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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?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday May 31 2017, @06:18AM (4 children)
I can't speak for him, but sometimes you just find yourself with coworkers that aren't stupid by any means, but you just don't "mesh": you don't have enough interests in common, you don't really like them well enough to want to hang out at a restaurant with them, etc. Personally, as an introvert it's pretty uncommon for me to find someone I really want to spend time outside of work with, especially if they're male. It doesn't help that most engineers are conservative and religious, so I'm constantly thinking twice about everything I say and generally "wearing a mask" when I'm around them, so the last thing I want to do is spend even more time around them (unlike when I'm actually at work, where I mostly just sit in front of a computer and only interact with others when I have a question or they ask me something, or if there's a meeting).
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday May 31 2017, @06:44AM (3 children)
Religious engineers, must be USA ;)
If they ever disagree with your professional advice. Just tell them that god told you it must be like you said. :p
Why not move on? keeping face at that level all day seems like a extra work burden you are not paid extra for in comparison with other workplaces.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday May 31 2017, @01:21PM (2 children)
Why not move on? keeping face at that level all day seems like a extra work burden you are not paid extra for in comparison with other workplaces.
Move on where? They're all like that. I'd have to somehow cross over into an entirely different specialty, like PHP web development, to get away from it.
(Score: 1) by Skittles on Wednesday May 31 2017, @03:16PM (1 child)
My experience in the Northwest (I assume you're American) is the exact opposite. Do you like rain?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday May 31 2017, @03:33PM
Rain's fine with me. I mainly do embedded programming; are you saying that engineers like that in PNW aren't a bunch of religious conservatives?