Another interesting part of quarantine: around the world, traumatized people are turning to comfort food. https://twitter.com/pookleblinky/status/1248156214648807425

People are perfecting recipes, talking to grandparents about recipes, reconnecting with comfort foods they may not have had since childhood. Second and third generation immigrants are scrounging youtube for the comfort foods of their grandmas.

Billions of people are, in the midst of trauma, coping by not only reconnecting with comfort foods, but mastering them.

What will this do to restaurants a year from now?

How is your favorite soul food joint going to taste when you try it and can't help but think you can make better with one hand behind your back.

What'll Panera taste like when you can make better bread with your eyes closed?

Last year, you may have thought comfort food and pictured fast food.

A year from now, odds are it'll be that recipe your mom found from her mom. That dish you created for your kids.

How is the restaurant industry going to adapt to everyone's tastes having drastically changed in a short time?

Who is going to go to a restaurant a second time after trying something and thinking "I made better than this with half the ingredients and a few youtube videos"

I think, a year from now, the whole global restaurant industry will have to adapt or die. Tastes will have changed drastically.

People will have discovered new foods and old foods, grown bored with old favorites, mastered recipes themselves. All before you add in shifting mores around being in public spaces.

What will street food stalls look like a year from now in India or DC?

I predict that, where the weather permits, food trucks will become popular. Lower financial footprint, easier to startup, more adaptable, etc. Restaurants that can't adapt will die.

I also predict an explosion of ethnic foods. People reconnecting with their traditions, people desperate for new things, people realizing that most ethnic foods are tailor-made for living in struggle, etc

I think this will, like other times of collective trauma, lead to a cultural renaissance in music and food simply due to everyone needing new sources of comfort just to cope.