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The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants
- jacknews 2y agoi'm not sure how this is anything to do with productivity surely that's when the same product or service is delivered more cheaply the starting question must have been more like 'why are restaurants more profitable now' and it's because restaurants are now selling more take-out meals; essentially a different product, which has lower overheads
- jchw 2y agoLabor productivity is just a technical term in this case. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/labor-productivity.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/labor-productivity.asp
- mihaic 2y agoThis is a strong argument that habits formed during covid stuck around until today, as it was long enough to reshape the baseline. Unfortunately these habits seem to affect the sociability of everyone, and I think we still underestimate what a terrible burden staying locked in was on the population.
- BurningFrog 2y agoSo what kind of macro event might nudge us back to sociability?
- bfdm 2y agoDying or becoming disable long term are also pretty bad for socializing. Anyone trying to take reasonable precautions for themselves or to protect vulnerable people around them has pretty much been jettisoned by society. Restaurants and bars are not the only way to socialize, but being unwilling to participate in those becomes a social death sentence. I have a pet hypothesis that there is high correlation between the people choosing precautions and those who did the social & emotional labour of organizing and cohering in the before times. I'm not suggesting anything has stopped, clearly it hasn't. But it does sound like what remains is a thinner gruel barely covering the bottom of the pot.
- nortlov 2y agoMy take away is that the overall labor per customer decreases because workers are spending less time on non-cooking/serving tasks. The paper implies the efficiency gain is in how labor is used rather than production or serving efficiency. This seems like an anticlimactic conclusion.
- smelendez 2y agoIt feels worth measuring formally so that the scientific community can basically treat this as a known, citable fact and have some numbers to work with. I do wonder if the somewhat elliptical, high academic writing (“take-out” in quotes as if it’s an exotic term) and talk of a mystery being solved is to deflect criticism that this feels obvious or like a WSJ story.
- relaxing 2y agoIt never ceases to amaze me when tech people take issue with jargon in other fields. The authors use academic tone because they’re academics writing for academics. The conclusion might feel obvious to you (very conveniently, when you’ve already been handed the answer) but what’s notable is proving it with data and rigorous analysis.
- bbor 2y agoYup, they pretty much state that explicitly right in the abstract. I think we have a relatively rare example of a clickbait scientific paper title, here! “If everyone’s doing takeout, you need fewer employees” isn’t exactly a shocking revelation.
- kittikitti 2y agoI don't have to deal with racist waiters by ordering through an app and having it delivered. This is a win-win where the restaurant is more "productive" and I don't have to deal with the staff guessing my race so they know how badly to treat me.
- NemoNobody 2y agoI've been a waiter or bartender on and off since University days - I'm really sorry you've experienced that. Making someone feel unwelcome is maybe the worse mistake you can make as a Server in restaurant - it leaves an impression on people, as You've noticed. Obviously, they failed their job responsibilities - failed at being people too. The owner/manager should never be allowing such behavior, if they are acting in a way that makes you feel like you do, that shouldn't be happening at all. That is an administrative failure too. I'm sorry that it's like that. I'd say stop eating there but you shouldn't have to do that even.
- erulabs 2y agoMy favorite ~75 year old BBQ place here in Pasadena has half the bar (where you'd sit and eat and socialize if you were eating alone) reserved to give space for all the take-out orders and uber-eats pickups flowing through. I see single people come in and, without a space at the bar, take a seat at a booth alone. I don't blame restaurants for this at all, it's a tough business, but I do think it's about time we apply just an ounce of shame to people who uber-eats every meal they eat from restaurants clearly designed for eating-in. Not to rant, but take out is for the pizza place, the Indian grocery store with no seating, the tiny hole-in-the-wall Chinese place, etc. If you order a southern fried chicken plate from a nice neighborhood restaurant for delivery, shame on you. Delivery sushi? Boo and hiss!
