Let’s take a look at some of the reasons millennials are allegedly killing every business. If you’re like me, you don’t buy napkins. Paper towels can be used at the dinner table to clean your hands after a meal and to wipe the kitchen counter clean after cooking.
Because millennials have realized they don’t need to buy two paper products when one will do, they’re being blamed for “killing” napkins. When’s the last time you walked into an Olive Garden? O.
K. I’ve been several times this year, but hey they’ve got free salads and breadsticks with all their food and I had a gift card. Unfortunately, nearly everything else on the menu varies from tolerable pasta-like entrees to some kind of food challenge.
The same goes for many other chain restaurants millennials are apparently killing like Applebee's and Buffalo Wild Wings, which are shocked this generation refuses to keep buying their mediocre food. Millennials are opting for healthier and more convenient options like cooking at home, going to fast casual restaurants like Chipotle or Panera which offer less service but higher quality ingredients, and of course we love ordering delivery on a variety of apps. The headlines also say we’re killing the real estate industry.
The reality is millennials are simply buying homes later in life. There are a few reasons for this including the record high student loan debt of our generation and millennials marrying later in life, but we’re also renting longer and when we do buy a home, it’s nicer than the previous generation’s first home. But part of the problem is simple economics – there’s a shortage of “starter homes” on the market, meaning smaller homes that people have historically bought as their first house that are around 2,500 square feet or smaller, because builders are opting for building the more profitable big 6,000 square foot or larger homes.
That means smaller homes are pricing out millennials, who find renting or living with their parents a little longer to be more affordable. The list goes on and on, but when it comes down to it, yes millennials have different attitudes toward certain industries and our consumer habits are different from our parents … but hasn’t that always been the case? Are millennials truly unique in being a generation that is out to kill every industry or is the free market just working the way it’s supposed to by eliminating products that aren’t innovating to keep up with what consumers want?
The biggest flaw in the headlines that millennials are killing x or y is the assumption that millennials are at fault. It is the duty of businesses to cater to their consumers, identify trends and adapt to them, it’s not the job of the consumer to keep anyone in business unless we want what they're selling. In my opinion, the more interesting story isn’t what millennials are supposedly killing, but rather the new industries we are creating and diverting our investments toward.
You can thank millennials for the convenience of ride sharing apps, the resurgence of public libraries, the massive amount of coffee we consume to make up for the exhausting work of killing off the soda and alcohol industries, a growth in the aerospace industry with new companies like SpaceX, and several other industries that folks may debate as to whether they’re a net positive or not like smartphones and social networking platforms. Millennials are also more willing to support companies that are charitable and environmentally friendly … so our dollars are making the world better. This whole narrative that Millennials are killing everything makes it seems like generations before us didn’t demand better products and services themselves.
Well, Millennials didn’t kill cassette tapes, it was those dang baby boomers who viciously decided CDs sounded better and were more convenient. With a growing interest in fast food restaurants like McDonald’s the baby boomer generation could be said to have killed diners, which drastically dropped in popularity as their generation entered the workforce. And of course, baby boomers inherited a country with a booming economy in the U.
S. and quickly went to work ruining it along with the environment. They racked up the national debt, burned record amounts of fossil fuels, lowered taxes which left entitlement programs with empty pockets, and let our country’s infrastructure decay among other things.
But that’s a whole other video. The real headline is a lot more boring, businesses that are making products people no longer want are selling less of those products … because duh. That’s just how capitalism works, if companies are complacent and not adapting to what millennials, the largest group of consumers, want those companies deserve to die and ultimately they only have themselves to blame.
I know, that sounds harsh, but that’s business, and I am after all a soulless company killing Millennial. Thank you to everyone who left a comment in my last video letting me know that my audio sounded really bad. Sorry, I made a mistake setting up my new microphone.
But I do have this brand new microphone, Blue Snowball mic, that I used for this video. It's the same microphone that the podcast Welcome to Nightvale uses, so it's pretty good, I thought it sounded pretty good. If you want to check out this microphone and any of my other gear, it's in the description below.
Thank you for watching and I'll see you in the future.
