Recommended reading, pre-summer edition
More stories for people who care about the future of restaurants
Hello! I’m in the middle of another travel push, freshly returned from the MAD Symposium in Copenhagen (more on that below), through my kid’s Kindergarten graduation, and currently in the middle of FAB, a gathering for women in the food and beverage industry, in Charleston, SC.
There’s a big announcement from a major company on my beat coming later this week, which I’m working to wrap my head around in between sessions today. But in the meantime, I’m doing the thing where I list out important stories that are worth your time; the type of stories I usually consult to inform my own reporting and analysis. AI summaries are cool, but personable recommendations are so much better.
More from me and Expedite soon. Happy early summer from the South!
-Kristen
What I learned about the future of restaurants from René Redzepi’s chef conference — Fast Company
I didn’t go to this year’s MAD Symposium in Copenhagen to report on the event, but I did go with an open mind looking for inspiration. I found some of that — mostly during the Symposium’s second day that focused on the future — but also a reality check. I wrote up a few thoughts about the future, as inspired by MAD, for Fast Company this week. Tl;dr: say the hard things first.
“The event itself was largely successful in its efforts to inspire important conversations about what should come next, even if it got off to a sleepy start. ‘Legacy’ was the theme of the first day, but some speakers missed the opportunity to reflect honestly on reality.”
How ‘business for good’ went bad — and what comes next, by James Surowiecki — Fast Company ($)
This piece captures a vibe that this business writer has been feeling a lot lately: What happened to all the businesses that gave a sh*t? So-called “stakeholder capitalism” fell out of fashion fast and, spoiler, it’s not just a Trump thing. (Though the current administration hasn’t helped!) To see this happen from my perch reporting on the hospitality business is particularly jarring; if the best businesses in my industry stopped caring about people, they’d be truly screwed. And yet!
“When a bubble bursts, it feels at first as if it had consisted of little more than overhyped promises, peddled by hucksters and embraced by trend followers. In the case of stakeholderism, critics on the right have brushed it off as a woke orgy of virtue signaling, while critics on the left have painted it as one big exercise in greenwashing, built on the fantasy that it’s possible to get businesses to care about anything other than profit.”
What America’s pizza economy is telling us about the real one, by Deena Shanker — Bloomberg
Restaurants are spectacular economic indicators during times of stress — look no further than the Waffle House Index, an unofficial metric that’s been used by FEMA to gauge the intensity of inbound natural disasters like hurricanes, for proof. This piece about the current state of pizza in America — sales at chains are falling as lower income consumers are priced out; sales at upscale pizzerias are rising as well-off consumers continue to spend — has a bigger message: the American economy, as judged by pizza, is in trouble.
“Between President Donald Trump’s 10% global tariff and the subsequent weakening of the US dollar, Mortati says his costs ‘increased effectively overnight by 20%.’ He says he has no choice but to pass the increases along to his customers. [Fred] Mortati, [an importer of high-end pizza ingredients] expects pizza shops to raise their prices from 2% to 5% based on food costs alone, and he’s not sure everyone will be so understanding. ‘Consumers are tired of seeing inflationary pressure, unfortunately,’ he says.”
The unlikely group getting rich off Dave’s Hot Chicken’s $1 billion deal, by Jemima McEvoy — Forbes
Private equity notched another win last week when white-hot Dave’s Hot Chicken sold a majority stake in its business to Roark Capital, owner of Subway, Dunkin’ and others. With news of the big payday comes promised expansion — up to 150 new Dave’s locations in the next year — befitting the scale and ambition that’s become a hallmark of PE investment in restaurants. My personal feelings about hypergrowth aside, I love this piece about the stakeholders involved in growing Dave’s to what it’s become.
“The four cofounders, who were at one time so broke they say they struggled to pool together the $900 needed to launch the first Dave’s popup, are now richer than they ever imagined. Each owned roughly 10% of the business prior to the sale and is selling around 80% of their stakes, amounting to around $80 million (pre-tax). ‘The money’s in our accounts,’ says [cofounder Arman] Oganesyan, who admits he Googled whether Roark could request the money back. ‘Wires are permanent. Even if you mistakenly wire money to somebody, you can’t take it back.’”
Put your restaurant menus online!!! by Ryan Sutton —
I can get behind a good gripe. New York City-based critic Ryan Sutton appeals to restaurants to (simply) put menus online. Why wouldn’t they? Well, per Sutton, it seems like many restaurants would prefer would-be patrons visit their highly curated social media feeds instead. There’s room for both, he argues.
“But here’s the larger question I have for restaurants: Do you really want a social media site — run by the Facebook folks — to be the central point of digital contact between you and your patrons? A social media site that purposefully floods us with videos of cats washing themselves to the tune of ‘Y No Hago Mas Na,’ all while folks are just trying to find out what’s for dinner?”
