can Lunch make a comeback?

I'm worried about Lunch.

To be clear, I'm addressing Lunch -- not as a meal -- but as a dear friend of mine.

Over the last three years, Lunch has fallen down the culinary (and cultural) mountain. It's become an afterthought. A has-been. Gen Z has no idea how high Lunch was flying back in the mid-90s and early 2000s.

At its peak, Lunch had three immovable pillars serving as its foundation.

1. The office

2. The sandwich

3. Fast food's "Age of Innocence."

But here we are in 2023, and the unthinkable has happened. Lunch finds itself, not fighting with dinner at the top of the rankings but buried in third place, with some ranking Lunch as low as fifth behind breakfast, brunch, dinner, midnight snack, and 3 pm charcuterie.

What in the world happened?

First, let's start with fast food's "Age of Innocence." There was a time, pre-Super Size Me (released in 2004) when we enjoyed fast food with no guilt whatsoever. It was normal to run a five-day gauntlet of gluttony, bouncing from McDonald's to Burger King to Wendy's to Taco Bell before finishing the week strong at Little Caesar's.

None of this was cause for concern. Fast food wasn't even on the dietitians' radar screen. They had their sights set on breakfast. Eggs and butter were the FBI's most-wanted terrorists, and the anti-sugar movement was gaining steam. If anyone called out fast food, there was an immediate agreement, "Well, at least it's not breakfast food."

Fried chicken? At least it's not fried dough covered in sprinkles. French Fries? At least it's not buttery hashbrowns. Burger and fries? At least it's not those cartons of cholesterol.

In the 90s, America didn't build Lunch around the Food Pyramid; no, America built the food pyramid around Lunch. This leads us to Pillar #2 - The Sandwich.

The Sandwich was the ultimate healthy option. "A sandwich a day keeps the doctor away," said Jared at Subway. Since bread was the most important food group, all we had to do was add lettuce, tomato, cheese, put a McFlurry next to it, and everything was covered.

Quick side note - I wonder if the food pyramid was meant to have vegetables at the bottom, but they accidentally printed 10 million carb-heavy copies. The person in charge looked it over, looked at the price of printer ink, and said, "Welp, bread it is."

Lunch was also the first meal of the day when you could sit down and relax. This brings us to our third and final pillar (the most recent one to fall): The Office.

The pressure to get to the office by 8 or 9 AM turned breakfast into a rushed 2-minute drill. Cereal. Pop-Tarts. Maybe two pieces of toast, but 2000s toast was disappointing. 2000s toast was just a sandwich without a middle, and we were still ten years away from discovering avocados. This mad morning rush caused some people to skip breakfast altogether. Gourmet plates with steak and eggs, eggs benedicts, omelets, pancakes, waffles, yeah right. Not with a 30+ minute commute. Besides, even if there were time, you'd have the dietitians breathing down your neck, hiding the sticks of butter.

Get to the office, dive right into meetings. Work, work, work. Three or four straight hours, non-stop. But then Aunt Betty stepped on the porch with a giant triangle bell in hand - ding, ding, ding! Stop what you're doing. It's 12 o'clock. Time for the sacred Lunch break.

Lunch. Break. What an amazing thing that was! Breakfast was stressful and rushed. Dinner you had to cook and then clean up the dishes. If you had kids, one of those kids might throw their plate of spaghettiOs at the wall. But Lunch was an oasis. A social event. People would walk around the office -- Hey, we're grabbing lunch. Wanna come? You could talk to your friends about sports, complain about work, or come up with four Pixar movies on one napkin. Anything was possible during the Lunch break.

At the peak of Lunch's dominance, you would've been laughed out of the cafeteria for questioning its future staying power. But now, with the advantage of hindsight, it's clear to see the three pillars were crumbling in broad daylight. We just weren't paying attention.

First was the fall of fast food. Not a financial fall. McDonald's, Burger King, Chick-Fil-A, they're all doing just fine. But gone are the days of super-sized meals. We went from 5-day gauntlets to "everything in moderation." People started packing their lunch 2-3 days a week, and when they did go out, restaurants pulled a fast one offering "Soup AND Salad" as lunch food. The "AND" was supposed to make us forget about the sandwich.

It was a whole new world. Dietitians started saying, "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day." What? And carbs are the enemy now? The 90's food pyramid felt as ancient as the Egyptian pyramids. The only bread on the table was the croutons on top of the salad.

