If you were choosing to eat at a restaurant based on social good, where would you choose? Would it be the zero-waste restaurant whose ingredients are only sourced within a 25-mile radius, or the one that offers job training to marginalised groups, such as refugees and ex-offenders, to become its chefs?
Or would it be Zizzi?
It might sound unlikely, but a new piece of research from Harvard University and the Naval Postgraduate School has identified the “full service” chain restaurant as being the best place to find people from different socioeconomic classes mixing. This would be places like Applebee’s or the Olive Garden in the US – our equivalents of Harvester and Zizzi, through to Wagamama and Côte. “The most socioeconomically diverse places in America are not public institutions, like schools and parks, but affordable, chain restaurants,” reads the report, which highlights these chains as the centre of the modern melting pot.
“Affordable” is of course in the eye of the beholder, but with main meals about £16 or less, it’s no surprise to see people choosing these sorts of conveniently located restaurants to splash out for a birthday, or dropping by for some reliable grub when the urge to cook at home has gone. Eateries have always had something of a community role – whether it’s young people hanging out at the chicken shop, or professionals meeting at the coffee shop – so it is worth considering the social value of the affordable chain when thinking about our changing high street.
But let’s not beat around the bush. The fact that these places are the pinnacle of cross-class mixing in the States is frankly depressing. Especially considering that the most likely encounter with a stranger in a restaurant is cursory and fleeting. If a polite laugh in the Café Rouge toilet queue is the best we can do in terms of forging diverse human connections – while not finding them in schools, workplaces or through shared experience of arts, culture and sports – then something has gone horribly wrong.
Globally, this is becoming a trend: the more economic inequality there is in towns and cities, the more the wealthy self-segregate, putting their children in private schools while working in elite professions, ensuring they can go days, weeks, maybe even months without encountering anyone who is struggling (a young Rishi Sunak put it succinctly once, when he said he didn’t have any “working-class” friends). This is a chilling prospect when we consider the positions of influence such people tend to go on to, not to mention just being very sad on a human level. There are brilliant, inspirational people up and down the class ladder, cutting ourselves off from them makes everyone poorer.
But here’s the good news – the trend of wealthy self-segregation hasn’t fully played out in Britain, not yet anyway (finally a good reason for a sense of British exceptionalism). A recent study analysed all core cities in England and Wales, and found that income inequality didn’t track quite as directly with social segregation, with some particularly wealthy cities like Cambridge and Winchester displaying lower than expected levels. The research also highlighted just how prevalent low-income groups are in many urban neighbourhoods and that the most segregated neighbourhoods in the UK tend not to be major cities with the highest earners, but places with average levels of income where people peel off to pockets of affluence.
How did Britain buck this trend? Perhaps it is due to interventions like public housing, of which the UK (even still) has a far higher amount and at a higher quality than the US. But with high income inequality in the UK, social mobility in decline and crumbling public services encouraging those who can afford to go private to do so, we would be wise to heed the US study as a ghost of Christmas future, showing us what could happen if we’re not careful.
Social mixing is not a magic bullet, and on its own cannot deliver social cohesion (a slightly nebulous concept but one that looks at inclusion, quality of relationships and mobility). But it’s a pretty potent tool, particularly if you get people young. We’ve seen it with issues of race: as a 2018 London School of Economics study put it, “the more mixed the school, the warmer the feelings for other ethnicities, promoting social cohesion”. However, it should be reiterated that surface encounters from people being thrown together are unlikely to cut the mustard.
On this point, research from 2015 makes for interesting reading – it looked at adults and children connected to primary schools in “super-diverse” areas to see how relationships blossomed. They found that class remained a barrier in developing meaningful relationships, even more so than ethnicity, and especially among the adults. It’s hard to imagine that even the powerful shared experience of embarrassment during a TGI Fridays Happy Birthday song could resolve this compared to, say, workplaces that take an active role in integration.
Still, councils and policymakers would do well to consider the role of the affordable restaurant as they oversee our changing neighbourhoods, making sure they are accessible and ultimately fit for a diverse Britain. They’ll need a multi-pronged attack, and the fork certainly isn’t a bad place to start.
Coco Khan is commissioning editor for Guardian B2B and a writer