- EcommerceFlow 2y agoRidiculous, you can't force user behavior like that. Have the restaurants and what not entice you to stay.
- erulabs 2y agoThe fact that sitting in at a nice cozy almost 100 year old bar and talking to your neighbors does not entice you is the problem I'm attempting to fix with a little good ol' fashion social shaming.
- nemomarx 2y agoI prefer to talk to my loved ones at home, usually? What's the use case for eating alone at a restaurant anyway?
- Carrok 2y agoIs this a serious question? Because you're hungry, want to eat, and can't or don't want to cook (e.g., traveling for work). Sitting at a bar with other people, suddenly you are not eating alone. It's called socializing. Some people enjoy such things.
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- wormlord 2y agoFriedmanite economists lauding the "productivity increases" of restaurants, meanwhile I have stopped eating anywhere except food trucks because mid-tier dining is so bad now due to cost-cutting and loss of expertise. Yeah that tracks for Chicago School economics.
- knowknow 2y agoI don’t see how explaining productivity increases that didn’t have a previous known origin is “lauding”. What measurable phenomena do you think economists should focus their research on instead?
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y agoActually wait, that’s the whole issue. The things being superseded for productivity here aren’t measurable.
- knowknow 2y agoThen how would you expect an economist to study it, go to restaurants and report their opinions? The comment i was replying to is essentially being snarky that economist are doing what they’re supposed to. Seeing and explaining economic trends.
- wormlord 2y ago> Then how would you expect an economist to study it, go to restaurants and report their opinions? Unironically yes. There are dimensions other than raw profitability that determine the health of a sector. The work that chicago school economists do flattens everything onto just a financial axis, which is harmful in my opinion. What do I care about the "productivity" of the restaurant sector when all the food tastes like shit?
- lukeschlather 2y agoNo, they did measure them, they just didn't bother to value them. People are spending less time in the restaurants (<10 minutes.) People spending time in the restaurants are getting service (cleaning etc.) and use of the space/dishes. They aren't accounting for these services.
- JackFr 2y agoI'm not an academic economist, so what do I know, but I think the authors aare missing something else. I think the productivity was in some part driven by minimum wage laws. At lower wages, developing, installing and maintaining ordering kiosks and smart phone ordering apps makes less sense, because fast food cashiers are so cheap. When fast food cashiers become more expensive (and the technology costs come down) kiosks and apps make more sense. The same amount of food sold without the cost of cashiers is the resultant increase in productivity. So my theory in a nutshell was that cashiers added little value. Substituting capital for labor led to labor productivity gains.
- jldugger 2y agoWell, the minimum wage laws are more or less constant, but the paper is able to examine inter-store variation: > Within McDonald’s restaurants, for example, the locations with the largest increase in short-stay customers saw the most productivity growth.
- cs702 2y agoAbstract: "We document that, after remaining almost constant for almost 30 years, real labor productivity at U.S. restaurants surged over 15% during the COVID pandemic. This surge has persisted even as many conditions have returned to pre-pandemic levels. Using mobile phone data tracking visits and spending at more than 100,000 individual limited service restaurants across the country, we explore the potential sources of the surge. It cannot be explained by economies of scale, expanding market power, or a direct result of COVID-sourced demand fluctuations. The restaurants’ productivity growth rates are strongly correlated, however, with reductions in the amount of time their customers spend in the establishments, particularly with a rising share of customers spending 10 minutes or less. The frequency of such ‘take-out’ customers rose considerably during COVID, even at fast food restaurants, and never went back down. The magnitude of the restaurant-level relationship between productivity and customer dwell time, if applied to the aggregate decrease in dwell time, can explain almost all of the aggregate productivity increase in our sample." Huh. Interesting! The finding is consistent with both the changes, since the pandemic, in my own eating-out habits and the behavior of other customers I see at restaurants I visit regularly. Nonetheless, seeing it validated with an analysis of largish-scale data is worth the read. The question is whether eating-out habits have permanently changed, or whether they will eventually revert to pre-pandemic patterns. Thank you for sharing this on HN!
