Americans Keep Dining Out (and Tipping Generously)
Despite economic worries. Even as many US households feel financially squeezed, eating out remains a top priority. Attest’s 2025 US Spending Trends Report finds that once basic bills are covered, prepared food – whether at restaurants or via takeout – is the most likely place Americans will spend extra cash. Just over 57 percent of consumers report spending on takeout food each month and 51.5 percent say they dine out at restaurants, which is more than the roughly 45 percent who make purchases in the apparel and personal care categories every month. In an economy where big ticket purchases are being delayed (purchase intent for items like smartphones, TVs, computers, and sofas has declined), it’s likely that restaurant food is regarded as a more affordable treat. While this sounds like great news for the restaurant industry, it’s important to note that disposable incomes are under pressure right now and – despite continuing to spend on dining – the amount consumers are spending is modest. With Less than $300 in Disposable Income, How Much Goes on Dining? Our research shows that the majority of Americans (53.5 percent) have less than $300 in disposable income per month. Consumers with disposable income in this range typically spend between $25-$49 on takeout food monthly, and $25-$74 on dining at restaurants. While these figures aren’t huge, they constitute a fair chunk of people’s disposable income, highlighting how important dining rituals are. For the 45.5 percent of the population who have a disposable income in excess of $300, they typically spend a bit more on prepared food: $100-$149 on eating out and $50-$74 on getting takeout food. Very few consumers spend in excess of $300 on dining out monthly (just six percent), showing that even better off individuals aren’t necessarily splurging on food. We do see that consumers’ dining habits vary quite a bit by age. Young adults (18-30) skew toward dining in restaurants, whereas older groups favor takeout. The 31-49 age bracket spends the most on restaurants of any group: the single largest share of this cohort reports spending $100-$149 per month on dining out. Gender also plays a role; women are significantly more likely to have a low level of disposable income, which can limit dining budgets…
Bringing Corporate Values to the Frontline in Casual Dining
How to ensure that a strong, values-driven culture permeates down to the unit level. Would you agree that in many casual-dining brands, corporate culture is often limited to the head office? Have you ever wondered why, and how to saturate your entire company with your core values, mission, and mindset, which create your brand’s culture as felt by both your internal and external customers? This month’s article comes from this precise issue and an excellent question from Alexandre Botelho, International Franchise Development Lead, Americas, of Dine Brands. Alex feels corporate culture is often limited to the head office in many casual-dining brands and asks, “What are the most effective ways to ensure that a strong, values-driven corporate culture permeates down to the unit level — especially in high-turnover environments where frontline staff may feel disconnected from the brand’s mission?” It will cost you in more ways than one. Many casual-dining brands invest time, energy, and finances into defining their corporate culture — mission statements, values, leadership principles — but these often remain confined to the head office. And beyond that, the results often remain in a computer digital file, printed, framed, and displayed somewhere it’s thought to be seen. How often do you walk by the same thing you’ve seen repeatedly and not really “see” it anymore? We all do! A company’s values are to be a living, breathing set of principles to be acted upon by its employees at all levels and felt by every customer and anyone who experiences your brand, even your vendors and suppliers. If a company’s values, vision, and mission, their culture, are only something discussed at the executive level and printed to check a box that it has been done, but not incorporated into every single operation, then it is meaningless. At the unit level, where turnover is high and the pace is fast, that culture can feel distant or irrelevant. This disconnect will result in inconsistency within your teams and low engagement from your staff, thus leading to difficulty retaining talent. Executive teams are always looking at their bottom line…
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The Essential System for Restaurant Owners Who Need to Focus
Start by listing all the tasks you need to handle daily. Don’t be afraid to delegate routine tasks to trusted managers or staff. Feeling overwhelmed trying to manage daily operations while also tackling important projects? Balancing the demands of day-to-day operations with long-term, important projects is a challenge every restaurant owner faces. But with the right approach, you can handle both efficiently, ensuring that nothing falls through the cracks. Let’s talk about the essential system for restaurant owners who need to focus. The struggle is real. As a restaurant owner, you’re constantly juggling multiple responsibilities—from ensuring smooth daily operations to making progress on key projects that drive growth. It’s easy for those important projects to get sidelined in the face of daily demands. But there’s a solution: time blocking. This simple system allows you to allocate specific time slots for various tasks, so you can focus on daily operations and long-term projects without neglecting either. Here are the steps to get started with time blocking. Step 1: Identify your priorities. Start by listing all the tasks you need to handle daily, as well as the important projects you want to complete. Then, prioritize them based on urgency and importance. This clarity will help you allocate your time more effectively. Step 2: Create a daily schedule. Next, design a schedule that allocates time for both routine tasks and key projects. Block out specific times for meetings, inventory checks, customer interactions, and other daily tasks. But don’t stop there—set aside dedicated blocks of time for your important projects. For example, you might spend the first hour of your day working on a project before the restaurant opens, and another hour after the lunch rush. The key is to schedule this time in advance and stick to it…
