Now what?

Considering the future of hospitality under another Trump presidency

It’s been nearly a week since Donald Trump was declared the next President of the United States and I’ve been thinking a lot about the consequences for the future of restaurants and the hospitality industry. 

It’s… a lot to consider, but we must. This edition includes historical precedents and educated guesses about the future of restaurants.

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First: Some relevant Election Day delivery data: 

Here’s a fun perk of all that data big delivery companies collect: We can understand, in nearly real time, how our food and drink consumption maps to current events. For example, this Election Day, DoorDash saw a 30 percent increase in orders for alcohol, and a 40 percent increase in orders for wine, according to a company rep.

This… tracks. The rep said orders on DoorDash for candy, coffee, and comfort food including burgers, fries, and chicken nuggets were up, too.

That day, champagne orders spiked in Oregon, an increase of over 190 percent. In Ohio, home state of the incoming vice president, champagne orders were up 125 percent.

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Understanding the future

photo via Unsplash

My personal relationship to restaurants skews emotional. They represent diversity, opportunity, creativity, and comfort; so-called ‘squishy,’ feel-good attributes. Restaurant logistics are equally important but less emotional, including financing, power, and policy. Expedite has always celebrated both extremes, because people who love restaurants should understand how they work.

A new administration brings new leadership and new priorities. This Trump term isn’t a guaranteed rerun of the first, though plenty of the main characters are the same. Here are what I consider the main ideas of the next four years in hospitality.

Changing regulations (and regulators): 

Technologists and business leaders love to hate on Lina Khan, the Federal Trade Commission chair and a President Biden appointee. In her three-plus years leading the agency, Khan’s taken aggressive steps to regulate the tech industry, suing giants like Meta and Amazon, issuing stark warnings about artificial intelligence, finalizing rules around online reviews, and (much) more. 

On Election Day, the New York Times called Khan “an election hot topic,” noting that she’s been criticized by left- and right-leaning business leaders. Investor, Democratic donor, and notable Shark Tank “shark” Marc Cuban has called for her ouster; friend-of-Trump Elon Musk recently said she’d be “fired soon.” 

At one point over the summer, Vice President-elect JD Vance seemed to voice support for her efforts breaking up big tech companies. Still, according to Fortune, “The prevailing wisdom is that Trump will usher in a new era of deregulation, with an even more hands-off approach than his previous term.” Khan is probably out. 

Knowledgeable (but still artificial) intelligence and autonomous vehicles: 

Emerging smart technology needs government support. Artificial intelligence has plenty of implications for the hospitality industry, from generative AI that writes marketing texts to cars that drive themselves to drop off dinner. When Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreesen shared his Trump endorsement in June, he said the future of technology was at stake. Specifically, Andreesen was miffed at the current administration’s plan to “overregulate” AI. 

Trump said he plans to dismantle existing AI policies immediately, though he was characteristically light on detail.