John Collison: prediction

Transcript context

…Yes, and they are also incredibly sought after. In fact, if you looked at the census data in America now, and this is also true in China, but if you looked in America, in the last 60 years, I think there's only a couple of years where the number of restaurants in the current year didn't exceed that in the previous year. Even though they are such difficult businesses because of our love for food, for socializing, being with each other and what a meal represents and how it can connect different people, it continues to grow. In fact, it's the number one type of establishment that malls and a lot of shopping centers want the most of. Talk to me about the trends in the restaurant industry these days. If I think about what people talk about, there's dark kitchens. That was more a few years ago, people were talking about dark kitchens. There's the fact that high-end restaurants can't make any money these days because no one drinks. There's maybe the emergence of new fast casual trends, but also some criticism of the slop bowls and everything. But that's just what people are… You're in it. Tell me what's actually going on in the restaurant industry. One of the most difficult things is how do you actually staff your restaurant? This is the number one challenge. This has always been the number one challenge. There's no easy ways around this, really. I think because the cost of labor only goes in one direction and only goes up, restaurants are increasingly making this choice of on the continuum of service to manufacturing. Where do I want to sit on that spectrum? I think that is one very big trend that more and more restaurants feel like they have to go towards the ends of the spectrum, whereas before—…

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