{"id":4691,"date":"2025-03-12T13:07:40","date_gmt":"2025-03-12T17:07:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/?p=4691"},"modified":"2025-03-12T13:53:53","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T17:53:53","slug":"the-curious-surge-of-productivity-in-u-s-restaurants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/the-curious-surge-of-productivity-in-u-s-restaurants\/","title":{"rendered":"The Curious Surge of Productivity in U.S. Restaurants"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<ul>We document that, after remaining almost constant for almost 30 years, real labor productivity at U.S. restaurants surged over 15% during the COVID pandemic. This surge has persisted even as many conditions have returned to pre-pandemic levels. Using mobile phone data tracking visits and spending at more than 100,000 individual limited service restaurants across the country, we explore the potential sources of the surge. It cannot be explained by economies of scale, expanding market power, or a direct result of COVID-sourced demand fluctuations. The restaurants\u2019 productivity growth rates are strongly correlated, however, with reductions in the amount of time their customers spend in the establishments, particularly with a rising share of customers spending 10 minutes or less. The frequency of such \u2018take-out\u2019 customers rose considerably during COVID, even at fast food restaurants, and never went back down. The magnitude of the restaurant-level relationship between productivity and customer dwell time, if applied to the aggregate decrease in dwell time, can explain almost all of the aggregate productivity increase in our sample.<\/ul>\n<p>That is from a new paper by Austan Goolsbee, Chad Syverson, Rebecca Goldgof &#038; Joe Tatarka.  A good paper, though I for one will note I consider the take-out experience (which I hardly ever do) to be a quality degradation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/marginalrevolution.com\/marginalrevolution\/2025\/03\/the-curious-surge-of-productivity-in-u-s-restaurants.html\">The Curious Surge of Productivity in U.S. Restaurants<\/p>\n<p><em>Originally posted on Marginal Revolution<\/em> &#8211; click to see comments and suggestions.<\/a><\/p>\n<h3 class='related_post_title'>Related Posts:<\/h3><ul class='related_post'><li><a href=\"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/is-indian-food-the-worlds-best\/\" title=\"Is Indian food the world\u2019s best?\">Is Indian food the world\u2019s best?<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/why-do-the-servers-always-want-to-take-our-cutlery-and-plates-and-glasses-away\/\" title=\"Why do the servers always want to take our cutlery and plates and glasses away?\">Why do the servers always want to take our cutlery and plates and glasses away?<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/rules-for-tri-state-italian-food\/\" title=\"Rules for Tri-State Italian food\">Rules for Tri-State Italian food<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/san-francisco-dining-2\/\" title=\"San Francisco dining\">San Francisco dining<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/around-since-xxxx\/\" title=\"\u201cAround since xxxx\u201d\">\u201cAround since xxxx\u201d<\/a><\/li><\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We document that, after remaining almost constant for almost 30 years, real labor productivity at U.S. restaurants surged over 15% during the COVID pandemic. This surge has persisted even as many conditions have returned to pre-pandemic levels. Using mobile phone &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/the-curious-surge-of-productivity-in-u-s-restaurants\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,1968,153],"tags":[1899,721,1961],"class_list":["post-4691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american","category-delivery","category-economics-of-dining","tag-delivery","tag-fast-food","tag-marginal-revolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4691"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4692,"href":"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4691\/revisions\/4692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}