Lynne Bredfeldt rarely hears people suggest brunch these days.
The 42-year-old senior director of global communications at Nike in Portland, Ore., almost never mentions it herself. “Maybe because I associate it with oversized portions, mediocre food and an entire afternoon disappearing.”
When Emily Wilson, a 33-year-old food writer in New York, thinks about brunch, making a reservation—or waiting in line—for eggs and pancakes that she could make at home doesn’t appeal to her either, she said.
Turns out a lot of people have lost their appetite for the meal.
For some, it’s the food. For others, it’s the pressure to drink, the time commitment or the spectacle that brunch has become. “I’m sure you’ve seen all the TikToks where everyone wears a wig to brunch,” said Nate Jones, a 29-year-old advertising strategist in Chicago.
About 100 years after the meal spanning weekend mornings and afternoons first gained popularity in America, brunch—a portmanteau originally coined in England in the late 19th century—has by no means disappeared. But the Bloody Mary-soaked, avocado toast-forward version as many knew it seems to be over.
In a culture where people are drinking less, and younger generations are prioritizing fitness and health , bottomless mimosas and carb-heavy menus don’t have the appeal they once did.
But people haven’t stopped going out to eat midday on weekends. Many are now just going to lunch. Lunchgoers love the leisurely nature of the meal, citing its more laid-back feel and the relative ease of getting a reservation.
Wilson, the food writer, said that lunch is more civilized. “You’re often not being rushed out the door.”
Bredfeldt, the Nike strategist, felt similarly. She said lunch is “unhurried enough that you actually get to enjoy the meal, but not so long that it eats your whole afternoon.”
According to Technomic, a market-research firm, restaurant traffic in the U.S. was down between January and May 2026 compared to the same period in 2023. But only by 10% for lunch, compared with 14% for breakfast and 15% for dinner. The firm doesn’t track brunch traffic.
The meal’s modern-day detractors also include culinary professionals. Anthony Bourdain, the chef who died in 2018 and whose early career was the basis for a new film, was among them.
In “Kitchen Confidential,” Bourdain’s bestselling memoir from 2000, he called brunch “a dumping ground for the odd bits left over from Friday and Saturday nights.”
Brunch has never been on the menu at Chez Panisse in the Bay Area. Maud Moulle, its general manager, said that it “isn’t really something that fits in with what Chez Panisse represents.” But weekend lunch is—and can be an easier reservation to get at the restaurant than dinner, Moulle added.
Brooks Reitz also doesn’t serve brunch at his restaurants, which include the Bell in New Orleans and Leon’s Oyster Shop, Little Jack’s Tavern and Melfi’s, in Charleston, S.C. Switching up their menus for just a couple weekend meals doesn’t make sense.
“You’re not serving pancake batter on a Friday or a Monday, so you have excess waste,” Reitz said. “You’re bringing in specialty products that are taking up space and you’re training your team on these new dishes that they’re only going to be cooking two days a week.”
Offering lunch seven days a week at some of his places is better business, Reitz added, partly because it encourages neighborhood customers to become regulars.
The quality of brunch food—or lack thereof—is a reason why Nick Tamburo, the chef-owner at Smithereens in New York, has avoided it and instead focused on lunch. He offers a prix fixe menu on Sundays: $52 for three courses, which change every weekend based on what’s available at the local greenmarkets.
“We’ve never repeated a dish at lunch,” Tamburo said. “It’s been a way to push the restaurant forward creatively and honestly just have fun.”
It has been 10 years since Nick Curtola, the executive chef and partner at the Four Horsemen in Brooklyn, N.Y., started serving lunch Friday through Sunday at the restaurant—another that has never served brunch.
“The whole idea came from the fact that brunch was having a huge moment, especially in Williamsburg and Manhattan,” Curtola said.
That moment in the 2010s was a reason why the Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas said he was leaving New York in a 2014 interview with GQ: “I don’t know how many, like, white people having brunch I can deal with on a Saturday afternoon,” said Casablancas, who through a representative declined to further comment for this article.
The vast majority of Darwin Poblete’s roughly 150 meals at the Four Horsemen have been lunch. “Because they have a stellar wine program, people coming here are not looking for Bloody Marys,” said Poblete, a 48-year-old architectural designer in Brooklyn, who noted that he occasionally has brunch at other restaurants like Le Crocodile.
Unlike brunch, lunch is also not inherently a group activity—a plus for people like Mary-Ann Awada, 36, a former corporate lawyer in New York, who sometimes enjoys dining alone.
She dislikes brunch and instead prefers having lunch by herself at the bar of a restaurant, where she can chat with the bartender and eavesdrop on others’ conversations. “Lunch is the meal that feels most for me.”
Credits: Food and Prop Styling by Emilie Fosnocht
Corrections & Amplifications: Lynne Bredfeldt, Nike’s senior director of global communications, is a strategist for the company. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said she was a publicist. (Corrected on Sept. 13)
