The future of food is...

I just blocked off an hour each day for the next two weeks so I can Tweet. It’s not always rosey, but working for a startup can be pretty cool at times.

On another note, I stumbled into a Clubhouse room where a bunch of guys were talking about the future of food. Like most things on Clubhouse, I found it interesting at first but quickly got bored. It did get me thinking about tech advancements and how they are going to affect food in the future.

There’s some exciting stuff going on and being built right now.

Delivery services like Doordash have enabled cloud kitchens so more cooks can produce food catered towards delivery. I can get a bowl of pho in under 20 minutes now. That’s awesome.

Robot cooks are just freakin’ cool. Yes I’d prefer a hand tossed pizza from an expert pizza maker, but heck the next best thing is a pizza made by a robot.

Tech is going to drive down the cost of food and create massive efficiency in how we get food in the future.

That sounds great right? Not necessarily.

While efficiency and cost cutting is great, I’m also genuinely worried about the inevitable future of food because of the impact it will have on mom and pop shops.

Small family restaurants that I love may not be able to survive in this not too distant future.

Delivery services will push people towards cloud kitchens because it’s more profitable for them.

A shift towards delivery over in-person will eliminate a lot of the small 2-4 table restaurants or small counter restaurants.

Lower costs due to automation by robots at competitors will outprice small restaurants who cook the old fashion way.

I hope I’m wrong. The optimistic and probably best case scenario is that these small mom and pop restaurants start to go more upscale and start charging more. I’m okay with that but I’m not sure if others will be. Regardless, I’ll miss my $8 bowl of pho in a 5 table restaurant.