According to OpenTable's solo dining reservations are up 8% this year and the average solo diner spends about $84.

So here with me now in studio of 57 to discuss this trend is Steven Zagor. He is a restaurant consultant, an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia Business School.

Thank you so much for joining us.

So we're just talking a little bit in the break and I am an only child.

So I am very comfortable solo everything, but dining, I've been solo dining for a while but I guess it's finally people are catching up with what I already knew.

Exactly. You're already into the solo mode, so for you, dining out is just an extension of being on your own.

You go, "Well, I'm here today at home, I might as well just go out by myself."

Yeah, and I enjoy it.

You enjoy your own company.

Yeah, and it's a combination of it's like your own company, but you're in public.

So I like to be around people, but I don't necessarily want to be like sharing a meal with them.

But [what] you said [is] a really key thing: dining out is an experience.

It's not just going out to eat. You're feeling all the vibes around you. - Yeah.

You're feeling the energy of other people, you're seeing the action maybe at a bar or waiters and waitresses moving around.

So you've left that moment of solitude, being alone, and you come out to a different location where you're still alone, but you're embracing all the things that are going on.

So like why is this happening more and more?

Is it that we are generally, you know, operating alone more and more and so we just don't have the connections to like gather people to go out or what's going?

We are. We are more alone. We are living alone more studies have said more and more single people living by themselves.

We are marrying later.

We have longer [time] to get kids. We're not getting kids quite as quickly

And we are much more confident and the the millennial generation and the Gen Zs, you can almost call them the Me-llennials or the Gen Me's because they are very confident and not necessarily in need of companionship.

And the other huge force is women,

women who are much more confident and much more in not in need of being with somebody and feel much more confident. They can embrace that solitude of going out to eat and not feeling like they're oh, "I don't think I can do this."

Right, you don't gotta wait till somebody asks you out on a date or something.

If you want to go a nice restaurant and have a good meal, you can spend that money on yourself. - That's exactly.

So restaurants are sort of changing to accommodate this trend.

I remember when I was in Japan last year, they have these like solo restaurants where I mean you sit down, you don't have to talk to a server It's just sort of in a cubicle.

That's the most extreme version of it.

But what are restaurants doing here?

Well, I think a good restaurant embraces the reason why the person is there.

There are people that are there to decompress. They don't want to be involved with other people.

They don't want to be sitting at a bar, they don't want to sit at a communal table.

They just want to be by themselves and you have to kind of read the moment. - Yeah.

Others are looking for yes, I'll sit at the bar because I just want to have that connectivity, maybe they'll sit at a communal table.

Restaurants, we forget sometimes [that] restaurants sell seats.

They don't sell tables, they sell seats.

Effectively, they're a real estate company, they're renting seats for a meal period and the average check is that rent and they want to maximize that,

so if you can look at it as a seat that you can fill with a single person that benefits you financially and even go as far as saying maybe we're gonna do promotions for people eating at the bar,

maybe we're gonna have promotions for people eat by themselves at a communal table.

So it's really a chance to kind of say I really love this because I can maximize my volume by getting those seats filled.

Are you surprised by that number that the average solo diner spends $84 like that's not cheap.

I am surprised. I mean, I'm surprised.

Yeah, it's that's a lot.

That's good That might be worth it for restaurants to lean into that.

It is. I always ask my students, I always say, "How many of you take more pictures of your food than your family and friends?"

And almost all the hands go up. - I can imagine.

And I think to myself, either you've got to get better family and friends or maybe are you dating your cheeseburger? I don't know.

The food is so dang good-looking.

Maybe your friends are not, I don't know.

Maybe. Maybe your friends are not. We're not all Instagram will be ready.

Stephen Zagor. Thank you so much.

You're welcome.