Has hospitality lost the art of being hospitable?

Dining out has always been about being looked after. But lately, that feeling has been harder to deliver. Hospitality hasn’t changed. How it shows up has.

I recently came across a café charging $3 for chilli flakes. It’s a small addition, and one I view as more symbolic of the times. Diners are paying closer attention to the overall restaurant experience, looking for value at every turn.

At the same time, restaurants are dealing with an increasingly difficult balancing act: rising wages, higher ingredient costs, rent, bills, insurance… the list goes on. Most diners don’t think about these pressures, nor do they care to. What they do understand is how it feels. “Why do they need the table back already? I paid $30 for this tiny plate?”

That’s where the tension sits right now—between what restaurants need to do to survive, and what diners expect when they go out.

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For many venues, the art of being hospitable has changed. Free bread is (mostly) a thing of the past, as are comped birthday desserts. These small, unspoken gestures go a long way for guests.

My favourite childhood Chinese restaurant, The Golden Lantern (miss you), would send every girl and woman home with a single carnation. It’s the kind of detail that stays with you. Would I expect that now? Absolutely not.

The absence of these gestures is an adjustment for guests who’ve become accustomed to them. The reality is, they’re harder to justify when margins are this tight—and this reality needs to hit the end consumer. I do believe the average diner has no idea how costly running a restaurant is. And that’s a big problem, especially in the current economic climate.

The art of hospitality is showing up differently now because it has to. Instead of the bread basket, it’s found in the front-of-house team that remembers you and knows the menu inside and out. It’s in better sourcing, better cooking and more considered menus. It’s in what arrives on the table, even if it does feel costly—it’s because it has to be.

As more venues close—at every level—it’s worth thinking about what disappears with them. When you dine out, you’re not just paying for what’s on the plate and in your wine glass. You’re paying wages, covering rent, backing suppliers and keeping a business alive.

Instead of asking if it was worth it, ask what it would cost to lose it.