- rickyhatespeas 2y agoI don't think the number of takeout orders will reduce much unless restaurants need a reason to seat customers. Many restaurants didn't have good or any pickup systems prior to COVID and many users hadn't experienced the ease and cost benefits of app-based ordering (reward programs, etc).
- uppost 2y agoA lot of the change in behavior probably corresponds to more work from home and social isolation. I haven't been to a sit down restaurant in over 5 years, but I still grab a to go meal about once a quarter. With inflation, I'm less price sensitive too when I buy my quarterly big mack, so I go for it and supersize, may get mcnuggets too. So work from home and inflation probably factor in.
- the-rc 2y agoI would have guessed that the surge had something to do with faster payments, namely contactless and the wireless terminals. In a way, it's even broader than that: if you order for pick up and prepay, payment is pretty much out of the picture entirely, replaced by just verifying that you are getting the right order. Then you're avoiding the productivity losses in serving the dishes, washing the plates, etc.
- deathanatos 2y ago> The restaurants’ productivity growth rates are strongly correlated, however, with reductions in the amount of time their customers spend in the establishments, particularly with a rising share of customers spending 10 minutes or less. The frequency of such ‘take-out’ customers rose considerably during COVID, even at fast food restaurants, and never went back down. The magnitude of the restaurant-level relationship between productivity and customer dwell time, if applied to the aggregate decrease in dwell time, can explain almost all of the aggregate productivity increase in our sample. One restaurant near me ditched its dine-in service entirely during COVID. They never went back; the dining area is now some odd mix of storage/prep/work area, and they're still take-out only. Which is a bit sad; the dine-in area was a pretty cozy experience, and you'd get free tea with the meal. (It was a Japanese restaurant.)
- tmpz22 2y agoJust look at the furniture in American restaurants - cheap, plastic, and uncomfortable, even in high priced restaurants. I empathize with the economic predicament of restauranteurs but I'll continue to frequent establishments with better comfort features especially because the prices are high no matter where you go. Why pay $25 rushed sloppy meal when you could pay $30 for a better meal, in a better setting, and resulting in a better (earned!) tip.
- tw04 2y ago>Just look at the furniture in American restaurants - cheap, plastic, and uncomfortable, even in high priced restaurants. Seriously, where are you eating? Nothing remotely resembling "high end" anywhere near me uses plastic furniture. It's all well-padded wood. From steak restaurants to ramen to pizza, I can't name a single place I go to that's plastic other than the typical fast food joints.
- satvikpendem 2y agoI agree, I don't recall seeing plastic in any sit-down restaurants.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- krunck 2y agoEating in American restaurants where there is constant pressure to shovel in the food and leave, is a waste. You feel like you're on an assembly line. What's the point then? On top of that they have the gall to ask for 25% tips. For what? Pressuring me to leave? I enjoy visiting Eastern Europe(and Europe in general) where a party can sit at a table at 7pm, dine, drink, talk, and relax and remain there until close at 1am if they want. No pressure. Just spending time with people and sharing food together. The table is yours for the evening. No pressure to tip at all yet I tip generously. America's got it all wrong.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> enjoy visiting Eastern Europe(and Europe in general) where a party can sit at a table at 7pm, dine, drink, talk, and relax and remain there until close at 1am if they want Would note that this is common at high-end restaurants in America. (Unless they sear at 10 or 11PM, in which case they may want another turn of tables.)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- supertrope 2y agoIt depends on the restaurant. If there is a line of patrons to be seated they will definitely nudge you toward conclusion. Even if they are not busy the more customers a waiter churns through the more they earn. I find tips deceptive. One is not evaluating service quality. It’s just letting them advertise prices at 75% of actual cost before 20% de facto mandatory tip and 10% sales tax.
