Courtesy of Dakota’s, photo by Beckley Photography
Audio By Carbonatix
Lunch is dead. Long live happy hour.
To clarify, eating between breakfast and dinner is very much alive and well. When we say “lunch,” we mean the lunch rush at restaurants that typically happens in the middle of the day when the 9-to-5 crowd is on its break.
This is the time that busy bigwigs used to call a “power lunch.” It doesn’t seem to be too powerful anymore, though.
According to a study released by Square, weekday transactions between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. were down 3.3% last year compared with pre-pandemic times, specifically 2019. Square’s explanation for this dip is the rise of hybrid workers who split time working at home and in offices.
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This doesn’t seem to be for lack of desire to eat out. During the same amount of time, sales jumped 4.2% on the weekends and 0.3% during weekday happy hours.
“There’s a perception that consumers are cutting back at restaurants, when in fact total spending has increased. The bigger change is in consumer behavior,” said research lead Ara Kharazian in Square’s spring quarterly report. “Before COVID, consumers were going out more during the week to eat lunch by their office and grab drinks after work. Now with remote work, restaurant spending has shifted to the weekend and we now see that weekend traffic is at its peak.”
Dallas-specific data collected by both Square and the University of Toronto mirror these national trends. Square reports a 7.3% decrease in weekly weekday lunch purchases, a 0.2% increase in weekday happy hour purchases and a 6.6% increase in weekend purchases.
Toronto’s Downtown Recovery study (which includes retail and entertainment in addition to restaurants) names Dallas a city that is “struggling to bring back activity during the workweek [but] booming after hours.”
The New Power Lunch
Statistics are not universal rules, however, and several Dallas restaurateurs have managed to rise above these trends and maintain a busy lunch hour. Downtown’s Sloane’s Corner and Dakota’s Steakhouse, both owned by the NL Group, have been business as usual at lunchtime according to NL Group’s executive chef Ji Kang.
“We’ve been really, really lucky as Sloane’s,” Kang tells the Observer. “I mean, us being attached to Trammell Crow Center has been just a blessing […] especially on days like today, where it’s rainy and windy and nobody wants to go outside. It’s such a perfect place for everybody to come down to eat lunch.”
On paper, Sloane’s seems like exactly the kind of lunch spot the research is talking about. It has typical lunch fare like soups, salads and sandwiches and is located inside of a corporate office building. Sloane’s manages to rise above its competition (namely, the sack lunch) by going against “power lunch” conventions.
“Ten years ago when power lunches were everywhere, on every single lunch menu, it was like a soup, salad and then a sandwich, entree, whatever, and then a sorbet or ice cream for dessert,” Kang says. “I really thought that could work, but it seems like everybody’s more in a rush.”
Sloane’s aims to get lunch customers in and out in 30 minutes and still have time to grab a fresh cup of coffee. Dakota’s Steakhouse offers a similar reprieve for busy customers, but with a different vibe.
“We have a ton of regulars [at Dakota’s], even more regulars than Sloane’s,” Kang says. “The regulars that come in there just want peace and quiet. They just want to get away from everybody. They have their own little booths. … You’ll see some businessmen and women all around the corners of the restaurant. They just want a little quiet time.”
Kang’s description of a lunch rush at Dakota’s sounds like a decidedly subdued alternative to the power lunch. That seems to be the secret to its success.
Al Biernat’s, another steakhouse ideal for making deals at noon, with locations in both North Dallas and Oak Lawn, says lunch is still booming for them as well.
Though it seems like diners are increasingly saving their going-out money for the weekend (or eating whatever’s in their fridge since they work from home), all is not lost for the weekday lunch rush. If a restaurant can offer both a menu and an experience that customers can justify choosing over their free leftovers, the lunch rush we previously declared deceased might just have a pulse.
(But still save a little for happy hour, though. You need something to look forward to at the end of the day.)
