Received: 4 February 2016 Revised: 29 July 2016 Accepted: 1 August 2016

DOI 10.1111/soc4.12417

ARTICLE

The dynamics of dining out in the 21st century:

Insights from organizational theory
Michaela DeSoucey1 | Daphne Demetry2

1
Department of Sociology, North Carolina
State University
2
Oxford University Centre for Corporate
Reputation, Saïd Business School
Correspondence
Michaela DeSoucey, Department of Sociology,
North Carolina State University, 1911 Building,
Campus Box 8107, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA.
Email: mdesoucey@ncsu.edu
Abstract
The world of restaurants—as organizations as well as indicators of
social status and cultural tastes—has, thus far in the 21st century,
become especially dynamic in the United States and elsewhere.
Social scientists have begun to engage seriously with issues
concerning germane shifts in the culinary profession and the emer-
gence of new forms of cooking and dining out. For sociologists
interested in consumption, organizations, and creative work, this
offers a number of timely topics, such as restaurants' financing strat-
egies and ownership models, the institutionalization of new culinary
trends, the expanding roles of chefs, and the labor practices of
upmarket restaurants. This article synthesizes recent scholarship
on the modern culinary field in the United States, specifically exam-
ining three interrelated themes: tensions between concurrent
demands for creativity and financial returns, new ways of catering
to consumer desires for authenticity, and issues of inequality in pro-
fessional kitchens. It concludes by discussing several issues facing
the future of dining out, as forecast by field leaders themselves,
which offer further opportunities for burgeoning sociological and
organizational inquiry.

KEYWORDS

restaurants, cultural production, authenticity, organizational theory,

chefs, consumption

1 | I N T RO DU CT I O N

With over 13 million employees and 4% of the United States' GDP (National Restaurant Association, 2013), the res-
taurant industry is the nation's largest private sector employer. In 2013, according to the United States Department of
Agriculture, 43.1% of food dollars was spent on meals consumed away from home, up from 40.4% in 2000 and 25.9%
in 1970. The world of dining out has proved remarkably resilient to recent economic downturns and has even been a
focal point of urban renewal and recovery. Despite the post‐recession challenges of financing new ventures in this
industry, restaurant sales grew from $379 billion in 2000 to $604 billion in 2011.

1014 © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/soc4 Sociology Compass 2016; 10: 1014–1027
DESOUCEY AND DEMETRY 1015

Such resilience is in part because restaurants—from neighborhood burger joints to white tablecloth establish-
ments—are significant sites of symbolic work, cultural valuation, sociability, politics, and pleasure (Finkelstein,
1998). Since the birth of the modern restaurant in 18th century Paris (Spang, 2000), eating out has been associated
with cultural participation, displays of taste and social distinction, and status group affiliations (Warde & Martens,
2000; Julier, 2013). Restaurants' type, cost, offerings, décor, and expected levels of formality have long stratified din-
ing experiences in the United States and elsewhere (Beriss & Sutton, 2007; Carroll & Wheaton, 2009). Moreover, res-
taurants merge the dynamics of economics with those of culinary aesthetics and creativity; they have long been
venues where social identities are negotiated among chefs, cooks, waiters, and diners (Fine & Demetry, 2012). In
other words, they are important and multifaceted symbols embedded in consumer culture (Beriss & Sutton, 2007).
This paper focuses on the contemporary American culinary field of upmarket (but not just fine dining) restaurants,
following Bourdieu's characterization of the “field” as a “particular social universe endowed with particular institutions
and obeying specific laws” (Bourdieu, 1993:163–75). In a culinary field, food‐centered cultural meanings, codes, and
distinctions are constantly being calibrated relative to one another and to their boundaries and external constraints.
Culinary fields generally include a spectrum of products, practices, and texts that tie together food production, prep-
aration, and consumption in recognizable ways; they are situated within larger public discourses and cultural relation-
ships (Ferguson, 1998, 2014). Despite 21st‐century economic slumps and growing social class inequality, popular
interest in this “loosely connected cultural field” (Ferguson, 2014, p. xxiii) has done the opposite of shrink (Johnston
& Baumann, 2015[2010]). Public and media attentions to food system issues, politics, and “foodie” culture have grown
in noteworthy ways that are no longer tethered to the most elite segments of American society (Naccarato & LeBesco,
2012; Williams‐Forson & Counihan, 2012).
Similarly, recent trends in the culinary field have piqued scholarly interest in the organizational and cultural dimen-
sions of professional cooking. Whereas the recent sociological study of restaurants began with investigations of “reg-
ular” professional kitchens (Fine, 2008[1996]), we find that contemporary research often veers instead towards the
identities, reputations, and work of the elite. This includes foodie eaters that legitimate their self‐images and class sta-
tus through “exotic” and “authentic” dining, as well as celebrity and head chefs who contribute to the glamorization of
kitchen life as creative, fun, and deeply meaningful. This article considers these trends, but as one thread among others.
Ideas about what it means to produce, cook, evaluate, and eat high‐status food exemplify what Ferguson (2014,
p.xiv) calls “food talk,” or how we discuss and create social worlds (our related ideas, judgments, aspirations, anxieties,
and desires) through food. As Leschziner (2007) argues, the social conditions engirding a culinary field, including its
“talk,” affects relationships among its creators as well as between creators and their products and audiences. “Food
talk,” then, both accentuates and suppresses a variety of complementary social and organizational distinctions.
Naccarato and Lebesco (2012) frame this “food talk,” and how it is arbitrated through media, as an increasingly impor-
tant type of 21st‐century cultural capital. Finkelstein (2014) shows that prominent restaurants similarly matter for
consumers' “engineered” presentations of self—that where we eat matters as much for our identities as what we eat
in our fast‐paced, media‐rich, and globalizing consumer culture.
While our focus is on dining establishments, it is important to note that consumers also matter in new ways for
these venues' reputations and successes. Websites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor allow a sizable public—most of whom
lack traditional critics' breadth of knowledge and experience (Davis, 2009)—to interact as “reviewers,” creating addi-
tional pressures on the restaurants themselves. Scholars call this active and collaborative production of meaning and
value by consumers “prosumption” (Humphreys & Grayson, 2008, Ritzer & Jurgenson, 2010). In terms of reputation
management, chefs and owners must deploy new and creative tactics to positively influence audiences' perceptions
(Fombrun, 1996; Petkova, 2012) and prevent empty tables and negative reviews (Ferguson & Zukin, 1998). For
instance, gourmet food trucks have relied heavily on Twitter to generate public attention and cultivate loyal fan bases
(Esparza, Walker, & Rossman, 2014). Social media platforms also offer new data sources for research, such as for
studying consumer dining preferences (Kovács, Carroll, & Lehman, 2014).
Within restaurant kitchens, “food talk” feeds back into the actual doing of culinary work, as well as creates new
shared meanings and offers a comparative basis for professionals' aesthetic and gustatory judgments (Fine, 1995,
1016 DESOUCEY AND DEMETRY