- bongodongobob 2y agoWhere? NYC? The densest cities in the country? If you get outside the metropolises it's not like that at all. That's just a reflection of demand and population density.
- dr-detroit 2y ago[dead]
- alwa 2y agoHow much of this is the COVID-correlated normalization of delivery apps [0]? Anecdotally I do sometimes notice people eating quickly or taking out, but what I really notice is the nonstop flurry of app delivery folks darting in and out of the pickup area... Seems consistent with the study's observations, too: > As a result, we think the growth in take-out or delivery is the primary driver of the jump in short visits. With take-out, the customer orders on their phone and then comes into the restaurant to pick it up without eating there. With delivery, the customer orders food to be delivered to their home either from a food app like Grubhub or directly from the restaurant itself as with a Domino’s Pizza. It is important to recognize that either of these things connotes a substitution of home production for restaurant labor. The customer cleans up after themselves and washes their own dishes, for example. And delivery services substitute for the customer traveling themselves. But they are still, from the restaurant’s perspective, just a new stream of demand. If the restaurant can satisfy such quick-turn customers in addition to their regular customers with the same labor force, that would show up in the data as a clear, legitimate increase in their productivity. [0] cf. https://www.businessofapps.com/data/doordash-statistics/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/doordash-statistics/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/grubhub-statistics/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/grubhub-statistics/
- colonial 2y agoWhat I'd like to know are the demographics of the people using the delivery apps. Everyone I know refuses to touch them due to the massive extra costs piled on top, but whenever I swing by somewhere in-person to get takeout, I have the same experience as you - there's always at least a few bags on the "Doordash shelf" or equivalent. Who's burning all this money?!
- jeffchien 2y agoIt's a little frustrating to me that the paper breaks out major chains as the big contributing factors, but doesn't analyze the remaining bucket. If possible I'd like to see the restaurants sliced by $/visit to see the effects on mid- or high-end restaurants.
- Tesas 2y agoThey probably offer less complex dishes with simpler to cook ingredients.
- copypasterepeat 2y agoI wonder if the surge in productivity would hold up if you also take into account the productivity of delivery people, who are with the move to delivery apps as much a part of the kitchen-to-table pipeline as the people working in the kitchens. I don't have any data on what they typically make, but my very anecdotal evidence suggests it's usually not much, especially when you take into account the gas, wear and tear on the car, etc.
- laughing_man 2y agoAs a group they may actually lose money, though they might not realize it. The big thing that nobody factors in is insurance - personal auto insurance policies generally don't cover business use, and if your insurance company finds out you were driving for DoorDash when you rear-ended someone, they won't pay out. You can get a commercial rider for your policy, but then you won't make any money. A buddy of mine was trying to make one of those companies his full time job, and it just didn't work out. There are too many hidden costs.
- pcthrowaway 2y agoPeople switched away from cash during COVID. Lots of people who might have been unbanked or lightly banked went all-in as everything went digital. Now restaurants (historically a pretty cash-heavy industry) have fewer cash transactions. Possibly related?
- khazhoux 2y agoI think the move away from cash coincided with COVID but was not related much. The convenience of digital simply made cash useless (mostly).
- ekianjo 2y ago> The convenience of digital simply made cash useless (mostly). Useless? Wait until your digital transactions fail or your bank or your state decides to block your access to your payment system. And believe me, it's not a "if", this is a real threat that will be waged against people. When it's technically possible, it always ends up becoming a reality. And by that time, "going back to cash" may not be an option in certain places, because of 'convenience'.
- lxgr 2y agoThat's arguably already the reality in the US to some extent. Many people I know don't even carry enough cash to pay for a single meal, unless they know they'll be going to a cash only place.
- vkou 2y agoIs that more or less likely than the state deciding to block your access to freedom, and arresting and imprisoning/deporting you? When you live in an authoritarian state with arbitrary law 'enforcement', the problem isn't the payment system that you're using. It's that you no longer live in a country of laws. And that's not a problem that's going to be solved by using dead tree money.
