The Restaurant Industry’s Worst Idea

Thinking of my earliest trips to restaurants, in the 1980s, I faintly remember waiters taking my grandfather’s credit card and using a manual flatbed imprinter to make an impression of its raised numbers. My nephew, born early in the coronavirus pandemic, may come of age with similar memories of physical menus as a childhood relic. Recalling them dimly when a dining scene in an old movie jogs his memory, he might ask, “Why did they stop using those?”

If that happens, I’ll recount the pestilence that raged as he entered the world; the shutdown of bars and restaurants; the push to reopen in the summer of 2020; the persistent if mistaken belief that high-touch surfaces, like restaurant menus, would be a meaningful vector. “Use disposable or digital menus.”