2008[1996]). Accordingly, several recent studies have centered on chefs as culturally formidable “tastemakers” in the United
States (see, e.g., Pearlman, 2013; Sax, 2014; Leschziner, 2015) and in Europe (see, e.g., Lane, 2014; Svejenova, Slavich, &
AbdelGawad, 2015; Opazo, 2016). While there have long been famous chefs (Ferguson & Zukin, 1998; Rossant, 2004), many
of the ways we think about “chefs” today—as objects of cultural reverence and as experts on social issues—are rather new
(Ruhlman, 2007; Rousseau, 2012; Johnston & Goodman, 2015; Terenzo, 2015). Moreover, this focus on chefs as exception-
ally creative and organizational leaders raises timely questions about new business models and the social organization of
work in this industry, as well as how stratified inequalities matter in “hot” 21st‐century kitchens.
Our broad goal in this article is to synthesize several themes drawn from recent research from sociology and
related fields on middle‐to‐high‐end American eateries. We do not focus solely on the highest echelon restaurants
that obtain multiple Michelin stars, have world‐famous chefs, or recurrently grace top U.S. restaurants lists. Rather,
we examine developments and trends common to modish restaurants around the country that have, for example,
come to serve as settings for date nights or casual get‐togethers (typically for people in the upper‐middle and/or cre-
ative classes), not just for important or special occasions. We call these venues “upmarket” to differentiate them from
lower status, family‐oriented, and chain restaurants, and we also examine research on new culinary models such as
gourmet food trucks and pop‐up eateries.
Our article consists of several parts. First, we synthesize recent scholarship on contemporary field‐level changes
in the upmarket restaurant industry in the United States (while recognizing the global nature of these phenomena).
We also discuss shifts in consumer‐centric expectations for restaurant food and experiences, namely, around height-
ened desire for authenticity, a burgeoning area of scholarship within organizational theory. Then, we discuss the work
of culinary production and the shifting occupational roles of, and constraints upon, culinary producers. Finally, we
focus on several effects of these consumerist and occupational shifts and suggest that the culinary field faces critical
challenges. We argue that future research in this area should consider restaurant workers' occupational standards and
conditions, the impacts of new financing and labor‐management strategies, and the ways that new organizational
forms of dining out are reshaping the upmarket culinary field.

