4 ms·
Agree with everything. However, this might not be true: > There's likely not much reason to think that in 2022 the dining habits of consumers will be drastical
by CydeWeys 6y ago
Agree with everything. However, this might not be true:
> There's likely not much reason to think that in 2022 the dining habits of consumers will be drastically different than in 2019.
I know plenty of people who basically never learned how to cook and who always ate out or ordered delivery. A lot of them have been forced by present circumstances to finally learn how to cook. They might continue doing so more often going forward rather than returning to pre-pandemic levels of restaurant consumption. I wonder how widespread this will continue to be. I for sure am cooking at home a lot more than I used to, and this won't change till I go back to the office full time (if that ever even happens!).
- ghaff 6y agoA couple weeks ago I saw data that suggested that more home cooking and online grocery shopping were two of the behavioral changes for a lot of people that were most likely to remain in place long-term. (Online fitness was another one.)
- CydeWeys 6y agoI believe it, on both these counts. It rings true with my personal experience and what I'm seeing in my friends, co-workers, and family. It really does seem like some non-negligible percentage of restaurant patronizing isn't coming back, and if that's true, then there's gonna be fewer restaurants.
- ashtonkem 6y agoWe’re never going to back to in-person grocery shopping. It’s much easier to avoid junk food when ordering on-line as compared to when you’re holding it in a grocery store.
- blfr 6y agoKnowing how to cook has done nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for going out or ordering in. In fact, sometimes I order the very things I cook to see how a pro makes them. The trend propelling eating out is atomization. It simply isn't time/cost effective to cook for one person, probably not even two. Shopping, prep, cooking, and cleaning take so much time that even gourmet restaurants have completely reasonable prices. Unless people start having big families and living in the exurbs, restaurants should be fine.
- sushshshsh 6y agoTotally on a tangent but my experience with restaurant cooking compared to my newfound cooking expertise is that the restaurant food is drenched in oil and salt and is cooked at much too high a temperature
- vsef 6y agoCooking at home is dramatically more time/cost effective for two people compared to eating out. Anyone this isn't true for just has very inefficient shopping, prep, cooking and cleaning habits. They probably also don't understand how inefficient they are in these areas, or know what the food budget of someone who knows what they are doing actually looks like. This is always abundantly clear when this gets discussed on HN.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoI don't think that's the right way to conceptualize this. Efficient shopping, prep, cooking and cleaning habits are complex and practiced skills, which not everyone has the time or energy to learn. I've cooked ever since I was old enough to be trusted with a kitchen knife, and I still regularly find myself throwing out half-eaten packs of meat or whole cabbage heads unless I sit down and literally write out a meal plan.
- CydeWeys 6y agoI agree with all this, but a lot of the meals eaten by people who formerly couldn't cook weren't eaten in restaurants; they were picked up from a fast/casual place nearby or ordered in. I used to eat all my meals at work, which roughly approximates ordering delivery, and it took less time than I'm spending now cooking food for most meals.
- heavyset_go 6y agoThe cheapest I've ever eaten was after I made conscious effort to only buy and eat healthy things. Since then, the only time I've ever seen something that's sold in a box be cheaper than produce is when whatever's in that box is made out of mostly sugar or flour. I'm under the impression that many people choose to shop at places like Whole Foods and pay a premium for it when they can get much cheaper, but same quality or better, food elsewhere. The markup on produce (besides bananas) at Whole Foods is typically 2x-4x more than the price of organic produce from a farmer's market, or other grocery stores. That, or they're under the impression that what they pay for meal-kits is how much food costs at the store. You're paying restaurant prices for food when you buy meal-kits.
- heavyset_go 6y agoPeople eat out for a variety of reasons, like they don't want to cook, want to eat something new or because they want to go out. They're more or less being forced to cook right now, unless they want to put themselves into uncomfortable situations everyday where they might expose themselves to infected people. This is similar to saying that if everyone has a bedroom or kitchen, they'll never want to stay at a hotel or a bed and breakfast. People travel because they don't want to be at home, or because they want to visit somewhere else. Similarly, people are, in general, being forced to stay put or they'll put themselves into uncomfortable situations where they might expose themselves to infected people.
- CydeWeys 6y agoI'm not talking about those people though, I'm talking about people who were patronizing restaurants daily because they didn't know how to cook for themselves. Those people now do know how to cook for themselves, and might well not go back to only eating food from restaurants now that they have acquired the skill and as a bonus are seeing how much money they're saving. In other words, there may well be noticeable long term trends in restaurant-patronizing frequency that persist even after the pandemic is over and restaurants are back to 100% capacity.