We’ve just lived through the greatest period of restaurant growth in U.S. history. Here’s why it’s ending.A new book explains the sudden death of the golden age of dining out in America
By Laura Reiley
The Washington Post
July 8We’ve just been through America’s belle epoque of restaurants.
What’s more, the party is over and most of us are blithely unaware. The restaurant industry is frequently the precursor for a market correction, an early harbinger of a bear market or even a recession to come. And some experts are saying that an unfortunate confluence of factors — oversaturated restaurant markets, rising labor and food costs, weak sales, changing consumer tastes and loyalties, a shrinking middle class, declines in mall traffic, bank and investor skittishness about returns on investments — means the near future looks bleak.
This is the thesis of “Burn the Ice: The American Culinary Revolution and Its End,” a new book by James Beard Award-winning food journalist Kevin Alexander.
Alexander argues that, starting in 2006, we experienced a transformative period for the U.S. restaurant industry.
He ticks off some of the innovations: the rise of “fine casual dining” (those restaurants with dangling Edison bulbs and exposed brick and in-your-face ambitious food that doesn’t lean overmuch on fine linens or fancy stemware), craft cocktails, farm-to-table dining, the hipification of non-Western food, the audacity of food truck culture, the democratization of criticism via social media.
But now we should prepare for a shake-up. ...
Full story in The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business ... bow&wpmm=1