- throw_pm23 2y ago
- TriangleEdge 2y agoI get recruitment emails for a startup some people from Uber are making called Cloud Kitchens. Basically kitchens that can scale based on demand. The company provides ingredients and the kitchens make the food. Share resources make it more productive. I think restaurants themselves are unproductive.
- t-writescode 2y ago> I think restaurants themselves are unproductive. You think one of the staples of all commerce for basically all of time are unproductive? I would imagine basically any form of sustainability for them has been tried. Sure patterns change; but, I mean literal millennia of food service is something to not ignore.
- TriangleEdge 2y agoYeah, true. I meant sitdown restaurants.
- t-writescode 2y agoThose have been around for centuries ... like ... the "Tavern" trope is among the oldest of tropes
- xg15 2y agoI wonder if there are also cultural/regulatory differences here. I'm in the EU, and of course we had the forced shift to takeout as well, during covid. But while homeoffice as a concept stayed, restaurants very quickly went back to in-house dining when it was over. Seeing a takeout-only restaurant with a repurposed dine-in area here in 2025 would be beyond weird and would probably just give everyone covid flashbacks. Interesting to see that the specifics of what has stayed from the covid time and what has reverted could be different from country to country.
- tayo42 2y agoEating out seems less popular in the the US right now. Everything is more expensive and there's the 18-25% tip that gets applied. Going out to even a basic lunch with my wife is close to 50 usually for the meal. Takeout I can tip the delivery person a little less. And keep left overs a little easier. Take out is only for being lazy, I'd still just cook and meet or beat in quality any restaurant except ones that mignt win an award or you can't do at home.
- UltraSane 2y agomost restaurants are absolutely terrible value for money.
- db48x 2y agoDepends on what you value. If all you value are calories, then sure, there are much cheaper ways of getting the calories you need. But if you value time, or novelty, or the dining experience, or conversation with a neighbor or even just the bartender then there are plenty of places that cater to your values.
- UltraSane 2y agoI can justify spending $25 to $50 a week eating at restaurants with friends. But eating fast food every single day is just pissing money away.
- jdeibele 2y agoI've noticed at several Thai restaurants in the Portland area that we are the only or almost only customers in the restaurant. There's a steady stream of Door Dash, Uber Eats, etc. drivers picking up orders. I haven't noticed it as much with other restaurants. Maybe Thai (and other Asian) dishes hold up well because the topping is typically kept separate from the rice?
- rileymat2 2y agoAs a kid, the only delivery was pizza and Chinese. It is odd to think it is so much like that.
- bongodongobob 2y agoIdk, think it's probably just cost and food quantity, at least where I am. I can order $30 worth of Thai and have 2 days worth of food while for the same price I get one ghost kitchen burger with fries.
- dismalaf 2y agoIt's because a lot of "family" dining establishments went out of business and every type of "fast" establishment grew. Over in say, Europe, the cost of commercial real estate is much lower (including more restaurants owning their own building) and governments simply covered lost revenue versus loans which enabled more full service restaurants to stay in business. The fact is, full service restaurants are a horrible business model and most aren't priced appropriately (they should be priced much higher).
- harrall 2y agoPeople got out of their comfort zone during COVID and tried new things. Campgrounds got packed, people got into skateboarding… if you look at statistics, you’ll see a 2020-ish bump for many interests and an associated sudden growth in revenue. But the question is how long it will last… Some outdoor brands that expanded with new stores post-pandemic discovered that many people who tried camping/surfing/etc. only had a fleeting interest and these brands had to close stores. Tech companies that hired during the pandemic found out a lot of people who tried online meetings/online work only did it because they had to and stopped as soon as they could and these companies had to lay off staff. But maybe the people who “discovered delivery orders” during COVID won’t ever stop.
