to operate a commercial kitchen??
Going out to lunch, going for a nice walk, and sitting down for 45 minutes is seen as anti-social and unproductive. After all, you could be working more and having lunch at your desk like a good little worker-bee.
I go to restaurants because I like the experience. Some I go to because they're small shops where the owner is the guy in the kitchen cooking my food and waves to me.
My favourite restaurant is one my wife and I will only go to 2-3 times a year, because we're going to sit and have several courses, drinks, and desserts and then walk home. But the head waitress knows us by name, and the chef/owner is 10 feet away making my food and occasionally chatting with me, and will happily tweak dishes within reason for our tastes.
I have no intention of letting these tech companies be the ones getting the money, and I've even heard in a few cases restaurants have stopped supporting Uber Eats because Uber didn't pay them, or that the Uber driver is stealing the food.
No thanks, I'll support local business, and not some douchy tech company in California. Bummer for the Uber drivers who are essentially making nothing, but that was never viable economically and not my problem.
My hard working waitress who brings me fresh beer, smiles, and checks in on me ... I'm far more interested in making sure she gets a nice tip, because she's probably been friendly to me and recognised me and made sure I had a good meal -- and I'm old enough to place value on that.
I have an affinity for the service industry, because unless you're an asshole, there's lots of nice, hard-working people who do their best to give you a good experience. They deserve the tips and everything else, not Uber.
I just hope this idiotic 'everything is an app' culture doesn't keep wrecking the good bits of our actual culture.
I just cook or (OMG!) go pick stuff up myself when I'd doing takeout. I get to walk a bit, no waiting for a messenger while the food gets cold. I also can pay good, old-fashioned, cold, hard cash, which is better for a small business than a crap card and delivery appitty-app taking a cut of their proceeds.
You tip someone who walks 50 feet indoors to deliver food to your table, but you don't tip someone who has to bike or drive for minutes to hours, often in bad weather? That's barbaric.
But what bothers me is the fact that ANYONE uses the ones that make you tip *before* the actual food arrives. It'd be like walking into a restaurant and tipping your future waitress. Uber Eats is the only one that doesn't do this in my experience, and once I discovered that, I deleted the other apps and never looked back. What a ridiculous layout. Who puts up with that!?