The Early-Bird Special Isn’t Just for Seniors: Why Americans of All Ages Are Dining Earlier These Days
For years, an early-bird dinner was associated with retirees who needed to eat at a restaurant’s first seating so they could be home in time for Matlock. But oh, how the times have changed—quite literally.
Now people of all ages are eating out in the early-evening hours, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. And they’re not just opting for earlier dinners; they’re seeing movies and theater shows earlier than ever before, and calling it quits well before midnight. Call it a Cinderella story.
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Restaurants currently seat 10 percent of diners between 2 and 5 p.m., according to Yelp data cited by the WSJ. That’s doubled since 2019, when only 5 percent of diners ate between those hours. And Uber trips to restaurants between 4 and 5 p.m. have jumped 10 percent since 2019, the ride-sharing company told the newspaper. Meanwhile, after 8 p.m., rides to restaurants are down 9 percent.
In response to this shift, restaurants are closing up shop earlier than they used to. When it opened in March 2022, Asterid in Los Angeles closed at 11 p.m. Now the last seating is typically around 8:30, and the restaurant pushed its opening time from 5:30 to 5.
“I’m a night owl, so shutting down the restaurant at 9 feels so weird to me, but if there’s two or three tables in the restaurant and a lot of us are just standing around, we lose money,” Chris Chernock, Asterid’s beverage director, told The Wall Street Journal.
The trend toward an earlier dinner time is in large part thanks to the pandemic. Hybrid and remote workers have more flexibility in their schedules, and when they’re working from home, they’re more eager to head out into the world as soon as their workday is over. As such, they may opt to immediately grab a drink or eat dinner at a restaurant, or see a movie or a Broadway show.
The data bears that out: A third of the shows currently on Broadway start between 7 and 8 p.m. on Fridays, according to Playbill data cited in the WSJ. And some movie theaters are adding earlier weekday showings, while cutting out late-night offerings.
So night owls, beware. We’re living in an early-bird world now.
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