The Restaurant Industry Is Broken. Can It Be Fixed?

If you dine out regularly, you might have noticed some changes in restaurants over the past few years. Perhaps you’ve found yourself ordering at a counter, scanning a QR code to see the menu, or eating … a lot more soft serve. These changes aren’t just trends. Brett Anderson, a New York Times food reporter, says they are restaurant owners’ desperate attempts to stay afloat in an industry in crisis. According to a report from the National Restaurant Association, 42 percent of restaurant owners said they weren’t profitable in 2025. Many of them were at serious risk of closing. In this episode of “The Sunday Daily,” Brett talks with our host Michael Barbaro about the economic realities that are forcing businesses to rethink the entire concept of a restaurant, including a radical experiment at one Minneapolis diner that stopped charging for food entirely. On Today’s Episode: Brett Anderson, a reporter for the Food section of The New York Times.Background Reading: This Restaurant Stopped Charging for Food. And Profits Are Up.The Restaurant List 2026 Photo credit: Caroline Yang for The New York Times.  For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.