Lynne Bredfeldt, a 42-year-old communications director in Portland, Ore., says almost nobody suggests brunch to her anymore. She doesn’t bring it up either. She pictures giant portions, so-so food and a whole afternoon gone. She has company. For some diners it’s the carbs; for others, the pressure to drink, the time sink or the spectacle. One Chicago strategist points to the TikToks of people wearing wigs to brunch. The bottomless mimosa, it seems, has found its bottom.
The Kitchen Math
Brunch first caught on in America about 100 years ago, and it has hardly vanished. But people are drinking less and younger diners are chasing fitness, so bottomless mimosas have lost some pull. Weekend midday dining hasn’t stopped. It’s just becoming lunch.
Technomic, a market-research firm, found U.S. restaurant traffic — the count of customer visits — fell from January through May 2026 versus the same stretch of 2023. Lunch slipped 10%, breakfast 14% and dinner 15%. Technomic doesn’t track brunch, so call that a clue rather than a verdict.
Chefs have grumbled for a while. Anthony Bourdain’s 2000 memoir, Kitchen Confidential, cast brunch as a landing spot for leftovers from Friday and Saturday nights. Brooks Reitz, whose restaurants include the Bell in New Orleans and three in Charleston, S.C., skips it entirely. “You’re not serving pancake batter on a Friday or a Monday,” he said. So extra batter becomes waste, specialty ingredients hog storage, and cooks learn dishes they’ll make two days a week. Lunch all week, he says, turns neighbors into regulars.
Lunch, Minus the Wigs
Chez Panisse in the Bay Area has never served brunch, but its weekend lunch can be easier to book than dinner, its general manager says. At Smithereens in New York, the Sunday prix fixe — one set price for the whole meal — is $52 for three courses, rebuilt every week from the greenmarket.
Diners call lunch calmer and more civilized. Mary-Ann Awada, a 36-year-old former corporate lawyer in New York, likes lunching alone at the bar, chatting with the bartender and quietly eavesdropping. No wig required.
For a household, the appeal is partly math. A set price shows you most of the bill before you order. Illustration: two people at that $52 lunch spend $104 before drinks, tax and tip. A number like that is easy to plan around.