- lxgr 2y ago> Tech companies that hired during the pandemic found out a lot of people who tried online meetings/online work only did it because they had to and stopped as soon as they could and these companies had to lay off staff. Quite the opposite: Many (US) companies are still figuring out how to get their office employees to actually start coming to physical offices again. There seem to have been more lasting pandemic-caused changes of habits in the US than in many other countries, which I also find quite surprising. Maybe people were already more tired of dining out and office work there than in the rest of the world, and that's why the changes in behavior are more sticky?
- harrall 2y agoPeople only were working remotely that much because everyone was forced to be home which was unprecedented. It can only possibly go downhill from “everyone was forced to be home.” But even that aside, according to Gallup, exclusively remote employees fell from a high of 70% to a measly 26%(!). Many employees did transition to hybrid work but working fully remotely is very different than knowing that you’ll see Mary and Bob in the office tomorrow. https://www.gallup.com/401384/indicator-hybrid-work.aspx https://www.gallup.com/401384/indicator-hybrid-work.aspx
- bongodongobob 2y ago
- Animats 2y ago"The restaurants’ productivity growth rates are strongly correlated, however, with reductions in the amount of time their customers spend in the establishments, particularly with a rising share of customers spending 10 minutes or less. The frequency of such ‘take-out’ customers rose considerably during COVID, even at fast food restaurants, and never went back down." Well, duh. I feel I'm in the way eating in a restaurant when 90% of their business is filling DoorDash/Uber orders. Restaurants are closing earlier. 8 PM closing isn't unusual now. By then, the delivery business has dried up, and they want the onsite customers to clear out. I previously mentioned a place in Silicon Valley near Apple HQ where not only did they want onsite customers to order via a QR-code menu, they tried to get customers to go through onboarding and set up an account. Eating onsite was simply a delivery with a very short distance, bag and all. Of course "productivity" is up.
- lxgr 2y agoI hate places like that, and I especially hate still being asked to tip 18 (or often 20) to 25 percent when I effectively did everything myself, including picking up my order (often in plastic containers, for my daily dose of microplastics and other funs tuff), getting water, and clearing my table. Fortunately that's still the exception rather than the norm where I live, but I try to actively avoid such experiences.
- csomar 2y agoProductivity here is sales per employee. That's why productivity has "shot up" during the pandemic. "Productivity" remained high because you can look page 20 where people no longer stay at the restaurant and just order food online or food to go. tl;dr: restaurants are becoming shittier and people are just grabbing food. that makes it possible for the restaurant to maximize his sales/head count. There is no real "productivity" gain here. You removed parts of the usual service, put more load on your employees and still charge high prices.
- spoonjim 2y agoThis uses the economists' definition of "productivity" creating a confusing headline. In reality, "productivity" as a layperson would understand it hasn't increased at all and the reason isn't very "curious." What's happened (by the economists' own conclusion) is that more people are ordering take-out and fewer people are eating in the restaurant, causing the restaurant to make more money per unit of labor. This is a trend that is probably going to make things like social isolation etc. worse, so not really something to celebrate.
- rahimnathwani 2y agoThey looked only at fast food, buffet and snack/cafe places: The Spend data covers major national brands disproportionately, making it much more representative for limited-service/fast-food restaurants than full-service restaurants. We therefore restrict the sample to POIs reporting NAICS codes corresponding to limited-service eating places (NAICS 722513, 722514, and 722515) and associated with a brand for which there is non-missing visit and spend data. This encompasses three subcategories: limited-service restaurants (e.g., Taco Bell, McDonalds); cafeterias, grill buffets, and buffets (e.g., Hartz Chicken Buffet); and snack and nonalcoholic beverage bars (e.g., Starbucks). Our final sample contains over 100,000 unique restaurants from over 600 distinct brands. From January 2019 to December 2022, our sample captures a total of about $24 billion in nominal sales.
