Page 110 - Southern Oregon Magazine Summer 2019

The Morning Glory Cookbook
chow | local habit
is Finally Here!
Now compare that to your glass washing machine that costs $125 per
month to operate—$1500 per year. It doesn’t mind working 24 hours
a day, never asks for time off, doesn’t have family emergencies, never
injures itself, doesn’t require FICA withholding, and never gets sick.
The machine wins this job. That is the calculus that every business
owner is doing.

To make it as plain as I can, once a machine can do something effec-
tively that has become price-prohibitive for a human to do, that human
is out of work. And that job is not coming back.

Here’s a possible scenario about how this happens, and how we become
okay with it. As front of the house employees become more expensive
to pay, restaurants skimp on service to make sure they stay in busi-
ness. This makes service suffer. There are now long waits for food and
Get your signed copy at Morning Glory at 1149 Siskiyou Blvd Ashland, Oregon drinks, or even to have someone arrive at your table. When you need
Thank you, Readers, for choosing Morning Glory! something, that server is so weeded (as we say in the industry) that
they either don’t see you, or refuse to look at you because they know
Also available at: just as well as you do that the service is poor, and they don’t want the
Barnes and Noble confrontation.
Bloomsbury Books
Paddington Station In this scenario, and in this day and age, it makes perfect sense to think
Tudor Guild that no service at all would be better service. In this future restaurant,
Jacksonville Inn you don’t have to rely on a service staff stretched thin by rising costs.
R Rebel Heart Books You really will believe that this is better service, because you will be in
charge of your experience, and for the staff that remains it’s pretty hard
to mess up carrying a plate.

I think the slide is that simple. And I also believe that we will move that
way with very little difficulty aside from the few years of poor service
before the solutions present themselves.

But let’s get back into that crystal ball for a moment. Does this mean
the end to the dining experience as we presently know it? In some
cases yes, but in some cases no. There will still be places that offer
the old-fashioned service, but they will be special occasion restaurants,
and they will be more expensive because they will have more staff to
pay. You’ll still be able to get “table service” at some places, but it will
become something to advertise and capitalize on, like “hand-crafted,”
or “artisan.”

Cultivate community with good food It’s very possible that the future of eating in America really only exists
in four categories: 1) fast food drive throughs, 2) major chains that
look like our hypothetical future restaurant, 3) special occasion places
holding on to the old ways - these will most likely be most viable when
paired with additional revenue streams like hotels or catering busi-
nesses, and 4) hybrid combinations of 2 and 3. For instance, the places
where you order at a counter, and then take a seat and either grab your
N The Café own food or wait for it to be brought to you.
—
A
D Of course, all of this is just conjecture. Maybe restaurants will continue
— to look the same, far into the future. But if I had to wager on it, I would
put my money on more automation and fewer people. There may well
come a day when discussion of table service is as quaint as rotary tel-
Open Daily 7 to 9 • 945 S Riverside Ave ephones, ditto copiers, and rolling up the windows in your car.
(541)779-2667 • medfordfood.coop

108 www.southernoregonmagazine.com | summer 2019