Can You Be a Regular on an App?

or…Why Nobody Knows Your Order Anymore

What happened to the local diner, coffee shop, and neighborhood deli? A Behind the Slicer essay about community, comfort food, hospitality, and why local restaurants still matter.

Social media can be great...we all know it. We connect, learn, find entertainment, be productive...it's why we use it almost every single day.

But a question recently has be rising in my mind.

Can you be a regular on an app?

At first, the answer feels obvious. Of course you can! The app remembers your order.

It remembers your address.

It remembers your credit card.

It remembers that one time at 11:47pm you ordered enough mozzarella sticks to feed a family of six (even if it was just for you) and called it “dinner.” In many ways, it remembers more about us than the local diner ever did.

And yet…Something feels different.

Think about the last time you found "your spot". Not some place you frequently dine on special occasions, or a place you go when you want to impress a friend. I'm talking about a place you know you can go in sweats, possibly with your shirt flipped inside out, hair in a bun or a cap...a place you can chill for a few hours and still know you're going to get good, solid food.

When most people talk about being a regular, they’re usually not talking about the food.

They’re talking about the relationship.

The waitress who asks where you’ve been.

The bartender who starts pouring your drink before you sit down.

The deli owner who knows your kids’ names.

The coffee shop that notices when you miss a week.

You see apps, for all of their usefulness, remember actions, transactions. It is the recreation of customer service because the truth is people remember people. Someone took the time to actually think that you we worthy to be remembered in their mind and say, "It's good to see you today.". That is the joy of the local spot. It's a place you belong.

And maybe that’s why I’ve found myself wondering what happened to the local spot.

Not necessarily the best restaurant. Not the fanciest restaurant.

Not the place with the highest Yelp rating or the most followers on Instagram.

Just the spot.

For Friends, it was the coffee shop, Seinfeld, Monk's, Cheer's...Cheer's. It reflected the realty we all had.

The place where life happened in between everything else.

Nobody called these places community centers, a chatroom, a subreddit...They were just there. Maybe that’s why nobody noticed when they started disappearing. Honestly, we get it. Covid, rising costs...going out simply isn’t what it used to be.

There was a time when breakfast at the diner wasn’t a financial decision. It was just breakfast.

Coffee.

Eggs.

Conversation.

Now everything feels more expensive.

Restaurants feel more expensive.

For every new convenience, life feels more expensive. It's almost as if for every convenience gained, we've lost a little bit.

People are careful with their money because they have to be and that is beyond understandable. Trust us, just as you have had to save, we too have had to get creative with our needs.

While cost isn't the entire story, something else happened at exactly the same time.

Convenience won.

Need dinner?...DoorDash it.

Need groceries?...Instacart it.

Need entertainment?...We carry more of it in our pocket than most people had in their homes twenty years ago.

But if you need social interaction? Well…sort of.

Clicking away at keys behind a screen doesn’t slake your thirst for personal interaction the same way staring at a picture of a cheesesteak doesn’t cure hunger.

It resembles the real thing. But it isn’t the real thing.

This is where things get interesting. We have the ability to talk to more people than any generation in human history. Text, post, share, and comment.

We are connected constantly. Yet, ask yourself...do you feel less lonely?

How can people be more connected than ever and still feel disconnected?

The truth is, connection and presence aren’t the same thing.

Maybe somewhere along the way we optimized ourselves out of gathering.

After all, if restaurants only existed to provide food, delivery apps should have replaced them entirely by now.

But they haven’t.

People still seek out diners.

Coffee shops.

Neighborhood delis.

Local bars.

The places that survive seem to survive for reasons that have very little to do with food.

And the more I think about it, the more I wonder if we’ve misunderstood what restaurants were providing all along.

The word restaurant traces its roots to restoration. A place where travelers stopped to restore themselves before continuing their journey. Most people assume that means restoring the body.

But I suspect it meant something else too...belonging. A place to restore your soul.

Restaurants became a brief pause from the world. No matter here you went, people always had their spot because everybody needs a place where they can put the weight down for a little while.

A place that asks nothing from them.

A place where they don’t have to perform.

A place where they can simply exist.

And with the need to save, and the availability of such convenience, Home has served that purpose for so many.

But home isn't connection. Just as we have given up so much for convenience, we've also given up so much by foregoing the local spot. In truth, maybe that’s what the local spot really was. A second living room for friends and family. A borrowed front porch. A familiar booth.

A place where somebody knew your name before they knew your order. Or if we were really good at our jobs, we knew your order when we saw your face rather than your name. There have been times when we see guests and the kitchen knew, two Cobb salads with extra dressings need to be fired.

Which brings me to something we’ve always loved about the deli business.

People often assume Celebrity Delly is named after famous people. The truth is a little simpler than that. The idea was never that celebrities came to eat here. The idea was you are the celebrity....that each and every person who walks in the door is worthy of star status if you let us. Not because you’re famous, but because your order matters, what you're going through matters...you matter.

And maybe that’s what we’re really losing when local spots disappear.

Not restaurants.

Not diners.

Not delis.

Recognition.

The simple comfort of being remembered. The feeling that somewhere in the world, there is still a place where somebody notices when you walk through the door.

And maybe even notices when you don’t.

Because it turns out the best local spots were never just feeding people.

They were restoring them...and maybe that’s why people still go looking for a spot they can call their own.

Because everybody wants to be remembered.

Even if it’s just by the waitress who already knows what they’re having for lunch.