Solo dining in the US is up 23% in a year, and it’s not a fringe trend. From Japan’s ohitorisama culture to hot pot chains building solo booths, businesses worldwide are re-engineering around people who eat, travel and spend alone, a shift South Africa’s own rising single-person household numbers suggest isn’t going away either. Bloomberg’s Howard Chua-Eoan makes the case for “Me-conomics.”
By Howard Chua-Eoan
A former colleague — terribly self-important because of winning a number of journalism prizes — once took a protege out to a fancy lunch spot in New York City. When the table talk reached a lull, however, the mentor flipped open a book and started to read. When his dining companion asked why he was being so rude, my colleague responded: “I’ll put the book down once you have something interesting to say.”
Expectations like that make me anxious. But it’s true that I’m usually to blame for any lapse in dinner conversation. That’s because, more often than not, I eat alone. So I take comfort in the recent revelation by OpenTable.com that solo dining in US restaurants has risen 23% from 2025 to 2026. That means there are more people like me who prefer interior monologue to tablemate chatter while digging into a meal.
Three years ago I wrote a column about the uproar here in London over a restaurant declaring that it reserved the right to charge solo diners double, otherwise it couldn’t balance its books. The whole thing was an awkward and unnecessary public relations fiasco — and, while I understand the business reasons behind it, I’ve never been able to bring myself to dine there. At many restaurants, when the number of guests registers at one, the hospitality meter can flip to hostile. And that affects me. And you. The problem for businesses, as I wrote back then, was that “we are all solo diners, whether in duos or groups of 12.”
From an economic perspective, the OpenTable data point to a broader change in consumer demographics. The idea of the household in the US, Europe and the developing world is being defined downward. Rather than couples with or without children, single-person “families” are on the increase. According to a US Census Bureau report issued in 2023, 27.6% of all households were made up of only one person. Back in 1940, it was only 7.7%. In the European Union, the cohort accounted for 21.5% of the population in 2025. China has about 250 million single adults. The proportions are most dramatic in Japan, where 34% of all households are made up of a single person. By 2040, that is expected to grow to 40%.
It is no surprise then that Japan is a pioneer in catering to solo consumers — called ohitorisama — not just with dining culture but travel and entertainment as well. The focus is no longer on ending their single state. Though companionship is still important, singledom is not considered debilitating. What ohitorisama are after is the fulfilment and enhancement of their individual existences. They are not hikikomori, the socially inept, incel-like shut-ins of Japanese sociological lore. Rather, they have come to value the solo life — and will spend to cultivate it. Can this be called “Me-conomics?”
The cultivation of self has a rich philosophical history, of course; it ranges from Buddhist meditative practices to stoic disciplines to (my favorite) epicurean delights. Indeed, the word ohitorisama was previously used as a respectful way for a restaurant host to address a party of one: The syllable “o” being an honorific, hitori referring to one person, and sama a more elevated form of san (the equivalent of Mr., Mrs., Ms. etc.). Originally, most were women but it now applies more generally across genders.
Japanese businesses have re-engineered to accommodate and develop the ohitorisama market. Take karaoke. Solo karaoke booths have been around for about a decade now. The specialized shops called hitokara — a mashup of hitori and karaoke — may make up as much as 20% to 30% of the entire sector. Barbecue shops and even spas now cater to individual customers. There is a whole tourism category called hitoritabi targeting the single traveler. Marketers in the West are now trying to apply ohitorisama lessons to their own customers. The awkward neologism “Me-kend” — as in a “weekend just for me” — is being bandied about for solo self-care holiday packages.
But back to solo dining and its discontents. I once went into a trendy new restaurant and eyed the game pie longingly. But when I asked about it, the proprietor yelled, “That’s for two.” I ordered something in the humble pie range and left humiliated. I’ve never returned.
Still, some culinary pleasures may never be able to shrink to solo proportions. Case in point: the huge traditional family-style portions sent out from kitchens specializing in Asian cuisine. A solo diner may be able to polish off one order, but to enjoy the proper punch of the menu, you’ve got to have a diversity of dishes to sample. I’ve packed Tupperware to deal with such circumstances. Alas, that makes me feel like an auntie — a fussy social category that is itself part of the me-conomic boom.
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There are some attempts at solutions. The ubiquitous and lucrative hot pot restaurant chains of China have begun to offer hermetic experiences to singletons. You may ask, what’s the point of hot pot if you don’t share the table with a clique of friends plopping their choice of seafood, meat and vegetables into a central cauldron of boiling broth and chattering away before batting each other’s chopsticks out of the way as they fish out the good bits from the communal slop?
Call me self-important, but that just makes me want to reach for a book.
© 2026 Bloomberg L.P.
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