For the last few years — largely driven by the spread of COVID-19 — many restaurants were forced to get good at something they were never originally built for.
Takeout. Delivery. Convenience at scale.
And to their credit, they did. They figured it out quickly. They streamlined operations, tightened menus, invested in technology that made ordering feel almost effortless.
But in solving for convenience, restaurants created a new problem for themselves. If your food travels well, arrives quickly, and can be eaten anywhere, why would anyone choose to eat it inside your restaurant?
“The two primary reasons for dining out are very different,” said Steve Starr, CEO and principal of StarrDesign, a restaurant architecture and design firm. “One is social. The other is convenience. What COVID did was push convenience to dominate the social side.”
Starr has spent decades in the restaurant design industry, partnering with concepts across the country, including a more than 20-year relationship with Firebirds Wood Fired Grill. His perspective isn’t theoretical. It’s built on years of watching how people move through restaurants — and more importantly, what brings them back.
And right now, that “what” is changing.
Staying home is no longer a compromise. It’s easy. It’s comfortable. It’s become indistinguishable from the in-person experience that many restaurants offer.
So the question isn’t whether people will dine in again. It’s why they would. And the answer, increasingly, has very little to do with the food.
From Starr’s perspective, much of the full-service “middle” market is struggling. While delivery and takeout now make up a larger share of sales, overall revenue is often down because dine-in traffic has declined.
“Dine-in checks are almost always higher,” Starr said. “You lose beverages, especially alcohol. You lose the experience. And that’s where the value is.”
And that loss goes beyond dollars. Because when you strip away the act of sitting down, being served, and sharing space with others, what’s left is just the transaction.
“There needs to be some sort of experience at the social level,” Starr said. “Whether it’s a high culinary experience or exposure to something new — something that educates, expands, or connects people — it has to be something.”
That word — experience — gets thrown around so often it starts to lose meaning. It can sound like a buzzword, something reserved for high-end concepts or big-budget builds.
But that’s not what people are responding to. They’re responding to something much simpler: how a place makes them feel.
You can see it in the places that are working. Not just restaurants, but the ones that blur into something else entirely: wine bars that feel like living rooms, breweries built around trivia nights and music bingo, neighborhood spots where the draw isn’t just the menu, but human connection.
“There’s a backlash happening against device culture,” Starr said. “People want to socialize without their screens. They want something tactile — cards, games, shared experiences.”
In other words, the pullback into restaurants isn’t about food. It’s about what can’t be replicated at home. And that’s where so many restaurants are missing the mark.
Because experience isn’t something you can layer on at the end like a playlist, a neon sign, or a one-off event meant to draw a crowd. It’s built or broken by the decisions that shape how a guest moves through a space, how they interact with it, and how long they stay.
“It doesn’t have to be high-end,” Starr said. “I love going to a breakfast counter, sitting there, talking to people, having someone refill my coffee over and over. That’s an experience.”
He points to places like Waffle House, where the appeal has very little to do with design trends or menu innovation and everything to do with what happens once you sit down.
That kind of experience doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t try too hard. But it’s intentional in ways that matter — spaces that invite conversation, staff that engage instead of disappearing, environments where you feel like you’re part of something, even if it’s just for the length of a meal.
And just as importantly, it doesn’t take much to break it.
“Fast casual dining rooms are brutal,” Starr said. “Too big, uncomfortable, chaotic. It’s the last place I want to be.”
It’s not one thing that creates that feeling. It’s everything. The chair that makes you shift after 10 minutes. The trip back to the counter since you forgot silverware. The line of people hovering too close to your table. The constant getting up, sitting down, adjusting, navigating.
None of it feels like an experience. It feels like work.
“If I sit down, I don’t want to get up,” Starr said. “I want to enjoy the time with the people I’m with. That’s the whole point.”
That’s the part of the conversation that often gets overlooked. Experience isn’t just about what’s added; it’s about what’s removed. The friction, the interruptions, the small decisions that pull someone out of the moment instead of letting them settle into it.
And that’s the shift restaurants have to make if they want people back inside — not by adding more, but by designing better.
For years, dining rooms were built around efficiency: how many seats, how fast you can turn them, how quickly you can move people through.
But people aren’t looking to be moved through anymore. They’re looking to stay.
“No one wants to sit in a half-empty space,” Starr said. “Make it feel alive.”
Energy matters. Proximity matters. The ability to talk without shouting matters. The feeling that something is happening around you — something you’re a part of, not just observing.
Because at its core, that’s what restaurants have always been.
“Look at any civilization,” Starr said. “The first public building is a place of worship. The second is a place to gather, to eat, to drink.”
Not just to consume, but to connect. And connection is the one thing that doesn’t translate to a delivery bag.
That’s the opportunity in front of the industry right now. Not to outcompete delivery on speed or price, but to offer something delivery fundamentally can’t. Something that only exists inside the walls of a restaurant.
“Something about it has to be remarkable,” Starr said. “You can’t strive for good enough.”
Remarkable doesn’t mean elaborate. It doesn’t mean expensive. It doesn’t mean turning dinner into a performance. Starr emphasized that it can be as simple as sharing a meal with someone, but you have to design for that to happen.
Because in a world where everything can come to you, the restaurants that bring people back will be the ones that give them a reason to go.
Not for the food. For the experience.
