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posted by n1 on Tuesday May 30 2017, @10:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the instant-noodles dept.

The U.S. restaurant industry is in a funk. Blame it on lunch.

Americans made 433 million fewer trips to restaurants at lunchtime last year, resulting in roughly $3.2 billion in lost business for restaurants, according to market-research firm NPD Group Inc. It was the lowest level of lunch traffic in at least four decades.

While that loss in traffic is a 2% decline from 2015, it is a significant one-year drop for an industry that has traditionally relied on lunch and has had little or no growth for a decade.

"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.

Re-heating leftovers in the break room microwave takes two minutes and is guaranteed to be on your diet?


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  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday May 31 2017, @02:49AM (4 children)

    by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday May 31 2017, @02:49AM (#518051) Journal

    I should have mentioned that. Break room is usually equal to alone with the computer. No hustle or chatting people. Besides it means one can chew the food without stress.....
    100 lines of code, food, 100 lines of code, food.. GOTO 10

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday May 31 2017, @06:12AM (2 children)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday May 31 2017, @06:12AM (#518139)

    You must have a really nice break room. Where I am now, there's no room at all, but I did have a job once where they had a break room, and it was the most un-relaxing place possible, with ultra-bright lights and a stupid TV blaring CNN at all hours.

    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday May 31 2017, @06:35AM (1 child)

      by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday May 31 2017, @06:35AM (#518148) Journal

      Think private office. You go to the (nice) lunch room and warm your food or buy it downstairs. Bring it back to the office room which you don't share with anyone. Then you code and eat interleaved. No buzzing sounds or stress. And no time break time needed for lunch so quitting earlier.

      That most of the people in the office don't need to be there at all but actually could do 95% at home with a double digit improvement in efficiency will however not reach the brain core of the people that decide how to organize the work.

      • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday May 31 2017, @01:22PM

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday May 31 2017, @01:22PM (#518263)

        Private office? WTF is that? We don't have those in this country any more. (USA)

  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday May 31 2017, @06:57AM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday May 31 2017, @06:57AM (#518156) Journal

    100 lines of code, food, 100 lines of code, food.. GOTO 10

    You still program in BASIC? :-)

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.