Imagining a World With No Restaurants

Without restaurants, you couldn’t pronounce chipotle, shiitake, charcuterie, quinoa, souvlaki, half-caf, barista or venti, much less use them in a sentence. Without restaurants, brunch would be a typo, and only baseball would have starters. There would still be breakfast, lunch and dinner, but without restaurants, they would mostly be miserable. To meet a friend for coffee or lunch would mean going to their place or yours. Every. Single. Time.

There would be no celebrity chefs. Or chefs. That means no James beard, Paul Bocuse, Jacques Pepin, Wolfgang Puck, Auguste Escoffier, Thomas Keller, Emeril Lagasse, Alain Ducasse, Jonathan Waxman, Jose Andres, Nobu Matsuhisa, or Alice Waters. Gordon Ramsay would be an angry carnival sideshow barker and Guy Fieri is running the Tilt-a-Whirl down the midway. Anthony Bourdain’s parts would be known.

Howard Johnson would just be a character in Blazing Saddles, Harry Caray a dead baseball announcer, and Michael Ditka and Michael Jordan would have to eat at home instead of in a building with their name on it. John Daly would have to nowhere to go after a celebrity tournament to chug beer, ogle waitresses and down wings. Eggrolls would be strictly an Easter White House lawn activity. Farm to table would be called food, and all diners would be locavores. Williamsburg and Wicker Park would be IKEA-blighted neighborhoods. Every worker, student and commuter would brown bag at noon.

The Two Broke Girls would both be unemployed, Cheers would be set at an AA Meeting and Ross, Joey, Chandler, Monica and Rachel would meet at the local Kinko’s to flirt, crack wise and commiserate instead of Central Perk. Delhi would only follow the word “new” and the most famous scene in When Harry Met Sally would take place in a community center, not a restaurant table. Placemats would be found only in Cleveland’s NFL franchise.

Without restaurants, Five Guys would describe how many people you needed for a men’s league basketball game, not your favorite lunch spot. You’d take a Subway, not eat at one. Dominos would be played, not delivered. Shake Shack wouldn’t be a place, it would be a prank you play on a friend using the outhouse. Drive-thru windows would be a New York Post headline describing the actions of a Long Island drunk driver, not where you’d go to grab fast food fast. The Cheesecake Factory would be a business that manufactured pinup girl posters, calendars and tshirts. Ruby Tuesday would remain the name of a Rolling Stones hit from 1966. Applebee's is where Archie and Jughead would attend the Riverdale principal's Christmas party, not a restaurant where they'd down riblets and root beers. The only time you’d visit a Hut is if you lived in Bora-Bora or needed a pair of sunglasses. DiGiorgino’s would have no tag line for their commercials.

General Tso's Chicken would be a historical reference to military cowardice, not #14 on the takeout menu. Potstickers would be price labels in a Medical Marijuana Dispensary, instead of yummy Asian dumplings. Early Bird specials would refer to discounted 6 a.m. hot yoga classes, not two fried seafood platters for $12.99.  A frequent diner would be a Weight Watcher’s member, not a target market. A salad bar would be the upper limit of how many chopped vegetables you could eat in a sitting, not a traffic generator. Point of sale would reference the tip of a jib and not a cash register. 86 would merely be a number between 85 and 87 and not refer to running out of anything. There would be no bustubs, busboys, monkey dishes, or salamanders. The only thing in the weeds would be your lost Frisbee, not the new waitress. Windows and doors would open and close, but not managers.

Technology would be radically different sans restaurants. Ubereats would be fruit or nuts you plucked from a tree, not an app-based delivery system. Grubhub would describe your fridge or pantry. Yelp is what your dog would do if the rocking chair leg caught his tail. Trip Advisor would just be a detour sign.

Only computers would have menus. The only tips would come from bookies or brokers. Surf and Turf would be the marketing slogan for Del Mar racetrack in Southern California, not a steak and lobster combo. A side of mushrooms would be a witty remark about fungi that Oscar Wilde muttered to a friend, not a sliced vegetable blanched in red wine and beef stock to accompany a medium rare beefsteak. A New York Strip would be a new inmate processing procedure at Riker’s Island. 

Without restaurants, you could die for your beliefs or your country, but not for the Molten Fudge Flan with raspberries and powdered sugar. You could experience death from malaria, but not by Chocolate. The only weekend reservations we'd have would center around if our daughter was bringing her new boyfriend home. Without restaurants, Ireland and Scandinavia would no longer be embarrassed by their anemic culinary expertise, and return to promoting their proficiency at either drinking to excess or depressing filmmaking.

A greasy spoon would describe something to stir chili with, not a roadside diner. Without restaurants, the CIA would be an agency you’d avoid, not a Hyde Park NY culinary program you’d matriculate in. A well-drink would be a dipper or bucket of water. Chips and Salsa would be a Latin Dance fundraiser for officers of the California Highway Patrol. Prime Rib would be an Old Testament explanation of how God made woman, and the most popular Buffetts around would be Jimmy or Warren, not Bellagio’s. Casual-theme would refer to your college roommate’s sartorial choices, not the architecture and menu of a branded restaurant group. A chain would restrain your dog, or secure your wallet if you’re from West Virginia. It would not describe a string of identical franchised restaurants. There would be no full-service, or quick service, just self-service. And fast food would be called rabbit.

Oh. Then there’s this: if there was no restaurant business, there would be no Greensboro Four who, on February 1, 1960 jumpstarted the Civil Rights movement with its most influential and significant sit-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter. And our nation would most likely be in an economic Depression, because 14,400,000 people would be unemployed, 1.7 million new jobs would not be created annually, and an additional 16.5 million citizens would be jobless because the manufacturing, distribution and brokerage industries that directly support foodservice would be nonexistent. A world without restaurants is a world I no longer want to imagine, eat in or live in.

The restaurant business is far from perfect, but it is ingrained in our national fabric and has given hundreds of thousands of immigrants a start, tens of millions of teenagers their first jobs, and countless ne’er-do-wells a second chance. It’s jumpstarted juveniles, made mavens of misfits and built the greatest industry on earth.

Jim Sullivan is a popular keynote speaker at Leadership Conferences Worldwide. His two books, Fundamentals and Multiunit Leadership have sold over 400,000 copies worldwide. You can get his free catalog, apps, podcasts, insight and more at Sullivision.com. Follow Jim at LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter @Sullivision.