The headline from a recent story in the Wall Street Journal: “Going Out for Lunch Is a Dying Tradition.”
According to the story:
“I put [restaurant] lunch right up there with fax machines and pay phones,” said Jim Parks, a 55-year-old sales director who used to dine out for lunch nearly every day but found in recent years that he no longer had room for it in his schedule.
Like Mr. Parks, many U.S. workers now see stealing away for an hour at the neighborhood diner in the middle of the day as a luxury. Even the classic “power lunch” is falling out of favor among power brokers.
With the fall in lunch business, more restaurants are hurting. And the pain extends back to food processors and suppliers, who have also seen business fall.
The Journal reports “new restaurant concepts, such as those that cater to consumers’ desire for faster, healthier food, are on the rise.”
Is the same thing true here? Are more people packing their own lunches? Are restaurants struggling at lunch? Are business lunches dead? And is the lunch trade transforming itself, of necessity?
Please share your thoughts and experiences.
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David and I usually have lunch at cheap restaurants, such as Zippy’s, Cattle Company, Anna Miller’s, and Gyotaku. Business is thriving for these restaurants.
Getting out of the office for lunch isn’t complely about the food ….. It’s about getting away from the office! you can escape prison and return to the real world with real people for a few precious moments. a decent walk outside makes it a lot easier to return to indoor pomp and bullshit. that, and having a decent non-vegan meat sandwich with extra cheese.
lunch at restaurant is wonderful. The price is cheaper than dinner, so it’s great to see what a restaurant has to offer without paying the dinner price. Of course, I speak as a retiree and not as one who works during the week. Employees at a lot of companies get less than an hour to have lunch, my last employer had 30 minute lunches with a few dept. having 45 minutes if they were lucky. So it’s not really up to the eateries to have sit down customers but the surrounding businesses that support them.