As our economy spits and sputters through its current travails, you will see food-related media outlets filling you with ideas about how to save money.
“Cook at home,” they will say. “Avoid high- priced restaurants. Skip dessert.” And “Did you know that if you make your own meals, you can feed a family of four for a week on what you’d spend at just one dinner out?”
They will be right, and they will attempt to equip you with knowledge and tips for hunkering through the storm. We have done so, and will continue to do so, in these pages.
But in this column I am not going to tell you how to save money. I am going to tell you how to save our economy.
Well, how to help, at least.
I am going to tell you to go out to eat. Tonight. Gather up some of your hard-earned dollars (not all of them, but some) and spend them at your favorite neighborhood restaurant.
And order dessert.
Look, I know that the human instinct in times of insecurity is to close ranks, nest, and stay low. I know that in the drive to economize, budget-minded folks avoid restaurants.
But if that approach helps your bank account, it doesn’t do much for the wider economy. Because in among all those mind-numbing half-explanations about credit crunches and securities oversight lapses and the pros and perils of debt relief on “Main Street” (wherever that is), there is one basic rule: A strong economy requires people to open their wallets.
That means you.
I suggest that when you exercise your wallet- opening skills, do it in a restaurant. Because when it comes to stimulating a neighborhood-community-city-national-international economy, eating out, particularly at a small, independent neighborhood restaurant, is a remarkably meaningful way to participate.
I remember in the acrid, smoky weeks after Sept. 11, when I was living in downtown Manhattan and had to show my driver’s license to even get into my neighborhood, then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani instructed us to get up and out and into the community, to go shopping, to go out to dinner.
And I remember thinking, in those helpless, heavy, angry days, how small and silly his directive sounded. Phalanxes of weary firemen, policemen, aid workers and construction crews would shuffle past my apartment, brushing ash from their brows and staring silently at the empty ground.
How could taking myself out to dinner compare to the spirit-crushing work these men and women were doing?
It couldn’t, of course. But I listened to the mayor anyway, and I went out to dinner. Over and over again. And as self-indulgent as it felt at first, it didn’t take me long to realize just how important it was — for me, for my friends, for the restaurants, for the city — that we went out to eat.
It was a small act, but it was good for all of us.
When you go out for supper, your money touches more people than you know. Some of the cash you spend goes to the restaurateur and his or her investors, to be sure. But some goes to the cooks, the busboys, the cleaning crew — and their families. It goes to the farmers, ranchers, butchers, delivery guys — and their families. It goes to the restaurants and businesses that those families support. And so on.
The money you spend on your supper touches dozens, maybe hundreds, of people. And when thousands of people go out to eat, that money touches thousands more people. Activity begets activity, business feeds business, and money moving back and forth is what makes an economy strong.
I don’t mean to compare 9/11 to the current crisis. They have little in common. But 9/11 taught us one lesson that resonates today: It is up to each of us, individually, to support local business and raise the spirits of our own communities.
And it also taught us that a relaxing meal at the restaurant down the street is a terrific way to calm your own jitters, economic or otherwise.
Going out to eat is a win-win way to feed the soul of a neighborhood. Busy streets and lively restaurants put us all in a better mood. Good business bolsters consumer optimism at the most micro of levels, and no matter how many hundreds of billions this or the next bailout costs, grassroots confidence in the economy is something you just can’t legislate. It comes from you, and me, vigorously participating in the life of our city.
I say let’s start with dinner.
Please, do yourself, your community and our economy a favor. Visit your favorite restaurant this week.
Tucker Shaw: tshaw@denverpost.com