2 | R E S T A U R A N T S : O R G A N I Z A T I O NS I N A N E V O L V I N G F I E L D

2.1 | Field‐level structural shifts

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics defines restaurants as “food services and drinking places.” They can range in size and
style from full‐service to limited‐service establishments, such as cafeterias, buffets, and snack bars. Most restaurants in
the United States are classified as small businesses and 93% employ less than 50 workers (Zhen, 2014). While we focus
on the cultural field of restaurants here, we note that some sociologists have also written about elite restaurants as a
“mode of cultural production” (Leschziner, 2007) or as a “cultural industry” (Lane, 2010). Cultural industries are those that
design, produce, and distribute products for taste and style beyond customers' utilitarian needs (Thornton & Jones, 2005);
they typically see more rapid cycles of fads and fashions than other industrial sectors (Hirsch, 1972).
Tensions between the logics driving economic interests and creative, aesthetic, and moral passions commonly
characterize the dynamics of many cultural producers and cultural industries. These are especially acute in the high‐
end culinary field, which sees incessant pressures for innovation and novelty with little room for slack (Leschziner,
2015). Chefs and head cooks must simultaneously wear both a banker's visor and a toque (Fine, 2008[1996]; Lane,
2014). Culinary work is also similar to “moralized markets,” a thread within economic sociology that examines how
individuals and organizations work to establish behaviors that intermingle the intimate and economic spheres
(Fourcade & Healy, 2007). Accommodating and meshing these contradictory logics have come to a head in recent
years, as the restaurant industry is confronting new operational challenges across the country.
First, the increased costs of living and doing business in many places—especially in cities that have historically
been culinary hubs—have exacerbated tensions between commerce and creativity. This is particularly salient for those
DESOUCEY AND DEMETRY 1017

restaurants that have proved trendsetters in supporting “locavore” food movements (DeSoucey & Téchoueyres, 2009)
and that have higher food and labor costs than their lower status counterparts (Leschziner, 2015). As we discuss
below, a number of U.S. chefs have begun serving as “moral entrepreneurs” (Hitlin & Vaisey, 2013) who speak publicly
about this model's unsustainability for the future of these types of restaurants, helping mobilize new standards of
legitimacy for the cultural field.
Second, new financing opportunities (private equity versus banks) and the growth of corporate restaurant groups
have restructured the industry's entry mechanisms. According to owners' self‐reports and a 2010 National Restaurant
Association Operations Report, brick‐and‐mortar restaurant profit margins usually range between 2% and 8%. It is not
surprising, then, that new business models emerged following the recent economic crisis; bank financing for small
businesses—including new restaurants—dropped and has been slow to recover (Mills & McCarthy, 2014). For instance,
the Kogi BBQ truck—frequently cited as the pioneer of the gourmet food truck movement—began in 2008 when LA
chef Roy Choi started selling Mexican–Korean fusion tacos out of an old lonchero truck (Wang, 2009). Applying
Stinchcombe's (1965) theory of “organizational imprinting”—which posits that an organization's structure is a direct
product of the temporal environment when it was founded (see also Johnson, 2007)—we see the rise of both
multi‐pronged industry groups and alternative business models as ways to reconcile the financial and operational risks
that infuse the upmarket culinary field. Generally, the high levels of uncertainty that cultural industries face compel
producers to continually seek new operating models (Hirsch, 1972).
On one end, investor‐based corporate groups (such as the Union Square Hospitality Group in New York and
Chicago's Boka Restaurant Group) have reduced the financial risks of opening a new restaurant, instead using con-
tracts with chef‐partners to do so. Many revered chefs are expanding horizontally—incorporating into a number of
mid‐to‐high‐end establishments with talented young cooks at each's helm, such as David Chang's Momofuku restau-
rants—or vertically, when a “super chef” (Rossant, 2004) builds his/her brand into an empire spanning lowbrow to
highbrow culinary categories and complementary outlets such as cookbooks and television shows (Collins, 2009). Ver-
tical expansion is exemplified by Wolfgang Puck's chain of casual restaurants, prepared supermarket products, and
affordable cookware in addition to fine dining establishments. Expansion can even be multinational, as in the case
of Gordon Ramsay's three‐starred Michelin restaurant in London and Las Vegas fish and chips pub, or of Alain
Ducasse, who has opened and consulted on elite restaurants from Paris and New York to Beirut, Hong Kong, and
Tokyo. While literature on category spanning suggests an organization's move into lowbrow activities would nega-
tively affect reputation, audience appeal, and/or market performance (Zuckerman, 1999; Negro & Leung, 2013),
recent research indicates that fluid and multiple category memberships work well for high‐status actors (Kovács &
Johnson, 2014), such as these world‐famous chefs.
Industry observers note that such trends have made it increasingly challenging for new or independent chefs to
find banks willing to lend the collateral necessary to open a restaurant, especially in cities with steep and rising real
estate costs. Concurrently, “cheffing” has become more accessible outside conventional kitchens through lower cost
ventures such as pop‐up restaurants, underground dining clubs, gourmet food trucks, private cheffing, and catering.
Such models enable restaurant‐less cooks, often recent culinary school graduates or those dissatisfied with profes-
sional kitchens, to attract private funders, fine‐tune their dishes, market their brands, and grow communities of ded-
icated diners before ostensibly (if ever) transforming into a brick‐and‐mortar eatery (Demetry, 2015). Prior culinary
experience has positive implications for consumer evaluations of food quality attained by new restaurant endeavors
(Roberts, Negro, & Swaminathan, 2013); accordingly, temporary or mobile eateries help new culinary entrepreneurs
finesse their skills similar to apprenticeships.

