The death of the middle-class restaurant

Summary

When Daniel Cox was growing up in Rochester, N.Y., he spent every Saturday night at Pizza Hut with his father and two brothers. The server got to know the family so well that when she saw their blue Dodge Caravan roll up, she would put their order in: two cheese pan pizzas and two pitchers of Pepsi.Mr. Cox’s parents were divorced, and the Pizza Hut ritual was centering for the family. “It was a time when we were all together and everyone was enjoying the experience,” he recalled. “Who doesn’t like pizza?”Now a father himself, Mr. Cox rarely goes out to eat with his kids. They’re in travel-soccer practice three nights a week, and his family can’t get out of the local pizzeria for less than $100. He couldn’t think of an affordable, sit-down meal they’d shared recently.Once rapidly growing commercial marvels, casual dining chains — sit-down restaurants where middle-class families can walk in without a reservation, order from another human and share a meal — have been in decline for most of the 21st century. Last year, TGI Fridays and Red Lobster both filed for bankruptcy. Outback and Applebee’s have closed dozens of locations. Pizza Hut locations with actual dining rooms are vanishingly rare, with hundreds closing since 2019.According to a February survey by the market research firm Datassential, 24 percent of Americans say they are having dinner at casual restaurants less often, and 29 percent are dining out less with groups of friends and family.Mr. Cox is a pollster by profession, the director of the Survey Center on American Life, and he wondered about the effects of the chain implosions. In his latest survey on social trust and cohesion, he was moved to add questions about how often people are not just ordering food from a restaurant, but actually sitting down to eat there.He expects to publish the results in May, but said recently, “I think what a lot of families are doing is opting out. That’s a real loss.”The diminishing of these spaces, along with the rise of ...