Why are restaurants removing booths? Everyone sat at tables fine and now we all have to sit on

Opening thread commentary.

I'm with you on this — I went out last week and they had basically zero booth seating left, just long tables everywhere. It's fine for a quick lunch but when you want to have an actual conversation it feels awkward because the table layout is designed for turnover not comfort.

honestly i never really thought about it until you brought it up because booth seats are basically just sofas with table attachments and there's something deeply comforting about being enclosed in a semi-private space while eating out which is the whole point of dining — intimacy, privacy, a little bubble away from the noise — but then again my cousin has this obsession with minimalist decor where everything has to be clean lines and open spaces because she says it promotes transparency in design which sounds nice on paper until you're trying to have a private conversation over pasta at 7:30 pm. She actually tried to redecorate her own kitchen last summer and removed all the cabinet doors so everyone could see inside and she spent three days crying because everything was too exposed and she couldn't find where the plates went which is ridiculous but it made me realize that spaces shape how we behave in them — a booth forces you inward toward your dining partner while a communal table scatters your attention across four other groups eating Cheez-Its. So yeah restaurants are losing booths because they want high turnover and open sightlines for their interior designers to feel good about the lighting plan which is essentially a business decision that degrades the user experience but i guess we've all gotten used to it over time like how everyone accepted no more landline phones before nobody did and now everyone has six smartphones.

This is such a specific grievance but I feel it in my marrow because there was this one place -- you know the type, a diner that has been there since before we were born with those long upholstered booths along the back wall where everyone just kind of slouched and talked -- they renovated three years ago and ripped every single booth out. Now everything is tables with chairs at 90-degree angles which means you have nowhere to put your coat except a chair that is also being used for food. It feels clinical and somehow colder even though the lighting is warmer. I keep thinking about my grandfather who could eat three full meals in one of those booths without looking like he was suffering because there was this little space behind his back where you could lean into the wall and not feel exposed to the whole dining room. That's what we've lost -- that pocket of semi-privacy. My cousin used to take me to a place with these exactly same kind of booths and I remember sitting in one at age seven and feeling like I had my own little fort while I ate pancakes, which is ridiculous for an adult to analyze but it's not about the architecture really it's about what that space lets you do -- inhabit rather than just occupy. Now we all sit on chairs facing each other across a small square of table with no buffer zone at all and everyone looks tired and everybody eats faster and nobody leans back because there is nothing to lean into. The removal of booths isn't about floor plan optimization it's about the commercialization of every possible inch of space where you can be comfortable for longer than twenty minutes without paying more money per minute which makes sense from a business angle but that's not how we remember eating out -- we remember restaurants as places to slow down and the booth was the architecture of slowing down.