2.2 | New tastes and the intensification of authenticity

In early 2016, the head restaurant critic for the New York Times downgraded Per Se, one of the country's most hal-
lowed and expensive restaurants, with a scathing review about its food and service (Wells, 2016). The piece “went
viral,” garnering numerous online reactions from the gourmet public supporting its message and deriding the
1018 DESOUCEY AND DEMETRY

restaurant as a pretentious rip‐off. This review and its aftermath are important for understanding the changing cultural
environment that contextualizes today's upmarket dining establishments, with implications for what and how we eat
more generally.
Current restaurant culture combines the baseline codes of classical fine dining with two other trends: the progres-
sive impulses of late 20th century counter‐cuisine (Belasco, 2007[1993]) and “foodie” sensibilities veering away from
overt snobbery and toward “omnivorous” eating styles that purport to be authentic, casual, simple, eco‐conscious, and
even fun (Johnston & Baumann, 2007; Goodyear, 2013; Pearlman, 2013). Since the 1970s, elite and fashionable res-
taurants have become more casual in setting, style, décor, and food (Kuh, 2001; Pearlman, 2013; Finkelstein, 2014).
This casualization extends fine dining's prior gastronomic styles of “New American” and “nouvelle” cuisine (Rao,
Monin, & Durand, 2005). The disparaging review of Per Se by the high‐status New York Times neatly illustrates the
ways that symbols and categories signaling “good taste” within the culinary field have shifted in real time.
Popularly shared understandings about taste are reshaping organizational opportunities and cultural meanings
about dining out. Today, modish restaurants around the country have embraced even broader interpretations of infor-
mality: irreverent and heavily tattooed chefs; funky or industrial décor set in reimagined warehouses; hip servers who
can describe each dish's ingredients and preparatory techniques in painstaking detail; and the embrace of trends like
nose‐to‐tail dining, multi‐course tasting menu only formats, and “plays on classics” like fried chicken or macaroni and
cheese, which Pearlman (2013) usefully calls “pop haute cuisine.” Gourmet food trucks, for example, are extremely
popular among these audiences, engaging diners by fusing highbrow and lowbrow culinary elements, such as gourmet
grilled cheese sandwiches.
A central feature of this more informal dining model is a shift in attention from the dining room to the kitchen
(Pearlman, 2013; Ferguson, 2014). Diners have increased accessibility—sometimes real, sometimes perceived—to
chefs both inside and outside the restaurant. Television series, such as PBS's “Mind of a Chef” and Netflix's “Chef's
Table,” have attempted to add nuance to consumers' understanding of what happens in restaurants—which has fur-
ther magnified popular fascination with the profession and with those visible in its vanguard (Collins, 2009). Addition-
ally, chefs are now guests and hosts of television shows, subjects in magazines and web posts, authors of books, and
invited speakers at charity events.
We argue that these trends are fueled by the widening appeal of “authenticity.” Asserting someone's or some-
thing's authenticity is a common tactic used to sell a wide range of culinary and other cultural goods and experiences,
as consumers regularly assign these objects higher value (Peterson, 1997; Wherry, 2006). Carroll and Wheaton (2009)
argue in their oft‐cited analysis of 20th century culinary discourse that it is an increasing concerns for authenticity that
help explain organizational dynamics and market patterns in today's elite American culinary field (see also Johnston &
Baumann, 2015[2010]). These concerns can have real material impacts. For example, studies find that diners value
“authentic” restaurants more highly on online rating sites even after controlling for restaurant quality (Kovács et al.,
2014) and are even more likely to forgive health violations if they evaluate the restaurant as authentic (Lehman,
Kovács, & Carroll, 2014).
In this context, authenticity refers to the subjective interpretation of identity—a set of idealized expectations
attributed by audience members about how something ought to be experienced to be considered credible, genuine,
or even real. Carroll and Wheaton divide authenticity into two categories: “type” and “moral.” The former, character-
ized as meeting a particular culinary category's expectations—use of appropriate ingredients, cooking techniques, pre-
sentation, and restaurant décor—has long been salient to evaluations and expectations for regional or “ethnic”
restaurants (Gaytán, 2008; Ray, 2016). Indeed, meals eaten outside the home are a primary way that people encoun-
ter cuisines (and people) from different ethnic backgrounds (Ray, 2016). Carroll and Wheaton's examples of type‐
authentic restaurants include steakhouse, sushi restaurant, Jewish deli, and barbecue joints. Type authenticity is
important for lower status restaurants, which are occasionally penalized if they cross culinary categories, such as
offering fusion food (Kovács & Johnson, 2014).
In contrast, Carroll and Wheaton's depiction of “moral” authenticity focuses on the ways that objects or people
carry certain values and, perhaps most importantly, that decisions undergirding a restaurant's or chef's identity are
DESOUCEY AND DEMETRY 1019

