I read the article and I stand by my comment
Wow. There's nothing special to you about eating a good meal with good company? To me it's one of the best things in life. I've been told that I should sign up for door dash or start delivering pounds of coffee to peoples houses while I'm shut down. I didn't open up the shop to make filthy lucre. If that's what I was in it for I could fine many ways to make more money with less work doing something else. I don't want to stand behind a machine passing off drinks to an app slave all day. I won't wear a mask for 10 hours a day, just to have the privileged of at most three minutes business like human contact while you go in the one door and exit the other moving through tapped off squares on the floor. My shop is a part of the neighborhood. It's the place where friendships, relationships, new businesses and public service projects are born. It's friends who haven't seen each other in months having a chance encounter and kicking it for an hour on the picnic table. It's really too many things to list and I'm sure it's things to people I barely know that they find important that I have no idea of. Food is sacrament. You need it to live. Maybe this means nothing to you. Maybe food, it's enjoyment, the realization people have worked hard from soil to your cup to try and make it special just for you is of no importance, a cup at 7/11, McDonalds, or from Door Dash is as good as another. I've noticed restaurants that start emphasizing app delivery get shitty within about six months. Their margins go down but the volume goes up. Your work harder for a little bit more money and a lot less fun. The owner touches less of what goes out the door, because the're too busy to be involved with all aspects as much as they used to be. The owner definitely has less contact with customers, cares less because it's hard to care when your main feed back is mostly the angry stares of app slaves who care for naught but time. Work isn't fun, if you can hire your way out of production you do. prices almost always go up in those first six months while quality goes down. Within a year I generally don't dine there anymore. There is a Thai place a block from my house, we used to ear there once a week, it's dead to me now but always has deliveries streaming in and out. I don't want to live in app food world, just like I don't want to live in a cooperate food world. I haven't eaten in a Chilies type restaurant in over a decade. I have a weakness for McDonalds breakfast, I might get it once a month. I've ordered food by app exactly once in my life. If I'm going to sit at home I can make my self something to eat. If I go out I want my food to be intentional, made by someone who meant to be at this place at this time making the food they want to make, rockin whatever tunes they wanted to rock, in an environment they thought would be conducive to the experience. Maybe I'm shallow, but eating other peoples food while I enjoy the company of the people I love and find interesting is close to one of my favorite things in life. It's possible I am not understanding your snark. If I am understanding it than your life sounds pretty fucking sad to me but we are different people who value different things. I hope the world still NEEDS to share good food with good company.
Know a guy with a burger shop. he was all about Uber Eats. He said "they take 25% but our business is up 25%!" Food went downhill. His wife put out a little table of munchies and candies and stuff for the Doordash guys to sit at, probably so they'd feel kind of like they were at a restaurant, I guess? But they're face-in-phone because they're on the job and the job pays ass so they'll happily find another reality, thanks. They were divorced within a year. His restaurant closed. It was "joe's burgers" and he tried to reopen as "joe's seafood bistro" and right now it's "main street sliders" or some shit but fundamentally, it's a place apps buy food and nobody else will bother with it. I hadn't made that connection before but you're right - it's one of three restaurants I no longer go to because it becomes all about the app. The sushi place down the street made my then-5-year-old wait 90 minutes for her food because they were too busy filling Uber Eats orders.I've noticed restaurants that start emphasizing app delivery get shitty within about six months.
It seems you took my comment very personally, which I can understand. To be honest, as I made this comment I considered one I'd read from wasoxygen earlier this week, which stated that any time there is a question in an article title, it can be answered with "No." I felt that way about this article. I don't think this article is without its merits, and I understand how local restaurants create a community. I consider myself part of such a community! I don't feel the need to defend my comments any further, and it does seem to me that your comment is one intended to incite a defense. I wish you and your enterprises well, and am sure we'll run across each other on Hubski again, with no ill will!
Haha. I don't think you should ever feel like you need to defend your comments to me. I'm don't bother too on Hubski anymore. I really don't understand how your answer is "no," unless you just hate headline construction gimmicks. Certainly no I'll will, live your life. This shit is horrible and it's going to leave our world poorer and more at the mercy of cooperate shit on billion levels, including food.
The thing is corporate food cant compete long term. Short term it will devastate everyone, but the barrier to entry in the restaurant is tiny and the margins arent there and never were. Restaurants cant support the 25% delivery app overhead or corporate structure overhead for a long time, sure short term they will because all the competition will get wiped out but in 5-10 years competitors will crop up and deal some significant damage. Unless of-course rent continues to be fucked up high globally... Then no matter how good you are you wont be fight corporate food since real estate is your biggest expense and the other stuff is tiny.