Breaking Bread or Building Barriers? Community building in local restaurants

In the corner of the dim sum restaurant, an elderly man sits with the daily newspaper. On the table is a teapot with its matching white porcelain teacup and of course a singular bamboo steamer. Today, he is reading about the surging housing prices in Hong Kong. It seems as though he has been there for hours from the comfortable crossed-leg posture and his back leaning on the frame of the wooden chair. He also appears to be friends with the servers.

This is a typical scene encountered in almost every local restaurant. Are these spaces a leisure space? A clubhouse? Or rather a second home, where the elderly can sit for hours and no one will question how long they’ve been there and why they are there regardless of their consumption. In other words, the restaurant scene within Hong Kong provides more than just food to its regulars; it provides community. As Zoe Pun, the owner of Hon Fat Noodle says, “We sell food. We sell relationships.” Elderly regulars and the restaurant themselves are consistently co-creating this community. Pun spoke of how her existing customers “started to bring their friends over. We introduced ourselves and that’s typically how this chain of relationships appears.”

So, what does ‘community’ really mean? We can define it as a group of people one can find common ground with. This common ground may arise from a shared physical space, but it also goes beyond that, embedded within the shared experiences, identities and values of a group. For the elderly, when the business and pressure of working life wind down, many find themselves struggling to find and maintain community. That is where restaurants step in.

However, not all restaurants are equally capable of creating community. Some spaces can stimulate a certain feeling and response in people within them, creating an ‘affective’ atmosphere, where the context and specific characteristics of the environment elicit an emotional restaurant. Local restaurants, specifically, are better at providing this environment– for key reasons. 

Firstly, a local restaurant is typically founded by entrepreneurs living in the surrounding community. Secondly, they tend to have goals that align with the livability and collective wellbeing of the surrounding community. Lastly, they promote active participation of the local community by hiring local people as staff or engaging regularly with local supplies. All of these qualities are unlikely to be found in mass chain restaurants or mega-corporations such as McDonalds, whose owners and supplies are generally transnational with no local links and whose goals usually revolve around profit. 

As a consequence, local restaurants are uniquely able to provoke nostalgia, stability and comfort. Within the confines of their four walls, elderly customers find themselves surrounded by a safety net: in one study, researchers found that such restaurants provided elderly people with a “space for social exchange that helps to alleviate social isolation” (Altinay et al, 2019).

Additionally, it is much more common in older and local restaurants to see staff themselves belonging to an older age demographic, many of whom have worked at the restaurants for decades. This element aids community-building because it allows the regular elderly customers to find individuals to resonate with. 

The age of a restaurant can also influence how comfortable an elderly person is within a space. Many fast food restaurants incorporate modern technology such as order screens, apps or QR codes: recent research suggests that many elderly people are confused by or excluded from using such systems (Nam et al, 2023). In comparison, a 90-year-old restaurant which values tradition and legacy offers a sense of comfort and familiarity. 

So if local restaurants provide such a deep sense of community for elderly populations, why are younger generations hesitant to engage? A quick glance into many traditional restaurants in Hong Kong will only reveal a scattering of customers under the age of thirty within.

I often try to convince my own friends to visit local restaurants with me, only to be met with some rejections and awkward smiles. Is it because they are not fans of the cuisine, or simply that the idea of ‘local community-building’ throws them off? These generational attitudes are deep-seated; for those who have grown up in an era of globalization and cultural homogenization, we may be more drawn to international cuisines or to the younger, more multicultural atmosphere of modern chains. This is perhaps particularly exacerbated within the bubble of an international school. Many of us filter out ‘non-international things in our daily lives, seeing them as ‘other’; whether it be the languages we speak, activities we take part in and even the restaurants we frequent.

The concept of ‘otherness’ stems from the Social Sciences, and describes the phenomenon that takes place when we observe communities or cultures outside our own and label them as different. This self-centered mindset creates a boundary between the observer and the community. For many of us who grew up in an international context, our norms and unspoken rules are ways to differentiate us from the ‘local community’ – ‘the other’. Breaking this boundary is a momentous task when one has grown up thinking this way.

Yet, only by breaking this boundary will one discover the meaning of community. Ultimately, a community is more than the sum of its parts. No matter how modern, aesthetically pleasing, or how expensive a restaurant may be with its 5-star customer service, it cannot easily replicate the sense of community that is embraced in local restaurants.

If we as a young generation cannot overcome this divide between ourselves and our local food heritage, we will increasingly witness a Hong Kong that is overtaken by chain restaurants as smaller venues struggle to survive. We must strive to appreciate the community value and collective memory held within restaurants – before it is buried permanently in the advancing wave of homogenization. 

Works Cited:

Altinay, Levent, et al. "The influence of customer-to-customer interactions on elderly consumers' satisfaction and social well-being." International Journal of Hospitality Management.

Nam, Jinyoung, et al. "Elderly Users' Emotional and Behavioral Responses to Self-Service Technology in Fast-Food Restaurants." behavioral sciences.