https://www.theringer.com/2025/05/06/food/bowl-food-millennial-trend-explained-chipotle-sweetgreen-cava
Over the past 25 years, American food culture has exploded. But no millennial gastronomic trend—not cronuts, not cupcakes, not even bacon—has endured like the bowl lunch. Here’s why.
Over the past 25 years, American food culture has exploded. But no millennial gastronomic trend—not cronuts, not cupcakes, not even bacon—has endured like the bowl lunch. Here’s why.
Getty Images/Ringer illustration
Anyone who’s worked an office job in America this century has been there. It’s noon, you’re at your desk, and you’re hungry. A pastrami sandwich sounds good. So does a burrito. Sadly, those fantasies fade fast.
You realize that if you go that route, your afternoon will be ruined. You’ll be overstuffed. You’ll just want to take a nap. Your laptop—which, obviously, is what you’ll be eating this meal over—will end up covered in grease and crumbs. You sigh deeply and settle for a slightly lighter option. You head to a bright, minimalist, fast-casual place down the street; go to the counter; pick a green, a grain, a protein, veggies, crunchy toppings, and a dressing heavy enough to undermine the meal’s mission. A friendly employee will toss that stuff into a recyclable container, and you’ll pay about 15 bucks, rush back to your cubicle, and shove forkfuls of arugula into your mouth as you reply to Slack messages.
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“It’s like conveyor-belt lunch,” says Mike Mitchell, cohost of Doughboys, a comedy podcast about chain restaurants. When you finally swallow that last shred of carrot, you’ll be full—just not of joy. “At least it’s not Subway,” you’ll claim to yourself.
The millennial embrace of food culture has helped lead to dozens of trends: bacon, gastropubs, cronuts, cupcakes, smashburgers, avocado toast, Nashville hot chicken, meal kits, Guy Fieri. But none embodies the generation’s consumer experience quite like the bowl. It’s just one example of a slick, streamlined product pushed on us as a “bold” way to improve our daily lives. Like Away suitcases or Warby Parker glasses, the bowl is exquisitely engineered, focus grouped, aesthetically pleasing, and sold as something that stands out from the rest. But now it’s ubiquitous. And it always ends up feeling like everything else.
“It’s the ultimate compromise meal,” says Bret Thorn, senior food editor at the trade publication Nation’s Restaurant News. “You want something that’s going to be not that expensive and it’s going to taste pretty good and be reasonably good for you. But trying to cobble all of that together in a bowl tastes like mediocrity most of the time.”
“It’s a nutrition pile,” adds Nick Wiger, cohost of Doughboys. “It’s pure sustenance. It’s not something that you’re eating for pleasure.”
On the surface, the bowl is a perfect lunch. It’s usually fresh, relatively healthy, and infinitely customizable. But underneath that layer of tortilla strips is something that, well, seems like less than the sum of its parts. If the evolution of media consumption over the past decade has taught us anything, it’s that endless choice and efficiency isn’t a formula for satisfaction.
The bowl’s trick is that it makes you believe you’re eating something more cravable than it really is. “With a bowl, you’re like, ‘I’m getting a bowl, not a salad,’” Mitchell says. “And a lot of times, you’re getting a salad, basically. But with a bowl, maybe it has some rice in there, or maybe it has some other stuff, and ‘I’m having a little bit more fun.’”
