In your home, how often is everyone able to sit down together for a meal? Is it daily? Almost daily? Weekly? Or less than that?
When you do all eat together, is it usually at home? If so, does someone in your family cook or are you more likely to get delivery, or takeout? How often do you have a meal together at a restaurant?
When Daniel Cox was growing up in Rochester, N.Y., he spent every Saturday night at Pizza Hut with his father and two brothers. The server got to know the family so well that when she saw their blue Dodge Caravan roll up, she would put their order in: two cheese pan pizzas and two pitchers of Pepsi.
Mr. Cox’s parents were divorced, and the Pizza Hut ritual was centering for the family. “It was a time when we were all together and everyone was enjoying the experience,” he recalled. “Who doesn’t like pizza?”
Now a father himself, Mr. Cox rarely goes out to eat with his kids. They’re in travel-soccer practice three nights a week, and his family can’t get out of the local pizzeria for less than $100. He couldn’t think of an affordable, sit-down meal they’d shared recently.
Once rapidly growing commercial marvels, casual dining chains — sit-down restaurants where middle-class families can walk in without a reservation, order from another human and share a meal — have been in decline for most of the 21st century. Last year, TGI Fridays and Red Lobster both filed for bankruptcy. Outback and Applebee’s have closed dozens of locations. Pizza Hut locations with actual dining rooms are vanishingly rare, with hundreds closing since 2019.
According to a February survey by the market research firm Datassential, 24 percent of Americans say they are having dinner at casual restaurants less often, and 29 percent are dining out less with groups of friends and family.
Mr. Cox is a pollster by profession, the director of the Survey Center on American Life, and he wondered about the effects of the chain implosions. In his latest survey on social trust and cohesion, he was moved to add questions about how often people are not just ordering food from a restaurant, but actually sitting down to eat there.
He expects to publish the results in May, but said recently, “I think what a lot of families are doing is opting out. That’s a real loss.”
The diminishing of these spaces, along with the rise of more atomized eating habits like delivery apps and drive-throughs, signals the decline of a cherished ritual in American life: dining out with friends and family, and the human connection it brings.
How well do the findings in the article reflect your own experiences? Is your family more likely to eat at home, whether it’s takeout or a home-cooked meal, than go out?
Do you have any special memories of eating at a restaurant with your family, as Daniel Cox does with his? Tell us about one, if so. Where did you go? Who was with you? Why was the meal memorable?
How often does your family eat meals together, whether out or at home? When you do eat together, what sorts of things do you talk about at the table? What does that time mean to you?
What kind of restaurant do you prefer when you do go out with your family? If you get to choose, do you pick a fast casual chain, sit-down restaurant, locally-owned place, food truck or some other type of business? What is your favorite restaurant, and why?
What is your reaction to the decline in casual dining chain restaurants? The article suggests that it means less human connection, among those dining together, as well as with restaurant employees and other guests. Does that feel like a loss to you? If not at restaurants, where else do you go where you are known as a regular, or where you can connect with others?
