Driving Change
by Andrew Zimmern, Jan 4, 2016
The food world is changing. Restaurant news and social justice food issues such as hunger and fair wages dominate headlines and dinner conversations. New York cabbies are debating the eventual landing point of Shake Shack’s stock price. And General Mills announced that it’s shifting from being a “brand” company back to the food company it was a generation ago, even unveiling a new company purpose: to “serve the world by making food people love.” When a company that size decides to make service, food and love the tentpoles of its mission statement, something big is happening. Here are two valuable signposts that offer a glimpse of some of the changes underway that will affect the way you eat for years to come.
Healthy Fast Food
Small single-item-style restaurants, especially ones with healthy menus, are beginning to dominate the quick-serve landscape. Chef José Andrés’ Think Food Group has created a mostly vegetable concept (some animal proteins are available) in Washington, D.C., called Beefsteak—think salad bowls built to order as you move down the line, Chipotle-style. Customer counts are so impressive and sales numbers so high that the company is expanding to the University of Pennsylvania and plans to open more stores as quickly as they can be built.
Eight years ago, Georgetown University students Nathaniel Ru, Jonathan Neman and Nicolas Jammet created Sweetgreen, a salad restaurant growing at such a staggering pace that it’s being called a lifestyle brand. Did I mention that there are 31 locations, with more on the way, and that investment groups are dubbing the company “the next Chipotle”?
Then there are global powerhouse chefs Roy Choi and Daniel Patterson, who have teamed up to open LocoL in San Francisco, a fast-food brand serving healthy food at fair prices. The company’s mission statement says LocoL’s intention is to nurture “body, soul and community.” Concepts such as these will continue to grow, driven by the new generation’s desire for wellness, fairness and transparency in the food system.
Tipping
Tipping is going to be phased out over the course of the next few decades, and the rush is on for upper-tier restaurateurs to change their house policies, prices and social justice positions on the issue. Most famously, New York City’s Danny Meyer, often considered the country’s savviest and most guest-focused restaurateur, announced that his restaurants will do away with tipping. Also in New York City, chef Thomas Keller did so with Per Se and chef Tom Colicchio is experimenting with it at lunch at his restaurant Craft; many others are joining in as well.
The general idea is to eliminate tipping, pay the staff higher wages and pass on the cost to customers by raising menu prices. Combined with the new legislation in many states to increase the minimum wage for all workers, the economics of restaurants are being thrown into a Cuisinart and puréed into something that no one can identify just yet.
I think the restaurants that are eliminating tipping are bravely providing bold leadership. In the U.S., we consume based on price, completely ignoring labor and other costs. But remember: The price we think we’re paying isn’t the actual price we pay. From taxes to tips to service charges, the number at the end is always bigger. We’re living in a delusion.
Both these trends are indicative of something much larger. I believe our food world is changing for the better. And paying a fair wage in restaurants, eliminating tipping and bringing healthy food into the quick-serve genre are part of a larger reordering of the entire American food system, a shift that I hope now can allow us to focus on our greatest societal need, feeding the hungry.