I’m often the first to defend struggling Millennials and Gen Zers. Housing really is harder to achieve now than it was for Boomers. And I don’t want to hear complaints about avocado toast or coffees.
There are now two viral threads on X. One is based on a $20 Jersey Mike’s lunch order. Another is based on Kevin O’Leary’s comment that if you make $70,000 a year, your enemy is the $28 lunch.
I think Millennials, particularly Millennials in major cities — in some ways have gotten a better deal than they realize. A lot of investor money in start-ups like Uber, Grubhub, Lyft, and other coordinating services drove down the price of these daily luxuries: cab rides, delivered food. Also, the huge influx of immigrant, particularly illegal immigrant, labor kept takeout food prices lower than they otherwise would have been. This isn’t limited to food service. The suburbs obviously saw the prices of childcare, lawncare, domestic cleaning services, and even laundry services stay low.
Millions of people habituated themselves to eating out or ordering in much more frequently than previous generations had. This also coincided with other trends that reinforced the daily takeout — more people living alone, fewer stay-at-home mothers making meals to send out, etc.
Now, while the labor market gets tighter because of immigration enforcement, the restaurant industry is facing one of its most serious threats in decades: the decline in alcohol consumption. Many restaurants live and die on the margins they get reselling and upcharging for alcohol. If enforcement keeps up, and AI robots don’t pick up the slack, I think we may see a society-wide partial retreat to the kitchen and to the habits of economizing at home.