Restaurant Industry’s Labor Shortages Made Worse
By demographic trends. For an industry full of leaders long ago accustomed to handling staffing shortages, the past few years have but restauranteurs to the test. The next few will be no different. Long-running demographic trends colliding with the lingering effects of the pandemic have many feeling we are in the middle of one of the most difficult decades the industry has ever faced. Restaurants were among the hardest hit by the pandemic, and among the slowest to recover. Health and safety protocols ensuring restaurants could open safely meant the industry faced a sloping recovery from a precipitously sharp drop. Customers were slow to return as well, as concerns about the pandemic kept many at home. As the industry began to get its feet back it immediately faced another unfortunate curve, the confluence of demographic trends. Beginning last year through 2027 4.1 million workers will retire annually, and there are not enough younger workers to replace them. If every unemployed worker found a job tomorrow, we would still be short by at least 1.2 million. There are not enough workers, and for an industry with a long history of high turnover rates and seasonal fluctuations such a long running labor shortage could quickly cause things to spiral out of control. Rather than just another hiring season, or a lull, labor-intensive industries such as restaurants face a permanent labor shortage. However, by spearheading innovative programs to retain some of the experienced workers retiring from the labor pool they can improve the training, recruitment, and retention of young workers. At the same time leaders must understand the realities of the continuing demographic trends, and work to understand and implement immigrant visa programs so they can attract workers from abroad. Demographic shifts are reshaping the workforce, of the present and of the future, and the restaurant industry is on the front lines. As of early last year the restaurant industry still had not recovered to its pre-pandemic levels, short some 450,000 roles. At the same time, more than 60 percent of restaurant operators say they do not have enough staff to meet demand. These struggles cannot be written off as the fault of the pandemic. While that certainly exacerbated these trends the underlying causes, such as America’s declining birth rate, have been around for decades. This means that at the same time thousands of workers are retiring every day fewer young people are entering the workforce. Furthermore many older workers who left during the pandemic are not returning, having retired or moved on to different careers. With a shrinking pool of available workers, such a heavily service-driven industry as restaurants has been hit hard. From the smallest mom and pop shop to the largest chains in the nation, everyone is seeing the same thing. Jobs go unfilled for longer than usual. Fewer people show up for interviews, and of those that do get hired many leave after just a few shifts…
The New Concept Ballers Hopes to Capture the Cross-Court Consumers
The latest food-and-games concept will focus on pickleball, padel and other racquet sports. Whether you call it “eatertainment” or something else, the food-and-games segment appears to be showing signs of struggle. And yet they keep coming. Launching in Philadelphia next month is a new concept called Ballers, a “social sports venue” that will have a significant food-and-beverage feature. This concept is all about racquet sports, including pickleball, padel and more, but it will also have a restaurant and bar component designed for walk-in enthusiasts, daily players, and group events. It is created by partners behind the Equinox gym and hotel brand and is supported by investors that include tennis champions Andre Agassi, Kim Clijsters, and Sloane Stephens; along with pro pickleball star Connor Garnett; soccer star-turned-padel aficionado Maarten Paes; and David Blitzer, who owns the Philadelphia 76ers. Ballers creators David Gutstadt and Amanda Potter are principals in Good City Studio, which is known for developing the concept for the Equinox fitness and hotel brand. They have partnered with Daniel Bassichis of Vero Capital to launch Ballers, which will open first in Philadelphia in July, but sites are scheduled to come to Boston, Los Angeles, and Miami this year and next. The partners have raised about $30 million led by sports-and-consumer investment firms Sharp Alpha and RHC Group, as well as the celebrity athletes. The goal is to expand to more than 50 locations over the next decade. Pickleball is one of the country’s fastest growing sports, and a number of food-and-game concepts have attempted to capture that energy, including Chicken N Pickle, which is opening its 13th unit this summer. Padel, a different game that’s more of a pickleball/squash mashup, is also growing, and the partners behind Ballers contend many fans are increasingly “cross-court consumers,” who play more than one racquet sport. Ballers Philadelphia, for example, will span about 55,000-square-feet with six pickleball courts, three padel courts, two squash courts, a multi-purpose turf field, as well as golf simulators and a putting green. It will also have a fully equipped gym, a recovery lounge, saunas and more…
Why Are Restaurants So Dark?
