No such thing as a free lunch

My buddies and I were sitting around happy hour the other day bemoaning the cost of lunch in and around McCook. What used to be dinner prices are now lunch prices because it’s hard to find decent food for less than ten dollars a plate. And, although not quite as pricey as sit-down restaurants, fast food restaurants aren’t far behind in their pricing either, especially if you purchase a drink.

So an article I read later in the week mentioned the high prices for lunch nationwide and, in fact, concluded that prices are so high that the lunch rush is over. The article was written by Julie Jargon in The Wall Street Journal. Paraphrasing her conclusion, she says that the U.S. restaurant industry is in a funk and lunch is to be blamed for it. And she has statistics to back up her claim.

There were 433 million fewer lunchtime restaurant trips last year and $3.2 billion in lost business in restaurants nationwide. That’s a huge blow for an industry that has had little or no growth for a decade. And one of the biggest factors is cost. The average restaurant lunch now costs $7.59, up almost 20 percent since the recession and falls right in line with lunch prices in this geographical area. Many people claim to live in this part of the country because it is cost effective and in many ways it is, but not if you’re buying lunch every day.

While the cost of eating at restaurants has increased, falling grocery prices have made bringing a brown bag to work more economical because work habits are also changing. The growing ranks of tele-commuters (my youngest son Will is one of these employees for Bank of America) simply eat at home. In fact, eating lunch at a restaurant is now seen as a luxury and a remnant of a distant time.

This is just another example of how fast the world is changing. The things we grew up expecting; those things we were taught by our parents are, in many cases, no longer relevant. And we’re trying to raise our kids for the future when we have no idea what the future is going to look like or be like. It’s like living life with a paper bag over our heads. We can’t teach our kids about technology that hasn’t been created or invented yet. We can surmise and guess about what the world is going to be like in twenty years when they take their place in it but, since it’s only a guess, it’s just as likely not to happen as it is to happen.

I hate to see the end of restaurant lunch as we know it. In big cities, the food truck is quickly running brick and mortar operations out of business when I would much rather be treated to a sit-down meal (providing it has quality) than to stand outside a food truck. But that’s what more and more young people are doing today because time is perceived as being too valuable to waste on a sit-down meal.

Which is sort of a shame.

Can restaurants reclaim their customers by lowering prices? There’s no way to know unless it actually happens and not many economic experts believe it will. When a threshold is met and then passed, it is almost impossible to go back below that threshold and that business theory holds for restaurants too. If you can get ten dollars for a sandwich that used to sell for five, it’s difficult if not impossible to convince the restaurateur that he or she should back their prices up.

If prices continue to increase, it stands to reason the restaurants who serve lunch will soon price themselves out of business and another tradition will have been lost; a tradition that has long honored social interaction rather than speed or convenience.

If it happens, something valuable will be lost that may never be found again.