- dataviz1000 2y agoSimple. The overhead on takeout is far less than dine-in although the menu items cost the same. Dine-in costs include base waitstaff salary and workman's comp, cleaning crew and dishwashers, electricity, insurance, ect.. while takeout requires the very small cost of packaging. Something that always bugs me is restaurants that charge $2 or $5 surcharge for takeout. I'm saving the restaurant a ton of money by not using the dining room, why would they discourage that? > It cannot be explained by economies of scale I disagree. Increase in takeout is an increase in efficiency for each line cook and emnployee. There was a 23 seat restaurant on the top of the hill in Pacific Grove, CA in the 90s named Taste Bisto. The chef and his wife made a fortune from that tiny restaurant. He did two things. First, he set the prices so there was always a little line waiting at the door, not too long, and he encouraged takeout with an emphasis on making the food still look presentable when the person opens the container 30 minutes later at home. According to the chef, his real profits came from the takeout. From the point of view of the grill cook, grilling 8 pork chops or 18 pork chops at. the same time isn't much different, as the cook has to stand by the grill anyhow.
- linkjuice4all 2y agoThis really seems the like 'oh duh' insight. The output of your revenue-making equipment (the kitchen) went up without requiring additional floor space and staff to serve a larger customer-base. More specifically - the restaurants that survived (which is already a feat in and of itself) could serve more customers since they didn't have to turn as many tables. Even with the "overhead" of food delivery apps - restaurants could still purchase whole-sale ingredients in bulk and sell to more people without building out their physical plant. To add - the dine-in experience has gotten faster. You don't need to wait for menus and you don't need to do the dance when settling your bill. Even if you didn't expand your delivery clientele you could probably turn tables faster without any 'hit' on rushing out your loyal customers.
- dataviz1000 2y agoMaybe what is happening is before 2020 the people who carried the food from the kitchen to the customer were employees and after the people who carried the food from the kitchen to the customer are gig workers not employees which would explain "Figure 1. Annualized Real Sales per Employee (1992=100), Food Services and Drinking Places, Seasonally Adjusted" [0]. Restaurants now use gig workers and not employees to deliver the food. Of course, there are more sales per "employee." [0] https://imgur.com/a/3n1ZJku https://imgur.com/a/3n1ZJku
- keming 2y agoMy first thought upon seeing the headline was that perhaps this could be due to a workforce that has abandoned or has been abandoned by other industries- providing an influx of enthusiasm, competition, variety, and desperation. But, then I read: > We document that, after remaining almost constant for almost 30 years, real labor productivity at U.S. restaurants surged over 15% during the COVID pandemic. So I wonder if it’s a combination of workers getting better tips and more people buying takeout meals?
- littlestymaar 2y agoTL;DR; “productivity” of restaurant in the colloquial sense hasn't progressed, but restaurants have diversified their business to the growing market of delivery apps, which is less labor intensive, hence the boost in observed “productivity”.
- Ozzie_osman 2y agoQR code menus, and phone or tablet ordering, also took off. Surely that affects productivity as well. Im guessing also, just doing things with thinner staff and resources overall caused a lot of establishments to learn how to operate more efficiently.
- Mengkudulangsat 2y agoI hate those with a passion! Especially ones where you have to create an account.
- wat10000 2y agoThis seems really stupid. A restaurant sells two basic categories of product: food/drink, and service. Labor is expended on both. They’re ignoring service and only looking at food/drink. The split between these two products has shifted away from service. That means more labor is going into the thing they’re actually counting and less is going into the thing they’re ignoring. Wow, productivity went up! It’s interesting that the industry has shifted to more takeout, but framing it as “surge of productivity” is ridiculous.
- horsawlarway 2y agoYeah, Marketplace on NPR covered this yesterday and came to essentially the same conclusion. It's not that productivity is genuinely up, it's that modern restaurants are providing a different product. Takeout/delivery to eat on your couch has different economics than a full service restaurant. Phrasing it as productivity is disingenuous.
- dehrmann 2y agoNit: Marketplace is an APM show--essentially a competitor of NPR. "NPR" has just become shorthand for "public radio."
