Restaurants and Institutions

Chris Muller

Restaurants Matter
November 24, 2008

Restaurants matter. To the macro-economy, to a local neighborhood economy, and to the micro-economy of just one customer making one purchase—restaurants matter across all levels of social enterprise. Millions of people are actively involved in making sure that the single purchase at “the last three feet” of customer/restaurant interface is made. 

Consider just this simple example: Blueberries grown in Chile are planted, harvested, packaged, ground-transported, air-freighted, inspected, warehoused, purchased, distributed, received, prepared, and will be served to a single customer in a small café in Chicago, or Amsterdam, or Singapore tomorrow morning. Put a job, and a face, and a paycheck at each of those activities. Now look at the average restaurant menu and multiply the chain of economic activities for a handful of blueberries by the hundreds of items which are represented on it. Even a single restaurant has an impact far beyond its walls, whether it is a 3 Star Michelin in Paris or a stall offering meat pasties in Nairobi.

Never mind that one company, McDonald’s, serves more than 30,000,000 complex meals world-wide every day. Think of the logistics and supply impact to the world economy of even a small bag of french fries. 

Is it reasonable to guess that worldwide there may be more than 5 million business outlets we could call a restaurant? How many people in how many different industries work every day to make it possible for them to open their doors and offer their hospitality?

Each of us is directly linked to all of us because of the impact of the restaurant business. Over the past weeks, economic news has been nothing if not bad. Banks have been brought back from the brink of catastrophe, industrial institutions have warned of their possible total collapse and governments have pledged to keep our economies from meltdown. To the average person it appears that almost no one really understands how obscure financial miscalculations could make a disaster happen so quickly.

But in our world, every day, it still comes down to one customer, buying one meal, from a server standing within arms reach. And that is why, because it appears so simple, we forget how much restaurants really matter.

Maybe the leaders of our economies should spend a few days learning about the complexity of “hamburger flipping” so they could understand the way the economy really works. And how a decision made by a customer on Main Street really is more important than one made by a trader on Wall Street.

Posted by Chris Muller on November 24, 2008 | Comments (2)