Restaurants use mood lighting to curate a vibe; not everyone agrees on what constitutes bright enough. I’d barely squinted my way through reading the appetizers at a dimly lit Chicago bistro before we gave up and my friend grabbed the pretty brass table lamp to use as a light. When my friend asked a server to explain an unfamiliar dish, she too strained her eyes over the menu. No one—diner or staff—could see a thing. I’ve made a common practice of holding up votive candles to decipher the menu in pitch-dark basement wine bars, and shining my unlocked phone toward my plate to see the fish at a low-lit omakase. Across from me, my date’s face flickers in and out of sight like a ghost. With their lighting, restaurants aim to strike a balance between functionality and the immersive theater they’re inviting diners into for a few hours. Unfortunately, diners and restaurant owners don’t always agree on what constitutes bright enough. “Why are the majority of sit down restaurants so dark?” asked one Redditor a few months ago. Ambiance! someone replied in cheeky quotations. Some suspicious users guessed that the dimness hid grime on dishes or flaws in the food. A handful defended low lighting for helping “set the mood” or creating a more “romantic” setting. “Low-lit spaces offer a cozy, private atmosphere separate from our everyday world,” says Whitney Walsh Cardozo, chef-owner of Chez Foushee Restaurant & Bar in Richmond. “Like color, lighting impacts people.” But finding the equilibrium between sultry world-building and enough visibility to read the menu is a delicate business. Chez Foushee complements its muted green walls with sconces that cast a soft upward glow. An alabaster chandelier illuminates “just enough of the bar area,” and small table lights emit sufficient light to see what’s going on, while an additional candle on each table establishes the mood. Lighting has to serve multiple purposes. There’s general lighting to set the tone, brighter task lighting to help chefs and servers carry out their jobs, and accent lighting to draw attention to certain areas of the restaurant or up the ambiance. A soft spotlight over a table, drippy wax tabletop candles, or a spindly chandelier above the bar might draw diners’ attention to unique design elements or submerge them in a sexy dining room. Accent lights are great for establishing a vibe, but deployed haphazardly, things can go from alluring to blackout-dark…
Hooters Closes Restaurants in at Least 12 States
Filed Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. Restaurant chain Hooters abruptly closed over 30 locations across multiple states June 4. Hooters said in a statement to USA TODAY that the closed stores were company owned and called the closures a “difficult decision.” “Hooters will be well-positioned to continue our iconic legacy under a pure franchise business model,” the company said. “We are committed to supporting our impacted team members throughout this process and are incredibly grateful to our valued customers for their loyalty and dedication to the Hooters brand.” The company did not respond to a follow-up inquiry on a list of closed locations or when employees were notified of the closures. The company filed for bankruptcy in late March but did not indicate that restaurants would close as a result of the filing. “Hooters is here to stay, and with a stronger financial foundation and streamlined operations on the other side of this process, we will be well-positioned to continue delivering the guest-obsessed hospitality experience and delicious food our valued customers and communities have come to expect well into the future,” the company wrote on its website. Hooters had more than 300 locations, USA TODAY reported in April, including 151 owned and operated by the company itself and a separate 154 operated by franchisees. The company has been closing locations since at least 2024. The following locations were confirmed by USA TODAY to be closed, as a prerecorded message announcing the closure was played when the listed phone number was called…
Did You Know?
Struggling with Restaurant Visibility? Here’s How Video Marketing Can Help. The restaurant industry is highly competitive. If you don’t stand out from the sea of options for diners, you may not bring enough guests through the door to stay afloat. Video marketing can be your secret weapon. Naturally engaging for the senses, videos attract attention in a sea of content, get diners interested in your menu, and encourage visitors. Want to create a loyal fanbase of regulars and encourage word-of-mouth referrals? Here’s how video can get your restaurant seen and build recognizable brand identity. There’s a visual nature to the food and beverage industry. While images can excite the senses, video takes it a step further with sensory appeal that words and photos can’t match. Just a clip of a sizzling, colorful dish moving through a beautiful and lively restaurant atmosphere can be enough to entice the senses in your audience before they even set foot inside. Then, when they want to dine out, your restaurant is at the top of their mind…
Employee Tip
Building and Teaching Resilient Teams in Hospitality. Training a team isn’t just about filling roles. It’s about building lives. At Fire by Forge, I don’t just run the restaurant—I run with a purpose. It’s an award-winning Pan-American kitchen, yes, but more importantly, it’s the social enterprise arm of Forge City Works, where food is more than a product—it’s a tool for transformation. We work with people in Hartford who are overcoming barriers most employers won’t even look past. Our mission is clear: use food and hospitality to train, uplift, and create sustainable careers. Not just jobs. Lives…
