I think we'll still be a family restaurant, we'll be contemporary, we'll be lifestyle, we won't be old, we won't be 60 years old in the view of the consumer.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
We've become such a restaurant society.
Older consumers don't want to be treated like teenagers; what's more, they don't want to believe they fall into any niche at all.
As people of color, it took a whole generation in many ways to get us out of the kitchen, and it's gonna take us the same whole generation to get us back into the kitchen and have ownership of restaurants, hotels and stuff like that.
You know, for 300 years it's been kind of the same. There are restaurants in New Orleans that the menu hasn't changed in 125 years, so how is one going to change or evolve the food?
We live in an era of consumerism and it's all about desire-based consumerism and it has nothing to do with things we actually need.
I don't think there's going to be sustainable demand for restaurants that force you to spend hours there.
People are going to be living quite soon for 100 years. Our idea of how a family works no longer applies. It's no good saying you're going to have children for 15 years and then you're going to retire and have hobbies, because you've got 40 more years to go after 60 and you're in good health until 90 or something.
Restaurants are like having children: it's fun to make them, maybe, but then you have them for good and bad. You are going to have to raise them and if something goes wrong when they are 30 years old, they will still be your little boy.
It all comes back to the basics. Serve customers the best-tasting food at a good value in a clean, comfortable restaurant, and they'll keep coming back.
We got Martha Stewart legitimizing homemaking for her generation, and then there's this return to being interested in all things home, lifestyle, and food again. I think this generation is less about the frills and more about the flavor of things.