Sure, it was great to return to the office with all that soup-and-salad energy, and yes, ranch dressing helped disguise a salad, but Lunch had taken a major hit. You even started seeing people eating lunch at their desks. Pair this with post-2008 "hustle culture," and the idea of taking a whole "Lunch Hour" or even a "Lunch Break" was a surefire way to fall down the corporate ladder.

But the fall of these two pillars was small (French fried) potatoes compared to the world-altering change we saw in 2020. Once stay-at-home orders went into effect, Lunch crumbled. The commuting worker -- who used to wake up at 6, shower, get dressed, eat a PopTart before hitting the road -- could now sleep until 8, skip the shower, only get dressed above the waist, and sit down for a full waffle, bacon, scrambled eggs breakfast. When someone finishes a breakfast of that magnitude at 9 AM, and their only physical activity is crawling over to a Zoom call in their boxers, it feels weird to hit 12 o'clock and say, "You know what, I think I could use a sandwich."

Lunch hour was replaced with leisure. Time to take a walk. Ride a bike. Read a book. Everyone had a new hobby, and most of those new hobbies were baking sourdough bread. Yet, oddly enough, none of these sourdough loaves went toward sandwiches. No, they were just displayed around the house like deer antlers.

The social component was gone. There were a few hardcore extroverts who insisted on virtual lunch, but after a week, it felt weird watching your co-worker eat Doritos over Zoom.

By the end of 2021, it looked like Lunch was officially done. And I mean done, like movie rental done.

Now, to be fair, it wasn't all doom and gloom. Mealtime experts thought maybe, just maybe, when people returned to the office, Lunch would have a comeback. But it didn't happen (at least not at first). Lunch even showed up on the return-to-office complaints!

I have to pay for gas, sit in traffic, AND pay $20 for fricken lunch? This is ridiculous.

Fricken lunch. Really? That's where we're at now? No one's ever said "fricken breakfast" or "fricken dinner." The whole thing was devastating to witness. Part of me thought, you know what, why don't we just get rid of the lunch hour altogether? Call it something else. The Leisure Hour. The Midday Snack. The Laptop Type & Chew. But let's stop disgracing the great tradition that is Lunch with these not-even half-assed versions of it. Let's take Lunch out to pasture. End with its dignity intact.

But then something incredible happened. As companies tried to entice employees back into the office, weekly catered lunches started showing up as a perk. As people experienced this treat, eating pulled pork sandwiches with their colleagues, it was a surprising reminder, "Hey, Lunch is pretty awesome."

There was so much excitement. New people! New stories! We're sitting together, in the flesh, eating Doritos. Especially after 2+ years of working from home with the same spouse, partner, kid, roommate, dog, cat, Alexa, having the ability to chow down with your work friends was incredibly refreshing.

Lunch was the new happy hour. Sometimes over an hour. And since bosses were so happy with anyone who voluntarily came into the office, Lunch had no rules.

90-minute lunch? Don't worry about it! At least you came in.

Beer at lunch? Hey, very European. I dig it!

3-hour nap after lunch? Alright, starting to push it. But we can be flexible!

I think organizations should lean into longer lunches. It's the ultimate return-to-office strategy that rebuilds company culture and gets people excited to drive in. For starters, ban 11:30 and 1:00 o'clock meetings. Let 11:30 to noon be for restaurant travel time or the extended, "Hey, what are you thinking for lunch? I'm good with whatever, how bout you? Yeah, I'm good with whatever, you?" back and forth.

I mean Spain has always had a two-hour lunch. Let's get to that level! They even have a word (sobremesa) for the post-meal chatter. We need a sobremesa! And a siesta. Let's build the workday around Lunch.

Look, I'm a realist. I know the 90s heyday with the carb-heavy food pyramid and the guilt-free fast food is behind us. I know people prefer Chipotle over Subway. The sandwich will never have the mystique it once had. I get it. But let's not give up. We can bring back Lunch by bringing Lunch to work.

So, who's with me? I know I don't have all the details mapped out yet. But that's okay. Let's meet and discuss.

Over Lunch.

Thank you for stopping by the new home of the Medium Rare blog. If you enjoyed this post, check out "the future is overrated." Also, part of the name "Medium Rare" means these posts aren't fully cooked. I'm always open to feedback, ideas, suggestions on how to improve a post. Please feel free to send thoughts to chris@longoverduebooks.com

To subscribe for semi-monthly Medium Rare blog posts, fill out the form below. Have a great week!