It’s Friday night and I’ve had three exams in the last week. I’m excited for tonight so that I can finally relax. Five of my friends and I head out to a night club and dance the stress of school away. We leave around 2am and decide we want to eat. We go to Cosmic Cantina because it’s on the way back to our dorm. We walk in and it’s filled with, what feels like, hundreds of people. People are eating while sitting on others’ laps and some are eating while standing. We order our food and get it almost instantly. We eat and socialize while the girls sit on the guys’ laps and then leave to go to our rooms and rest for the next day. In Chapel Hill, we all have different reasons for dining after midnight; however, Time Out, B Skis, Cosmic Cantina, and R & R Grill seem to be the most popular for reasons unexplained.
From day to night restaurants change to attract the people who are out looking for food during those times. During the day, restaurants are very calm and not very crowded; however, when day turns to night, the complete opposite happens. Restaurants become excited, their lights are bright and they are filled with people. I asked the B Skis night manager, BaBa Williams, what is done differently during the late night hours to attract people versus what they do during the day? Williams responded by telling me, “Nothing other than the lights outside change. At night, kids are looking for a quick meal and that’s what we provide.” As I went through the other restaurants and interviewed their night managers, that same answer continued to arise. Later, Jillian Dukes, a late night customer at B Skis explained how B Skis had a good location in relation to the bus stop. She also continued to say how the food was good and fast. I concluded that what attracts people to these restaurants has nothing to do with the actual restaurants, but more to do with the restaurants’ ability to get a customer in and out quickly so they can get home when they want.
Food is valued differently depending on the hour in which the customer is eating. During the day, it seems that comfort and selection is very important, but during the late night hours this does not seem to matter as much. A late night eater’s biggest concerns seem to be quickness, efficacy, and cost. The late night restaurants that I have researched do not have enough seating to accommodate the amount of people that come in to eat at later times; however, this does not stop people from coming. Most people come in large groups, grab a dirty table, and sit on each other’s laps until they are finished eating. There are also groups of people who stand and eat because there are no places to sit. I asked a couple eating on a Friday afternoon in R & R Grill at 1:30pm if the food was good enough to eat while standing because there were too many people. They responded by telling me no; they continued to say that if it was that crowded they would just leave and go to another restaurant where they could sit down. At 1:30am on a Saturday morning, I went back to R & R Grill where I saw many people standing up, while eating. When I asked them why they didn’t just go somewhere else, John Kyle responded with, “I like the atmosphere here. It’s very laid back and worth the standing.” What I concluded from that answer was that during the day light hours, food is important, but not as important as comfort; however, during the late night hours, food is much more important than comfort.
As I went around to these different restaurants, I realized one very important thing about the differences of daytime hours and late night hours. As the late night comes, prices and menus change. For example, at B Skis water is free until midnight, when the price goes up to $1.50. This is a clear showing of how these restaurants taking advantage of late night customers. This is even more evident in intoxicated customers. As I watched intoxicated customers place their orders, I realized they ended up being talked into buying higher priced items than those who were sober.
During most of the interviews, I continuously ran into a huge problem, intoxication. Due to the fact that many of the people who I initially interviewed were highly intoxicated, it was very difficult to question and understand them. Also, many of them were underage. The question that came to my mind was why does it seem that during the late night hours, being intoxicated in public is socially acceptable and why are there so many underage people publically intoxicated?
Public intoxication during the late night hours in these restaurants is socially accepted, not only by the intoxicated people and their friends, but also by the restaurant employees and managers. R & R Grill and Cosmic Cantina actually sell alcohol, so there were not as many underage intoxicated people there, but B Skis and Time Out were filled with them. I asked some of the sober people in B Skis how they felt about all the intoxicated people around. Bonnie Weaver said she laughs at them because when she sees them the next day, they have no clue how stupid they looked the night before. Alisha Gardner offers a different view though. She told me, “They make the entire university look bad. They fall all over the place and then think it’s cute. It’s not and they know if their parents were to see them like this, they would realize how bad they really look.” These two girls pretty much share the two common views on underage drinking and public intoxication. Most people feel the same as they do; it is funny, but it also reflects poorly on our university.
Intoxication alters a person’s mind and choices. I interviewed people during the day to see exactly how much being intoxicated affected their choices in food. Erica Holt was asked about her normal eating habits compared to her eating habits while intoxicated and she responded by telling me that when she is intoxicated, she eats whatever is close to her. “When I’m drunk, I just like food. It doesn’t matter where it comes from, I just want it and I want it fast.” Erica then explained a situation where when she was sober, she wanted fast food, but did not want to eat it because it was not healthy; however, when she was intoxicated later that night, she ate exactly what she decided against earlier that day.
Eating is something we all have to do, but late night eating is more circumstantial. Eating after midnight at restaurants like Time Out, B Skis, Cosmic Cantina, and R & R Grill gives the impression of being quicker, more efficient, and costing less. These are the reasons more people go to these places after midnight and it seems that intoxication levels cause people to eat at these restaurants too. Even though it appears to be cheaper, in situations like B Skis and the cost of water going from being free to costing $1.50, these restaurants clearly take advantage of a customer’s want of food and state of mind when they order. Late night is a time where appearing intoxicated becomes a fashion statement and restaurants and people just turn the other cheek to underage drinking. On Friday and Saturday night these restaurants see hundreds of people and obviously make lots of money from staying open late, but there restaurants are not capable of seating all the customers. This shows the biggest differences between dining during the daytime hours and dining late night: restaurants get away with raising prices, poor food quality, and not giving a high level of comfort all because they are open late, customers are intoxicated, and they appear to be cheaper.
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