“true to self” rather than socially scripted (2009). Value for morally authentic producers, they argue, hinges on their
identities as honest and sincere. While Carroll and Wheaton focus more on individual intent and motivation, most
of the culinary establishments they categorize in this way typically respond through the eco‐friendly attributes of
their offerings—to connect “green” growing practices with culinary quality. For instance, chefs who desire to
reacquaint diners with the sources of their food will feature ingredients from local sustainable farmers, such as
grass‐fed meats and heirloom tomatoes, which exemplify reputation‐enhancing claims of moral authenticity (Weber,
Heinze, & DeSoucey, 2008; Carroll, 2015). Moral authenticity also links to nostalgic and emotional notions of
premodern simplicity that directly oppose mass‐commercialized and large‐scale industrial food production (Jordan,
2015). This follows what pundits are calling a “seismic shift” in what middle class people want to eat (Taparia &
Koch, 2015) and how other segments of the food industry are responding in kind (Fromartz, 2006; Schleifer &
DeSoucey, 2015).1
We argue here that amplified, even hyperbolic, expectations for “moral” authenticity in today's culinary field
have transformed it into a new kind of “type” authenticity. When diners eat out at upmarket restaurants today,
they expect—even demand—elaborate concerns for flavor, quality, and presentation to be matched by sharp and
explicit ethical commitments to local food systems, artisan production methods, sustainable agriculture, and ani-
mal welfare initiatives. To not cook and present dishes in this way is now to make a bold statement of a differ-
ent kind. This is in part because of what such commitments ostensibly denote about these organizations'
motives and the virtues of their chefs as thought leaders. According to food studies scholar Anne McBride,
we are currently in an era of “chef as expert” on questions of food politics and food system sustainability
(Terenzo, 2015). Over the last two decades, a number of chefs have also become outspoken advocates on social
issues outside the professional kitchen, such as community development, the environment, education, and child-
hood hunger (Rousseau, 2012).
Yet, in building and fine‐tuning this new identity, those attempting to successfully invert the otherwise alienating
aspects of capitalism while integrating the exacerbated demands of moral authenticity into their business strat-
egies face some serious operational constraints. These are often tied to market and regulatory parameters that
limit the culinary field more broadly. Namely, it is expensive to provide morally authentic products and experi-
ences in their dining rooms. Unlike lower end restaurants, where routinization encourages uniformity and
reduces the uncertainty produced by combining different workers' skillsets (Leidner, 1993), upmarket venues that
promote moral authenticity depend on the cult of personality and on creative uses of nonuniform goods. Chefs
must expend a great deal of time and energy negotiating numerous and inconsistent orders from the “right” pro-
ducers, rather than receiving regular deliveries from one or two vendors. Menus must change constantly, some-
times even daily, to match product availability. Kitchens need skilled workers who are comfortable with a wider
and more flexible variety of routines. Additionally, several culinary practices deemed morally authentic when they
are done in‐house, such as preserving or pickling, are problematic for cities' health department regulations,
constraining the field through state‐led standardization practices (Lamont, Beljean, & Clair, 2014). Yet, con-
sumer‐centered expectations of moral authenticity among upmarket restaurants have grown so intensely that
some are even making false claims to capitalize on them (see, for example, the Tampa Bay Times exposé, “Farm
to Fable” [Reiley, 2016]).
Moreover, while this culinary style diverges from those previously offered by elite restaurants, the ways it por-
tends markers of “good taste” and social distinction in the field do not (Pearlman, 2013). For instance, even at hyper
casual pop‐ups or underground restaurants—where dinners occur in private homes or nonconventional locations—
prices can run upwards of $150 or more (Demetry, 2015). Similarly, food from gourmet trucks sees prices that are
25–60% higher than traditional trucks (Wang, 2009). Price is not the only indicator of status. Linguistic cues such
as lists of uncommon ingredients or particular cooking techniques on menus—like escabeche, spherification, or for-
aged—signal a restaurant's price class, aspirational identity, and desired clientele (Jurafsky, 2014). Consequently, while
these trends may appear at one level to be increasingly broad and open, in reality, these establishments are destina-
tions for hip, affluent, and often urban patrons (and are even parodied online and by popular television shows). As
1020 DESOUCEY AND DEMETRY

organizations, these restaurants reproduce field‐level, class‐based disparities related to food availability and
consumption.

