There was a time that anyone wanting a special meal would head to a steakhouse.
Anniversaries, promotions, birthdays, retirements and graduations were all celebrated in true
American fashion: over a giant slab of meat.
But the 21st century hasn't been kind to the steakhouse, and across the country, they're
disappearing.
Long-time favorite restaurants like Ponderosa, Bonanza and Outback Steakhouse have all announced
massive shutdowns.
Locations are shutting their doors for good, and some chains have been struggling for as
far back as 2008.
Steakhouses are having such widespread problems that you might even call it an epidemic of
closures, so let's talk about what's really going on when it comes to these staples of
American cuisine.
Rising beef prices
Historically, beef prices go up when droughts hit, since it's harder to maintain cattle
in an environment where nothing grows.
Droughts aren't going away any time soon, so market prices continue to skyrocket.
The trend continued specifically in 2017, and in 2018, news outlets reported cattle
ranchers were still dealing with drought conditions, as well as struggling to keep up with increasing
demand.
Prices are being driven up by that demand, pushed even higher as US beef exports also
hit record highs.
Production is struggling to keep up, but it's not enough.
And that's hurting the profit margin of steakhouses across the country.
When Wall Street favorite Ben Benson's Steak House closed in 2012, they cited rising costs
of beef as a factor in shutting the restaurant permanently after their lease wasn't renewed.
Fast forward to 2017, when the New York Post talked to steakhouse owners across the country.
Some places saw their beef prices jump about 20 percent, and that's not the kind of cost
increase restaurants can easily survive.
Bang for your buck
They say you get what you pay for, and that's definitely true of steaks.
While high-end steakhouses might be scaring away customers with their price tags, steakhouses
that have been more accessible are finding they have another problem: people now know
they're paying a premium for steaks that are no better than what they can pick up at their
favorite grocery store.
According to James Beard Award-winning food writer Josh Ozersky, one of the biggest problems
with America's chain steakhouses is the quality of the steaks they serve.
Most, he says, aren't serving USDA Prime, they're cooking lower grades of steak.
They often use tenderizing methods like poking the meat with needles, adding MSG, and using
butter to mask the toughness and the texture.
So, unless you're prepared to spend big bucks at a big-city steakhouse, more and more people
are just opting to cook their own.
Kobe beef left a bad taste
People want to be able to trust a restaurant, and when the truth about Kobe beef started
to come out, it didn't make steakhouses look good.
In 2012, Forbes' Larry Olmsted called the industry's promotion of Kobe beef "Food's
Biggest Scam."
At the time, there were a ton of US steakhouses that advertised Kobe beef on their menu and
charged exorbitant prices for it, but there was a catch: at the time, no real, authentic,
Japanese Kobe beef was sold anywhere in the US.
In the following years, Olmsted revisited the issue.
By 2014, there were only a few restaurants in the US authorized to sell real Kobe beef.
He said that while there were some legit steakhouses actually serving up the real deal, most of
them weren't.
When Inside Edition ran their expose in 2016, they found there were even some Michelin-starred
steakhouses supposedly offering Kobe beef… and lying about it.
"I'm very embarrassed to work here"
"Hi."
"Hi"
Animal welfare
We're not just getting more aware of how healthy our food is, we're also becoming more aware
of where it comes from.
When you start talking about meat, it's a tricky subject steakhouses are getting caught
up in.
When Prevention wrote a piece on the cruelest foods on the market in 2012, it included,
you guessed it, beef.
Protesters concerned about factory farm and slaughterhouse conditions have descended on
steakhouses from Toronto to Australia, not just condemning the restaurant but the diners
eating there.
In 2016, a coalition of 50 organizations set their sights on Darden Restaurants, the parent
company of places like Olive Garden and Longhorn Steakhouse.
The movement focused on getting the chains to do more to improve their animal welfare
standards, and only source meat from responsible organizations.
Even though Darden talked the talk, they allegedly didn't walk the walk, organizers said, and
that's not good publicity surrounding an already uncomfortable subject.
Living in moderation
You are what you eat, the old saying goes, and there's something to that.
The dining choices you make do, after all, say a lot about who you are.
"How about your favorite food, what would that be?"
"Oh Milk steak!"
"Hm.
What?"
"Milk steak"
And that connection, says food writer Josh Ozersky, is at the heart of one of the big
problems Americans are having with steakhouses.
He describes them as,
"[...] closer in spirit to strip clubs or spas, places to which people repair for rites
of costly self-indulgence.
[…] Both the steakhouse and the strip club seem to offer the most primal of pleasures,
but the actual exchange is cynical, unsatisfying, and almost prohibitively expensive."
Ozersky argues that heading to a steakhouse to gorge yourself on a massive piece of meat
was once up there at the top of the pyramid of life's pleasures.
There are slabs of steak, too much alcohol, desserts so indulgent they'll make you sick…
and modern Americans just aren't into that any more.
At a time when restaurants are going increasingly healthy, steakhouses are a relic of a not-so-distant
past.