Guardian – ‘It breaks an employer’s control’: the tragic disappearance of the American lunch hour Americans are spending less on weekday lunches, opting instead to save for weekends. Is a once-cherished meal in its death throes? Alaina Demopoulos Tue 28 May 2024 Blame it on working from home, tighter budgets, inflation or all of the above: transaction data pulled by the digital-payments app Square found that midday food spending was down 3.3% nationwide last year compared with 2019. The decrease was steeper in some cities, including Boston, Atlanta and Dallas. While a full obit for the humble lunch break might be premature, a recent report from the University of Toronto backed up the hypothesis that Americans want to spend more on weekend luxuries than a lunch bill. The study found that foot traffic in major US cities remains low on workdays, but higher during the weekend.
It’s just another episode of “blame pandemic mitigations” lockdown revisionism with a side of some inflation hype as well. This doesn’t really add up since people who work from home can go to restaurants for lunch, for takeaway, or get it delivered, if they wanted to. And people who work in offices can take lunch with them to work. Maybe there’s a reason people don’t want to use up their lunch break milling around in midday traffic. The real tragedy here is if the reason some people don’t get out food for lunch anymore is that workers are inappropriately being forced to work through lunch, and sadly that’s the more likely explanation.