As a current freelance worker and lifetime city resident, a huge portion of my social and professional life takes place in the so-called “third place” – public spaces which, after home and work, are the background for most of our lives. Specifically, I spend most of that time not in public libraries (too quiet) or parks (no wifi), but in the kind of social space centered around food and drink: coffee shops, cafes, bars and restaurants. I have also worked in restaurants more directly for over a decade – so I feel safe saying I have spent more time thinking about hospitality than most.
With that much time spent wrapped up in the industry, it is hard to avoid one depressing idea that resurfaces again and again. It shows up in think-pieces, statistics, and generally-held wisdom, with hints dropped like breadcrumbs but the conclusion rarely said out loud: restaurants are bad for society. Consider for a moment how many conversations you’ve had about the trendy new place opening in your old neighborhood; what is it if not a sign of gentrification, rising rents, young hipsters and overpriced quinoa bowls? Or, for that matter, how many times you’ve walked by a trash can overflowing with to-go cups from the dozens of nearby coffee shops and thought about the egregious wastefulness of the modern food industry (Styrofoam, plastic and plate waste as far as the eye can see). Restaurants are extremely energy intensive, and on paper they often seem like no more than a luxury designed primarily for the global 1%.
Then there is the problem that is taken as axiomatic within the industry but discussed less frequently outside it: for most workers, restaurants simply can’t pay a living wage. The best-intentioned owners and managers acknowledge minimum-wage hikes as long overdue, while simultaneously feeling their stomachs lurch, knowing that the rock-bottom rates they were paying for difficult physical work (not to mention the subsidy offered by tipping – a system that is at best unreliable and inequitable) may have been the only thing keeping them open at all.
At the same time, restaurants are obviously not the source of these evils any more than they are the victims of them. Tipping and worker exploitation unfortunately set the standards in the industry. Restaurants are hugely expensive to open and run, but investors expect profit nonetheless. And the sheer difficulty of succeeding in the long term as an independently owned establishment means massive turnover, especially in major cities, adding to the continual churn of demolition and construction that disrupts neighborhoods and communities. Most restaurant owners can “succeed” only by expanding, franchising, and removing themselves from operations.
All of this is damning evidence for any socially-minded individual in the industry. It is evidence I struggle with more so now than ever, while I spend my days helping restaurant owners trying – as they always have – to convince the world that their passion is worth pursuing. At my most pessimistic, that passion seems like the height of privilege: trivial, unnecessary, out-of-touch or harmful by design. But I would like to propose a different perspective here, because the moment calls for optimism. The fight towards justice requires boldly imagining the future we want, so that this imagined future can both guide our tactics and motivate us through an arduous slog. When I picture that future, it always includes restaurants, coffee shops and bars – third spaces where food and drink build community and celebrate culture. Eating is necessary, so why can’t it be joyous? It seems like a failure of both imagination and spirit to declare this impossible, to throw out the baby with some (admittedly quite nasty) bathwater.
This work (blog) takes as it’s thesis that such a future exists, and asks instead what the path there looks like. How are existing restaurants engaging with these issues, building community and lessening their footprint? Nudging their impact further in the direction of justice and sustainability? How do the thorniest issues intersect, like public health and sustainability, or workers rights and gentrification? How can we think bigger, and imagine an intersection that is not zero-sum, but additive? And while this is all primarily a learning experience for me – an opportunity to actively engage with a topic that I have largely ignored (except to occasionally worry over) for nearly a decade – I hope it can spark similar conversations elsewhere and inform real action in the future. Because I’m pretty sure that when it comes, the revolution will be caffeinated.