David Chang hits out at 'existential threat' to restaurants - and Gen Z are to blame
Topics: Alcohol, Drinks, Restaurants and bars
Jen Thomas
Featured Image Credit: Rene Johnston/Toronto Star via Getty Images
Topics: Alcohol, Drinks, Restaurants and bars
Dining and lifestyle movements come and go, but one restaurateur has hit out at a particularly Gen Z trend.
It's apparently causing irreparable damage to the restaurant industry due to changing habits around alcohol.
David Chang, who founded Momofuku, has said that the changing ways of the youth has harmed the profits of restaurant owners - both from big chains and small independent spots.
He has called the reduction in alcohol consumption a 'real existential threat' to the industry as a whole.
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Chang said in an interview on the TBPN podcast: "Kids just don't drink anymore!"
It's not even Dry January yet, either.
Gen Z are defined as anyone born from 1997 to 2012.
He joked: "They are never going to know what it is like to wake up at 3 p.m. in the afternoon and be like: 'S***, I left my credit card in that bar.'"
Many restaurants make a sizeable chunk of profits from alcohol sales, with about 70 percent of the money coming in from food sales, and 30 percent from beverages.
Chang advised: "Something is going to give when you are down 18% on beverage sales."
His fear is backed up by research.
Gallup carried out a survey in August, which found the number of Gen Z young adults drinking alcohol fell.
The number reduced by around 9 percent, between 2023 and 2025.
It's thought to be down to the cost-of-living-crisis causing people to cut back on spending, and when that combines with the rising costs of food and drink it becomes a double-edged sword for the industry.
They're also going out less to bars and nightclubs, so it's not just restaurants feeling the pinch.
Many young people are sharing videos of them holding supper clubs or communal dining instead.
Phil Kafarakis, the CEO of the Food Away From Home Association, told Business Insider: "Consumer sentiment is in a very bad place, restaurants are grappling with rising ingredient costs, higher labor costs, and fickle consumers."
Kafarakis doesn't see it ending anytime soon: "This whole thing is really becoming a tsunami of sorts that really doesn't look like it's going to slow down."
According to TIME Magazine, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism representative George F. Koob said: “It is becoming clear that, for whatever reasons, today’s younger generations are just less interested in alcohol and are more likely than older generations to see it as risky for their health and to participate in periods of abstinence like Dry January."
Koob added: “It makes sense that older drinkers are drinking more, given that Baby Boomers were steeped in a heavier drinking culture."
What can be done to solve the problem? Unfortunately, it's not that straightforward.
Chang said: "I don't have an answer. Food needs to get more expensive, but that comes across as terrible… because it's already expensive."