The Next Supper: The End of Restaurants as We Knew Them, and What Comes After by Corey Mintz

Author:Corey Mintz [Mintz, Corey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2021-11-16T00:00:00+00:00

THE GRAY MARKET

The socioeconomic divide that separates immigrants from prosperity gives way to a geographical one. As cities grow, they spread. The ethnic enclaves that used to jostle up against each other, a block-to-block transition from Little Portugal to Chinatown to the Jewish deli, all within walking distance of the entertainment district, grow farther apart and less accessible to each other.

Suresh Doss mentions a collection of blocks on the east side of Toronto, right on the subway line but not a prime commercial district. A couple years ago, half of these storefronts were empty. Just north of the strip, affordable housing that had been predominantly Sri Lankan has become overwhelmingly Punjab and Bangladeshi. Lately, as rents for restaurant spaces have reached beyond the scope of first-time operators, Doss has seen these smaller lots, traditionally used to sell jewelry and a variety of other goods, repurposed for food businesses. “That stretch has become Bangla Town and Biryani Row in two years. There are places so tiny, if you walk in there, you can’t put your arms down. Smaller than shipping containers. You have to slide in, order your biryani, and then slide out. No white person is going there because they don’t know it’s there. There’s no signage.”

The micro market won’t last long. Within five years, as houses and apartments change hands and chains and franchises knock down walls to expand storefronts, this part of town will be unrecognizable. Because of this, Doss has recently noticed a divergence in the pathway of immigrant restaurateurs, as the latest stage of real-estate pricing shifts these businesses off the street altogether. “Now you meet this South Indian couple that has moved from Madras, about seven months ago. He cooks. She cooks. They both come from a very food-rich family. They live [far away from downtown] in Scarborough, in an apartment building, finding that nobody is doing the food that they want.” Like their predecessors, the couple researches the idea of opening a restaurant. “They look at prices downtown. That’s not going to happen. They look at prices in Little India. That’s not gonna happen. They look for places in Scarborough, and even that they can’t afford. Because they just got here a year ago. They have no capital. So what they will do is resort to cooking out of their apartment and serving food using social media as a conduit to tap into their audience.”

Recently, this gray market has exploded, expanding tremendously in the couple of years before the pandemic, then exponentially as a result of pandemic conditions. Often this starts without the intention of growing a business. “Let’s say this woman’s name is Anita. She makes South Indian food for her neighbor who’s babysitting her daughter. Her neighbor says, ‘This is great—you should open a restaurant.’ Anita says, ‘I can’t do that.’ The neighbor tells her neighbor. The next day there’s a knock on the door. You multiply that by ten or a hundred. Now the entire apartment building is aware of Anita’s food.

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