- brians 2y agoAlso Marketplace airs on NPR stations. I have Windows on a Dell, and I hear Marketplace on NPR.
- dehrmann 2y agoMarketplace airs on stations that might happen to also air NPR. It's more like dual booting Windows and Linux on your Dell that has a Windows sticker on it.
- horsawlarway 2y agoAPM and NPR are both syndicated content, but it's not quite the same. The local stations mostly call themselves NPR stations (NPR member stations) and they explicitly include NPR branding (ex - right in the logo for mine: https://www.wabe.org/ https://www.wabe.org/) and pay membership dues to NPR in addition to content licensing. APM also has its own set of stations, but the list is much smaller. Plus - basically the only content from APM on my NPR station is Marketplace. It's "NPR" for all intents and purposes. It's not dual booting, it's like a linux machine running WINE for a single application.
- casey2 2y agoRestaurant dining rooms are a complete waste of valuable real estate. Everybody wanted to live like millionaires in the 50s without a thought for sustainability. Two hour drive into downtown to park your cat in a reserved spot and walk your wife and 2.5 children to their reserved seats, eat a 3 course meal with a waiter all for under 100 bucks including gas and tip. It was never going to last. If you don't use your resources efficiently from the very beginning your country is going to stagnant
- throw_pm23 2y agoI loved the typo "parking your cat" -- that would indeed be the height of decadence.
- daft_pink 2y agoSo offended that Steak N Shake has order screens instead of servers these days and they still expect a similar tip before service is even rendered.
- greenchair 2y agosame with shake shack, went there once, never going back. also asked me for my phone number.
- daft_pink 2y agoif you’re lucky enough to have a shake shack with a drive through - most don’t - they don’t ask for a tip and your order is delivered more quickly and you don’t have to use a tablet. ours has a drive thru so we regularly drive thru and bring the food inside and eat it.
- chrisbrandow 2y agoAnd every restauranteur I’ve spoken to uniformly describe the last few years as miserable
- PeterStuer 2y agoWould the numbers reflect the same if restaurants increased had their contingent of undocumented and thus undeclared workers? For example: If I perviously had 1 server, then brought in a second one which is not on the books at all and I pay under the counter in cash, would it show up as a productivity increase of my still official single employee?
- kayo_20211030 2y agoI'm confused. The paper is about something called "Restaurant Productivity", but it's not defined up-front, or any place close to up-front. Maybe, it's defined by page 9, but it's hard to tell. It all might be completely correct, but for God's sake write a paper that a reasonably intelligent person can follow. What are we talking about? What do we know? What you think we know, but isn't true. What we now believe, having done the analysis. Quick summary, and then done. I think Goolsbee is famous somewhere, but why be a lead author on a badly written paper? It's just prose. Maybe it's true, but who'd know?
- namaria 2y agoPage 2: >Figure 1 shows the remarkable shift in restaurant productivity after years of stagnation. It plots monthly real sales per employee in the industry from the beginning of 1992 to the present (in annualized terms).2
- svat 2y agoYes, and even on page 1: "reveal significant productivity growth among individual restaurants whether measured in sales per employee or even in a more basic/physical measure of total consumer visits per employee."
- ForOldHack 2y agoComing from Chicago, famous for its Economics, this article, and its premise are mystifingly inadequate for even answering why their metrics are so poorly used and misunderstood. I would go through and point out most of the utter lack of understanding and rigor. Soon this article, and its lack of scholarship will sink gently into the muck. Here is something to cleanse the palette: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/opinion/krugman-robots-and-robber-barons.html?hp https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/opinion/krugman-robots-an...
- whatever1 2y agoHow people can afford take out? Uber eats etc charge rates are insane like 20$ per order (don’t forget the driver tip). I also noticed they have a variable cost as well aka if you order food worth 100$ you pay more compared to if the food was 50$. Like this adds to the delivery cost.