The Next Supper

The End of Restaurants as We Knew Them, and What Comes After

By: Corey Mintz

Narrated by: Corey Mintz

A searing expose of the restaurant industry, and a path to a better, safer, happier meal.

In the year before the pandemic, the restaurant business was booming. Americans spent more than half of their annual food budgets dining out. In a generation, chefs had gone from behind-the-scenes laborers to TV stars. The arrival of Uber Eats, DoorDash, and other meal delivery apps was overtaking home cooking.

Beneath all that growth lurked serious problems. Many of the best restaurants in the world employed unpaid cooks. Meal delivery apps were putting restaurants out of business. And all that dining out meant dramatically less healthy diets. The industry may have been booming, but it also desperately needed to change.

Then, along came COVID-19. From the farm to the street-side patio, from the sweaty kitchen to the swarm of delivery vehicles buzzing about our cities, everything about the restaurant business is changing, for better or worse. The Next Supper tells this story and offers clear and essential advice for what and how to eat to ensure the well-being of cooks and waitstaff, not to mention our bodies and the environment.

The Next Supper reminds us that breaking bread is an essential human activity and charts a path to preserving the joy of eating out in a turbulent era.

©2021 Corey Mintz (P)2021 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

“With the warmth and humor of a good host, Corey Mintz invites us to meet the people and forces behind the restaurant business, and offers a taste of real change in The Next Supper.” (Karen Leibowitz, cofounder of Mission Chinese Food)

“With a journalistic appetite honed like a Japanese knife, Mintz slices through the ego, spin, and fat of our restaurant obsession to reveal the dark underbelly that threatens everything we love about eating out, serving up a hopeful recipe for the future that may just save dining. The Next Supper is a brilliant, eye opening, fun as all hell book that is mandatory reading for anyone who loves to eat.” (David Sax, author of The Soul of an Entrepreneur)

“Brilliantly written and deeply researched, Corey has delivered the book the restaurant industry has been waiting for. We're in a crisis, and this book turns every question on its head and gives us real life answers. Every single person interested in food needs to read this book.” (Amanda Cohen, chef and owner of Dirt Candy)

Great listen, essential reporting.

Great subject - who doesn't eat out or know someone connected to our food chain? I thought the book delivered consistently impactful and interesting subjects. It was well researched and passed my smell test. I love a book that's entertaining, educational and motivational.

Great insight into the current state of the restaurant and food world

I learned so much about the restaurant world and both internal & peripheral effects. The author tells an in-depth and engrossing story about what it’s like to work in restaurants as well as being a food writer. Very engaging book and he’s a great narrator (except for how he pronounces certain ethnic foods like pronouncing pho like “foe”(!) and certain Thai dishes. That was a bit surprising and unfortunate but otherwise, loved his storytelling and journalistic approach

Phenomenal Book

Great inside of the industry. The author put the work to understand and go deeper into the subject.
Highly recommend

Interesting topic but not quite enough

This book should be an article, all the chapters are very repetitive but the topic is interesting