I’m finally catching up, and in this mystifying world, I am further mystified why they would drop a column like yours, as this speaks to what so many of us have experienced in the last 30 years of hospitality, F&B, and wine and spirits.
Pardon a meandering rantish thought bubble that came from reading this article:
Business is so different, and lo and behold it’s even odd to say that it’s just not as fun anymore. Not only that, it’s dangerous, there’s so many new costs, there’s liability and exposure unlike the past. There’s working with people out of alignment and with unrealistic expectations, building owners that don’t live in the communities and can’t fathom the pulse on the ground. A K-shaped economy, they call it, where 20% of consumers are well off enough to do 80% of the spending, so the economy looks healthy while 80% get squeezed. Grocery prices are up 33% since 2019… profit was always a choice, it wasn’t the covid dented supply chain after all. We’ve lost community spaces, ie bars and places to be with other humans, because we’ve engineered glowing rectangles into our lives so there’s an ability to craft the narrative, divide us, track us, and monetize us. Seems inhuman, no? Someone wrote an article that no one is hanging out or drinking, everyone is on weight loss drugs, and getting high at home, so the future is “beautiful, stoned, and lonely”.
I’m finishing editing an 800 page lost book from a Vegas bartender, and after that I’ve been musing a pivot from our work into a “third space”, as they call it, community cafe and spirit lounge based on my 2000 lps and 20 years of DJing. But, where are we with an economy built so that it’s too expensive for consumers to consume, and it’s too expensive for a business to operate? What now, what next?
I’ve found, at the very old or very young age of 50 depending who you speak with, that an analog existence is truly the solution. My albums will never have a commercial, nor will I have to wonder if it’s “AI slop”. Fighting the smartphone addiction of scrambled anxieties, opting for long-form thought, getting back to books, getting back to staring with no intent. It’s human to not know things, we’ve not known things for thousands of years. But it’s obvious why we’re so addled, when 20 years ago our brain was filled with “I need to get to the bank and post office”, while in 2026 the smartphone has scores of apps with endless settings and we’ve all this manufactured data to addict us… in game purchases & DLC, tracking our steps and our workouts… gamifying all the data so it consumes us as an addiction, pulling a slot machine handle where the cost to play is our human time. No wonder gambling addiction is so pervasive, now… technologists have engineered the internet to addict us at every turn. AI is absurd, and isn’t even an option, because why would you outsource your human condition? What a sad thing to use the cold machine of AI to tell you how to give up on creativity and our human race.
So that’s the “thought bubble” in relation to missing your column, Wine Biz Monthly feels a bit emptier, and I’d say soulless but they do good work and it’s the business and the tone of just about every aspect of our world has changed. It’s impressive, in a world of fallen trades and publications, they’re still printing.
But it’s just not a priority now, and I guess it’ll just be picking up a few of your past, and upcoming, books. Thanks for what you do.
-Me
The above was in response to this post of Lance Cutler’s. This one is absolutely great about restaurant industry pricing and exploiting wine as a profit center that now turns people off to a night out, or the outrageous markups. https://winepatrol.com/it-could-work/