A lot of restaurants built their margins around the second

A lot of restaurants built their margins around the second cocktail or bottle of wine, and now they’re getting squeezed from both directions: proteins, produce, and labor keep climbing while people nurse one drink all night or skip alcohol entirely. You can already see menus reacting — smaller lists, more pasta, more braised cuts, fewer “just because” ingredients, and honestly some of the smartest cooking shows up when a kitchen has to stretch flavor instead of budget.