3 | C U L I N A R Y P R O D U C T I O N A N D SH I F T I N G R O L E S I N T H E F I E L D

3.1 | The chef

Popular culture and scholarship alike have paid the most attention to one figure in the culinary field: the chef. Typically
defined as someone who leads a professional restaurant kitchen, the term itself comes from French and means “chief”
or “head.” By and large, becoming a head chef, especially an elite head chef, takes years of hard work and persever-
ance. While the shifting “rhetorics” (Fine, 1996) of professional cooking have enabled chefs to define their work and
professional identities across time, chefs are distinct from cooks—their employees. Successful chefs assume dual roles:
(a) as charismatic leaders who empower, envision, and energize the kitchen and (2) as organizational architects, con-
trolling relationships (like those with suppliers and investors) and recognizing employees for hard work (Balazs, 2002;
Lane, 2014). As Leschziner (2015) details, elite head chefs' self‐understandings of their positions in the culinary field
guide both business and creative choices, so that their food and their reputations continue to be esteemed by diners,
critics, and each other. Today, “chef” is more than an occupational category; it is also an identity that people can take
on outside of a brick‐and‐mortar restaurant.2
While cooking was, throughout history, the province of household servants and housewives, with only a select
few rising to the status of artisan, the chef as cultural icon is not a new phenomenon. Ferguson (1998) explores factors
that enabled chefs' positioning in the emergence and institutionalization of gastronomy as a cultural field in 19th cen-
tury France (see also Trubek, 2000). “Haute cuisine” was itself challenged in the 1970s by “nouvelle cuisine,” a coun-
ter‐movement that was institutionalized successfully because of the efforts of well‐known chefs with the reputational
capital to underpin a gastronomic identity shift and resist critics who policed the field's boundaries (Rao, Monin, &
Durand, 2003; Rao et al., 2005).
Most recently, Spanish chef Ferran Adrià, owner of the now closed three Michelin‐starred elBulli, disrupted the
international culinary field with his new model of modernist cuisine (Svejenova, Mazza, & Planellas, 2007). Addition-
ally, Rene Redzepi's famed Noma (which is slated to close in December 2016)—ranked the best in the world by Res-
taurant magazine for several years—popularized Nordic cuisine and foraged foods (Byrkjeflot, Pedersen, & Svejenova,
2013). In both cases, high‐powered chefs served as what organizational theorists call “institutional entrepreneurs”—
people who are innovators, brokers, storytellers, and negotiators who possess sufficient resources to introduce and
legitimize new logics, ideas, and relationships in a field (DiMaggio, 1988; Lawrence & Phillips, 2004; Dorado, 2005).
Similar to the media's framing of chefs as personality‐driven geniuses in advancing “pop haute” and “morally
authentic” dining trends, many scholars have also spotlighted chefs at the top echelons of the profession. With a
few notable exceptions (Fine, 2008[1996]), this focus on elite actors (largely white and male) has honed our knowl-
edge of how status functions in this field at the expense of understanding challenges and constraints for the many
“regular” cooks whose work is also crucial for the field's future, as we argue in the following section.

3.2 | Kitchens' challenges and constraints

Professional cooks occupy what Hyman (2008) calls a “vexed class role,” in that chefs have achieved reputational sta-
tus through onerous physical labor, contrary to other ways of moving up the class ranks. Indeed, scholarly and jour-
nalistic forays into restaurant kitchens (Davis, 1999; Fine, 2008[1996]; Leschziner, 2015) reveal that professional
cooking is definitively not as glamorous as popular food television shows make it out to be. Even at upscale restau-
rants, most cooks and chefs (excepting a few superstars) are far from rich. The hours are grueling, stressful, and not
conducive to maintaining work–life balance. A recent article on Grubstreet (the food blog of New York Magazine)
called kitchen culture “kamikaze” (Tishgard, 2016). Substance use and abuse are not uncommon. Tensions between
DESOUCEY AND DEMETRY 1021

the realities of combining business with demand for artistry and innovation can be especially vexing for elite chefs,
who must maintain their high‐status reputations in pressure‐cooker atmospheres (Lane, 2014; Leschziner, 2015). In
the last two decades in the United States and Europe, tragedy has occasionally struck. A few cases of famous chefs'
suicides have been speculated to be the result of their preoccupations with status, reputations, and/or economic trou-
bles (e.g., Shire, 2015; Steinberger, 2016).
A few scholars have examined instances where intense demands for innovation have been decoupled, or sepa-
rated, from a restaurant's daily operations through a workshop model. In organizational and institutional studies,
decoupling is often theorized as a way for an organization to gain internal flexibility while also performing necessary
tasks and routines (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). The popularity of workshops, such as Spanish modernist chef Ferran
Adrià's R&D group (Svejenova et al., 2015; Opazo, 2016), has grown as a new form of elite culinary production. Here,
workers focus solely on developing novel and innovative dishes by engaging in activities, such as creating new cooking
processes and ingredients, which may eventually translate into dishes and experiences in the dining room (Tan, 2015).
Many aspiring fine dining cooks are seeking out these settings for a “stage” (an unpaid apprenticeship) to develop their
skills and social capital. Because the identity of these work groups rests on innovation, the influx of these new (and
free) young cooks in turn contributes to knowledge growth and development (Tan, 2015).
Behind the head chef is the line, a backstage world of sous chefs, pastry chefs, prep cooks, line cooks, bussers,
servers, and dishwashers, all necessary for what Fine calls the “production of quality” (Fine, 1992). However—even
as more restaurants open, as culinary schools graduate more students, and as cheffing becomes an exalted occupa-
tion—the supply of eager, capable cooks willing to do the emotionally and physically demanding low‐paid work of
kitchen life is dwindling. As Moskin (2015) writes, this gap “between what the chef wants to do and what the cooks
can execute explains why many new places offer dazzling menus but disappointing food” (which we also see as an
unintended consequence of diners' hyperbolic expectations for moral authenticity). Some chefs complain that young
cooks and culinary school graduates are more interested in pursuing fame and fortune—and have been swayed by
food television's portrayal of kitchen work as creative and fun—than taking the entry‐level jobs that give them “real
training” (Leschziner, 2015). Only a few demonstrate considerations for the impacts of culinary school debt and the
unaffordability of the cities where their restaurants are located (Ferdman, 2015). Culinary jobs at companies like
Whole Foods or food delivery services like Blue Apron are also competing for these young cooks by offering better
pay, shorter workdays, and health care subsidies. Consequently, we argue, the elevated status of the chef persona
has become a double‐edged sword for the U.S. culinary field as a whole.

