Domino’s is finally launching one truly personal pizza. Yes! Right? Except the company’s announcement about it is strangely sad. Hungry guests will be able to customize their meal “without compromise,” avoid “sacrifice” and share a meal without Actually to share. Sure, pizza isn’t that deep, but that’s the point. In general, we should be able to come to an agreement on olives and pepperoni.
A growing number Americans eat themselves – The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey shows that by 2023, more than a quarter of Americans will spend most of their time only eat and drinkcompared to a fifth in 2008. When people finally gather for meals, they increasingly find themselves in silos. We discovered how to eat alone, even when we are together.
Foodhall-inspired startup Wonder creates meals from multiple menus from the same kitchen, so no one has to choose between cuisines. Delivery company DoorDash has launched a feature for corporate customers that lets employees choose individual lunches from different places and have them delivered all at once. A 2026 OpenTable survey found that 52% of Americans say they would rather order their own dish than share it at the table, even as group dining has increased overall.
We may share space, but we don’t share food – and in turn, we don’t share all the benefits that come with a communal plate.
“The act of coordinating itself builds people’s trust and connection,” says Kaitlin Woolley, professor of management at Cornell University. “Sometimes this little bit of friction or this little challenge helps us come together.”
Woolley means what she says literally. In one of her studies, she paired people together and had them share a bowl of chips and salsa, or each have their own bowl. She then placed them in a negotiation scenario, in which one person played the role of management and the other a union representative, and asked them to reach an agreement. wage agreement. Her findings: Couples who shared a snack were more likely to close a deal than those who didn’t. The minor inconvenience of submerging the timing chip and trying not to be too heavy helped the partners gain understanding.
Sharing a meal often involves a series of everyday adjustments: choosing the restaurant, waiting until everyone has food before starting, not eating too quickly, leaving the last cookie on the tray until someone finally gives in and takes it. None of this behavior is particularly profound, but it does make us pay a little more attention to the wishes and actions of others.
When people order from the same location or eat from the same cuisine, the collective experience improves. That comes at the expense of not everyone getting exactly what they would have chosen if they were alone, says Ayelet Fishbach, a professor of behavioral sciences and marketing at the University of Chicago. “There is a lot to be gained socially, and the individual costs are usually negligible,” she says.
Sharing a meal often involves a range of everyday accommodations.
We also tend to bond when it comes to food, Woolley adds: “More so than taste in music or similar clothing, it seemed like a way for people to connect.”
This isn’t always so easy when everyone agrees on the same cheese pizza and moves on. Many people have done that food allergies or dietary restrictionsand the ability to personalize things makes it easier to participate, even though this brings its own challenges. Instead of being given veto power, the person with the problem can do their own thing and still stick around.
It can be stressful being the odd one out, and research shows that people with food restrictions often worry about how they will be perceived. They worry about having to reveal their limitations, wonder whether people will refuse to invite them in the future, and feel insecure about others making negative assumptions about them.
Kevin Kniffin, an assistant professor of management and organizations at Cornell University, conducted a study about a decade ago that found that firefighters who eat together perform better as a group than teams that eat alone. One of the firefighters in the investigation was vegan. He brought his own meal, but still made sure he ate at the same time and at the same table as everyone else. He also took part in shared clean-up duties, despite not contributing to the shared mess.
“The firefighter apparently had a strong intuition that all that shoulder-to-shoulder and face-to-face activity was important, and it was his clever way of tailoring his own nutritional decisions to his platoon’s meal-sharing practices,” says Kniffin. He adjusted the portion of the meal he needed, without opting out of everything surrounding it.
Sure, people share meals without eating the same thing over and over again. This means that we often order separate dishes in restaurants. Eating different items together does not destroy social interaction. A large part of the dynamics depends on expectations. If everyone agrees to bring their own lunch to the cafeteria, it can strengthen bonds. But if someone invites friends over for the express purpose of cooking a home-cooked meal and a guest decides to DoorDash their own food instead, that’s a no-no, even if the host might not be overtly offensive.
“There are silent social agreements,” says Nicklas Neuman, associate professor and senior lecturer in food studies, nutrition and dietetics at Uppsala University.
The idea that everyone should get exactly what they want is a modern luxury. It’s a “radical” development in human history to choose what we eat based on taste preference rather than what’s available to us, Neuman says. “Obviously it also has to do with how individualized the culture is,” he says.
Meals aren’t just about nutrition, taste, or social gatherings; it is also a consumer choice. What we eat says something about who we are, what we value, what we can afford and where we are in the class hierarchy.
Delivery apps and the ability to get hyper-customized meals have unbundled the constellation of decisions and activities that typically accompany communal eatingsays Kniffin. In terms of consequences, he compares the effects to those of Jenga: it is not clear “which pieces in the bundle are crucial” to actually provide the social benefits of a shared meal. Maybe the shared entrance isn’t load-bearing, but if you remove too many other blocks, the whole thing collapses, and what’s left is a handful of people consuming individualized products and staring at their phones around the same time.
In addition to food selection, other parts of the shared meal also turn into atomized interactions. Technology has made it possible precise distribution of the bill. A lunch or dinner for several people has long offered options low-stakes financial stress. Do we distribute it evenly? Does the person who skipped drinks pay less? Does anyone really want to decipher who ate how much of the entree?
Each person choosing their own specific adventure can lead to a trade-off between long-term social connection and short-term convenience.
Apps like Zelle, Splitwise and Venmo make it possible to solve those questions with strict accuracy. That can alleviate potential conflicts, says Margaret Clark, a professor of psychology at Yale University. When a friend starts calculating everyone’s share down to the last cent, “it just feels petty,” she says. If the app does the calculations automatically instead, it can feel less burdensome. “It’s not the person, it’s not one of the members, who is suggesting that we should act down to the last cent,” she says.
Friction during meals is not necessarily virtuous, nor is its removal necessarily antisocial. Sometimes technology and optionality eliminate annoying logistics and make it easier to be together. Other times, the thing being manipulated away has value: taking turns, making adjustments, making compromises. Each person choosing their own specific adventure can lead to a trade-off between long-term social connection and short-term convenience. There’s something about approaching meals in a more collaborative, straightforward way – we eat the same thing, generally guessing how the money should shake out, or you say you’ll get me next time if I pay – that could improve the relationship.
Maybe instead of five people ordering five individual pizzas and following Domino’s “no compromise” approach, most of the group agrees to get a large cheese. The person who really wanted sausage learns to live without it during the meal, and the person with an allergy gets a separate pie with a gluten-free crust. Everyone takes their slices at the table and discusses whether it would be better to have Chinese or Mexican next time.
Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider and writes about business and economics.
Business Insider’s Discourse stories provide perspectives on the most pressing issues of the day, based on analysis, reporting and expertise.
