Why are Americans eating out earlier? | The James Brown Commentary

Have you noticed that bars and restaurants aren't as busy as they once were?

I have too.

And we're not alone.

eating out in a sparse trendy restaurant

That's one of the lingering changes since the COVID-19 pandemic, documented by Placer AI.

That's a foot traffic analytics firm.

Their data shows that people are less likely to go out to dinner after 7 p.m.

The pattern, as laid out in Nation's Restaurant News, shows that foot traffic around restaurants at 7pm has moved to about 5pm nationwide.

Yelp is seeing similar trends among restaurant reservations.

In fact, in 2023, 10% of all diners were seated between 2 and 5 p.m.

That's double what it was in 2019.

The amount of diners seated between 4 p.m.

and 6 p.m.

went up from 17% in 2019 to about a quarter in 2023.

And I must admit, I've done all this in recent months.

I'm not sure why all this is happening, but I know of a few things that likely play a role here.

We've seen a ton of these restaurants come back with shorter hours and higher prices.

At the same time, it's been well documented that a good portion of upwardly mobile white-collar workers, you know, the people more likely to absorb these price increases and eat out anyway, have left cities due to COVID-19 restrictions and concerns.

They spread out into suburban areas and small cities and towns around the country.

And many of them are among the percentage of our population who are still working remotely, at least part of the week, which means they're not near most bars and restaurants in a lot of cases.

And then there's the elephant in the room.

Crime is still above pre-pandemic levels.

And with that, I'm not surprised by this data.

And honestly, I think it's another reason why nothing is going back to the way it was anytime soon.

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