3.3 | The “other” cooks: race, class, and gender in the kitchen
The world of elite cooks and chefs is a segment of the upmarket American dining experience that, we posit, has been
oversampled by academics as well as journalists. Higher end kitchens, especially in urban areas, are often comprised of
workers of multiple ethnicities and backgrounds, as well as immigrants. A 2008 report by the Pew Hispanic Center
found that undocumented workers comprised 10–20% of the nation's restaurant employees (Passel & D'Vera,
2009). We know little about the efforts, identities, and needs of these other cooks and restaurant workers (Jayaraman,
2013).
The U.S. culinary field relies on inexpensive labor and poor working conditions, such as repetitive and physically
demanding jobs that can lead to injuries and poor health (Jayaraman, Dropkin, Siby, Alston, & Markowitz, 2011). The
National Restaurant Association has long lobbied against raising the minimum wage, and only a small fraction of U.S.
restaurant workers has health insurance or receives paid sick days. Most restaurants pay servers a “tipped minimum
wage,” often meaning less than $3 per hour before tips. Tips are often shared between servers and kitchen staff, and
sometimes a portion is (illegally) allotted to salaried managers. Wage theft is a common problem, especially for undoc-
umented kitchen workers. The frequent end result is poverty‐level wages for many people behind 21st century
“organic, locally grown, slow, cage free, and grass‐fed” meals (Jayaraman, 2013, p.172). Recognition of these issues
1022 DESOUCEY AND DEMETRY

is growing, as a number of news and online articles, some written by chefs themselves, have issued calls to improve
the culture and practices of restaurant kitchens (see, among others, Ferdman, 2015, Hammel, 2015; Moskin, 2015).
Additionally, the statuses of minority chefs in what is a largely male‐ and white‐dominated profession remains
under‐investigated in academic research. Ray's recent book (2016) highlights the argument that a major component
of a cultural field's (such as cuisine's) processes of professionalization is domination by those already possessing social
power. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, less than 20% of chefs and head cooks are Latino and less
than 9% are Black. While minority enrollments at culinary schools have risen, high‐profile success stories in the indus-
try are relatively rare, and mentors remain few and far between (Borelli, 2012; Ray, 2016).
Less than 20% of chefs and head cooks are women, and the percentage is even smaller in fine dining, at 8% (Sut-
ton, 2014). Female cooks and culinary students have long been channeled into pastry (rather than line) positions,
which have lower status, pay scales, and fewer numeric positions in the professional kitchen (Burros, 1992). While
the gender politics of many kitchens are shifting, a number of institutional mechanisms—such as time‐intensive career
structures and hyper‐masculine, military‐style (even misogynistic) work cultures—have prevented many women from
advancing within the occupation (Harris & Giuffre, 2015). The most commonly cited causes for women leaving pro-
fessional kitchens are inflexible work hours and incompatibility with family life (Harris & Giuffre, 2015). Additionally,
Druckman (2012) discovered in interviews with 75 female chefs and restaurant owners that sexism—both interac-
tional (such as verbal abuse and sexual harassment) and institutional (such as greater difficulty in securing bank loans
or insurance)—remains rampant for those who stay.
Furthermore, female chefs receive far lower levels of public acclaim than their male peers. Epitomized in 2013 by
the myopic absence of women in Time magazine's now‐infamous “Gods of Food” issue, women are poorly represented
in food media in both the quantity and quality of descriptions of “who is a great chef” (Harris & Giuffre, 2015). In one
of Bravo's first seasons of Top Chef Masters, only three out of 24 competitors were women. In 2007, for the first time
in fifty years, Michelin awarded three stars to a female chef in France. Yet, women have been culinary trendsetters for
decades. For instance, Julia Child's public television program brought French cooking to the American mainstream,
and Alice Waters, a forbearer of California cuisine, has used her fame to champion issues like improving school lunch
programs (Goldstein, 2013). Nevertheless, glossy magazines' “Best New Chefs” features often include a single, token
woman in a crowd of men, if they do at all (and sometimes those women already possess superior reputations than
those with whom they share the spotlight). When female chefs do make forays into celebrity status, their culinary per-
sonas often perpetuate highly gendered stereotypes, such as the domestic homebody (e.g., Rachael Ray) or sexualized
pin‐up (e.g., Nigella Lawson) (Johnston, Rodney, & Chong, 2014). We see changing perceptions and realities of the
industry related to race, ethnicity, and gender as important avenues for future research.

