For eight years, “how to make a good dinner for your family” was simple. It was just my wife and I and “good dinner” was just about two people. We wanted exotic and interesting food. Dinners out could be impromptu. We could sit at the restaurant bar and linger for hours sampling small plates.

Then in 2015 our first daughter arrived. After 6 hazy months suffuse with drowsy stumbling through our new parental duties, we felt motivated to get back to the old dining routine. We naively thought we would just add our wonderful new daughter to our nights out. Table for three, please!

If you’re a new Millenial parent, I am going to give you the cliff notes version of adjustments to expect to your dining out routine. When a baby enters the picture, the meal routines and rituals change.

Top Ten Dinner Out Behaviors that Change with Kids

1. No bar seating. In fact, you will likely be stuck in some back room family section with space for your baby carrier.
2. Beer makes babies cry. Guaranteed, when your beer arrives to the table, one of your kids will start crying.
3. Ask for extra space. You will need room for the giant backpack with all your diapers, wipes, change of clothes, and toys.
4. Mexican food. This is probably the only restaurant that will work. Embrace it. Become regulars and tip well- see #9.
5. Bring entertainment. Sometimes a restaurant offers coloring but this probably only buys you 10 minutes so bring back up.
6. You will spend time under the table. Not a spot you thought you would ever be but you will be cleaning spills and chasing crayons under tables.
7. Food makes babies need the bathroom. Guaranteed, when your food arrives, one of your kids will need to use the bathroom.
8. Snacks. I know this is counter intuitive but you will need snacks for your kids at any extended meal.
9. 20% doesn’t cut it. You now must tip for the Cat 5 hurricane level destruction your kids will unleash on the table you sit at.
10. Sunk cost fallacy. No matter how much you ordered or what it cost, 60% of the time you will leave without eating your food or drinking your drink. As you carry screaming kids to the car. Pray for a fast payment process.

Our Millenial Dining Routine

Now, with three kids, we are continuously seeking ways to make a good dinner for our family of five. So far, our routine is grounded in traditional concepts. We eat dinner as a family and mostly at home.

Additionally, we aim to always add excitement in a way that is manageable with our dinner time schedule. Technology plays a big role in finding new ideas that are high on convenience and fun. Fortunately, Millenial families like ours are more likely to share parenting content and challenges online.

While social media and Google searches help find great ideas it also means Millenials have raised the bar on the concept of a “good dinner.” It’s not just about the food anymore. Motivated by social media worthy meal pics, we aspire to meals that are healthy and aesthetically pleasing.

Millenial Families

We were on the early side of the curve for the growth of Millenial families. Now the majority of Millenial families are about a year into the adjustment to a new dining routine. 2018 marked the peak number of births by Millenial mothers.

Burdened with debt and living through the Great Recession, Millenials put off getting married, having kids and buying homes. Now, many of us are entering into our peak earning years. We are starting families and looking for our own homes and cars.

What will future generations looking back say of the Millenial family dinner? This question will be answered in the next decade. Here are some of the forces I think will shape how the Millenial family dinner.

The Squad First

Millenials will be family focused adopting traditional routines like sitting down for dinner as a family. The Millenial twist will be the focus on healthy recipes that work for everyone in the family. Meals need to be quick and easy to make and parents will go the extra mile to make meals enjoyable for kids. Ever focused on experiences over stuff, Millenials will seek ways to build shared experiences around meals at home.

Dads Stepping Up

Moms will still take lead in the kitchen and for groceries in the majority of homes but Dads will start closing the gap. College educated men is the fastest growing cooking segment. While, I am glad to see men taking on more of the cooking duties, I hope this expands to kids taking a share of the cooking duties. Teaching kids to cook offers them a life skill and a tasty way to learn science and math.

Value

Millenials chasing the F.I.R.E movement dream are hyper focused on capital accumulation. Restaurant meals are $20 plus per meal. Meal kits are $8-$10 a meal. These might work for the dual income/no kids phase but breaks the budget for a family of five. A home cooked meal is just $4.30 a meal.

Convenience

Now, there is an opportunity cost to the time it takes to grocery shop and cook at home. Technology is helping here as Millenials have a spectrum of grocery shopping services and cooking devices to decrease the time invested in the kitchen. Additionally, with our smart phone sous chefs, we can find recipes offering fast prep and easy clean up.

Fresh

Organic, meh. Fresh, heck yeah. Fresh will be the key ingredient purchase driver. Millenials will grow tired of the proliferation and premiums from specialty food labels. We will have access to a supply chain of hydroponic warehouses, rooftop gardens, and home indoor gardens to have fresh produce year round.

Dinner Anywhere

Ghost Kitchens will explode. Ghost kitchens are restaurants with no seating or drive up window. They have small scale kitchens and leverage delivery services like DoorDash. Moreover, some of these might actually deliver home cooked meals with a slight premium. With cities banning new fast food restaurants, low capital ghost kitchens will pop up to seize the opportunity. Millenial families will be able to eat anywhere with food delivered to them.

Intentional Meals

Sure, when it was just you and your wife, it wasn’t a big deal that you sat at dinner staring at your phones. Wait until you feel a little bit of your soul slip away as your kid does something for the first time and you missed it because you were on your phone.

Consequently, driven by the aspirations of quality time with family, Millenials will conquer the addiction of always being plugged in. Being intentional is about being present and engaged with your life. Use of phones and other technology will be part of an intentional shared experience and not a habit or distraction. Think, family movie night or a family video game battle.

Author

Dan Kurdys is a dad that cooks at home for his wife and three daughters. Growing up, meals were a critical part of Dan’s learning and family bonding. He feels the struggle of balancing a full time job and preparing family meals that are convenient, on budget and healthy. He started his side hustle blog Meal Genome in 2018 to discover insights for better meal experiences. The approach is to use skills from career experience in corporate strategy, a MBA and a degree in Economics toward analytics of meal experiences.