4 | CONCLUSION AND DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

We conclude with some thoughts on several gaps and emerging trends in this dynamic culinary field that future socio-
logical and organizational research could address. First, we suggest more research is needed on social relations that
are crucial to the organization of kitchen life but exist outside the restaurant's walls, which would also assist in shifting
the spotlight away from the singular chef. Even the most genius of chefs depends upon the social systems in which
they create their magic. Successful restaurants draw together an interdependent variety of agents, each with their
own positions in swaying the field: public relations firms, designers, suppliers, investors, financers, lawyers, urban plan-
ners, labor activists, and politicians. The importance of these non‐cooks shows how organizations like restaurants—as
cultural producers and regulated workplaces—connect to and rely on the public sphere. For instance, local laws can
influence organizational tactics, such as in the case of gourmet food trucks that must follow cities' rules of how close
they can park to a brick‐and‐mortar restaurant or where they are allowed to prep food (Esparza et al., 2014).
Furthermore, if moral authenticity is indeed the central driver of new upmarket culinary trends, this will in turn
affect how kitchens are structured, as well as who and what is cooking. Doing “good” in the world of food requires
DESOUCEY AND DEMETRY 1023

not only sincerity but also due diligence, consistency, and a broad structural perspective on social problems. One big
issue on the horizon, in this regard, is food waste. 2014 was declared the year of “Food Waste Awareness.” The
National Restaurant Association ranked it ninth in its “What's Hot in 2015” list, and Food & Wine magazine launched
a #loveuglyfood campaign. In 2015, esteemed New York chef Dan Barber invited other top chefs to co‐host a pop‐up
restaurant in New York City called “WastED,” where every dish was created with typically discarded food scraps. This
trend will easily connect with academic researchers interested in ecological and social sustainability and growing con-
sumer interest in the food system.
The second trend we see necessitating further inquiry is the turbulence and fragility of labor pool issues. As noted
above, professional cooking has been historically organized via hierarchical career ladders, where young cooks work
long and arduous hours for little or no pay as a rite of passage to develop technical skills and build social capital.
Yet, in the past few years, this status quo has begun changing. Prestigious kitchens around the country are expressing
concerns about a field‐level dearth of eager and qualified cooks. Several influential chefs have also vocalized doubts
about the value added by formal culinary training, even though many graduated from top schools themselves
(Leschziner, 2015). In December 2015, a group of graduates won a multimillion dollar lawsuit against Le Cordon Bleu,
a chain of culinary schools, for misleading students about placement rates into well‐paying jobs, resulting in the
planned closure of all 16 schools across the United States by the end of 2016. Occupational skills mismatch will likely
be a significant and pervasive issue in this field's near future, especially in the country's largest (and most unaffordable)
cities, where many upmarket restaurants are located.
Finally, as Chicago chef Jason Hammel recently argued in a widely shared essay (2015), moving forward in “the
new world order” of progressive restaurant kitchens means needing a “hard talk about money,” namely, about labor
conditions, compensation, and benefits for kitchen workers, rather than about artistry or coolness. A number of chefs
and restaurateurs are piloting new ways to make their own kitchens, as well as the larger culinary field, more sustain-
able. Some have raised prices or started charging a flat service fee (replacing tips) to manage rising labor costs, provide
benefits, and cope with cities' new minimum wage laws (Cohen, 2015; Wells, 2015). Here, the primary target of
change is diners themselves, building on hopes that consumers' fervid interest in moral authenticity might extend
to caring about the lives and working conditions of the people who prep, cook, and serve their food, as well as clean
up after them. Such programs have, however, so far seen limited success.3 Yet, while increased wages and benefits
might create initial short‐term costs for restaurants, projected long‐term positives include increased worker loyalty,
lower turnover (which allows savings on the cost of hiring and training new workers), better service, and even better
food. While such arguments indicate a cultural and organizational field in flux, they have yet to appear in academic
scholarship, in part because they are so recent. To understand what these early‐stage field‐level efforts might enable,
we will need to keep abreast of them.

NOTES
1
As a relevant sidenote, we well‐recognize this is not how most Americans cook and eat at home. See Hune‐Brown, Nich-
olas. 2016, “If You Are What You Eat, America Is Allrecipes”. (http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2016/05/allrecipes_
reveals_the_enormous_gap_between_foodie_culture_and_what_americans.html).
2
Across our various research projects, many men and women we would call “chefs” said that they preferred “cooks,” even
though they spend as much, if not more, time supervising others' cooking than doing it themselves (Fine, 1996).
3
See, for example, http://la.eater.com/2015/12/16/10243678/andy‐ricker‐interview‐pok‐pok‐tipping.

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How to cite this article: DeSoucey, M., and Demetry, D. (2016), The dynamics of dining out in the 21st cen-
tury: Insights from organizational theory, Sociology Compass, doi: 10.1111/soc4.12417

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES

Michaela DeSoucey is assistant professor of Sociology at North Carolina State University. Her research centers on
how varied relationships among markets, social movements, and state legal systems shape the cultural and moral pol-
itics of food and consumption. She is the author of Contested Tastes: Foie Gras and the Politics of Food (Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 2016). She received her PhD in Sociology from Northwestern University in 2010.

Daphne Demetry is a postdoctoral research associate at the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation, Said
Business School, where she is studying issues at the intersection of trust, authenticity, and reputation in business. Her
research centers on the culinary industry: restaurant kitchens, pop‐up and underground restaurants, and gourmet
food trucks. Within these settings, she investigates questions related to organizational theory, economic sociology,
and entrepreneurship. She received her PhD in Sociology from Northwestern University in 2015.