VOA慢速英语2019 来越多的美国餐厅取消用餐区

More US Restaurants Remove Dining Areas

Dining rooms are disappearing from restaurants in the United States, as Americans increasingly use apps to order food.

随着美国人越来越多地使用app点餐，美国餐厅内的用餐区正在消失。

One example is the new Chopt Creative Salad Company restaurant, which opened last week in New York City. It is unlike any of the company's other 61 restaurants. It has no cash registers or dining tables.

以上周纽约新开张的Chopt创意沙拉公司餐厅为例。它不同于该公司的其他61家分店。这家店没有收银机，也没有设餐桌。

Atlanta-based restaurant Chick-fil-A has similar locations in two cities: Nashville, Tennessee and Louisville, Kentucky. Customers order and prepay online. They can either go to the store for their meal or have it sent to them.

亚特兰大的Chick-fil-A餐厅在田纳西州的纳什维尔和肯塔基州的路易斯维尔也设有类似的分店。客户在线订购和预付。他们可以去店内用餐，也可以选择送货上门。

Chick-fil-A is also trying something different. The company has announced plans to set up three "delivery kitchens." In all three, Chick-fil-A will share space with other restaurants to prepare food for delivery only.

Chick-fil-A餐厅也在尝试不同的方法。该公司已经宣布计划建立三家“外卖厨房”。在这三家餐厅中，Chick-fil-A将与其他餐厅共用空间，只提供外卖食品。

Digital orders are a major growth area for fast-food and fast-casual restaurant chains. More are turning to these dark, or ghost, kitchens to cut costs.

线上订餐成为快餐和休闲快餐连锁店的主要增长业务。更多的店家转向这些黑暗的，或幽灵般的厨房来削减成本。

Wendy's, another fast-food business, announced last month that it aimed to open two "dark kitchens" by the end of the year.

另一家快餐企业Wendy's上月宣布，计划在今年年底前开设两家“黑暗厨房”。

Some food delivery-only operations in New York and San Francisco have failed in recent years.

近年来，纽约和旧金山的一些只提供食品配送的业务以失败告终。

But in January, Travis Kalanick's CloudKitchens got a $400 million investment from Saudi Arabia's sovereign¹ wealth fund, Reuters reported. Kalanick is a co-founder of ride service Uber. The Wall Street Journal first reported the investment earlier this month.

但据路透社报道，今年1月，特拉维斯·卡兰尼克(Travis Kalanick)的cloudkitchen从沙特的主权财富基金获得了4亿美元的投资。卡兰尼克是Uber的联合创始人。《华尔街日报》本月早些时候首次报道了这笔投资。

CloudKitchens, founded in 2016, builds shared food preparation areas for delivery-only restaurants to rent.

成立于2016年的cloudkitchen建立了共享的食物准备区，只对仅提供外卖的餐厅出租。

Julie Atkinson is the Chief Marketing² Officer for Chopt. She says the company offered pick-up and delivery orders soon after it opened 18 years ago. Today those orders make up nearly make up nearly half of its business at larger restaurants, she said.

朱莉·阿特金森(Julie Atkinson)是Chopt的首席营销官。她说，该公司在18年前开业后不久就开始提供取货和送货的订单。她说，如今这些订单几乎占该公司大型餐厅近一半的业务。

"We are sensing a really huge customer need for speed, for convenience," she said. "We're hopeful that this concept really raises the bar on customer convenience."

她说：“我们意识到顾客对速度和便利的需求非常大。”“我们希望这个概念真的能提高顾客的便利程度。”

On November 5, coffee house Starbucks opened its first Starbucks pickup³ store in the United States for online orders. The new store is similar to some new Starbucks stores in China, where digital ordering is more common.

11月5日，星巴克在美国开设了第一家在线订餐的星巴克皮卡专卖店。这家新店与中国的一些星巴克新店类似，在中国，线上订餐更为普遍。

Words in This Story

app – n. a computer software program for a smartphone or other electronic device

delivery – n. the act of transporting something to someone

casual – adj. easygoing; unofficial

ghost – n. the spirit or presence of a dead person

fund – n. a financial or investment program

rent – v. paying someone for the use of something

customer – n. someone who purchases a product or service

convenience - n. a quality or situation that makes something easy or useful for someone by reducing the amount of work or time required to do something

concept - n. an idea of what something is or how it works

1 sovereign   

n.元首，金镑；adj.具有主权的，至高无上的，极好的，完全的

参考例句：

• For a brief time Texas was a sovereign nation.得克萨斯一度是个主权独立的国家。
• The Queen has sovereign power.女王握有统治权。

2 marketing   

n.行销，在市场的买卖，买东西

参考例句：

• They are developing marketing network.他们正在发展销售网络。
• He often goes marketing.他经常去市场做生意。

3 pickup   

n.拾起，获得

参考例句：

• I would love to trade this car for a pickup truck.我愿意用这辆汽车换一辆小型轻便卡车。||The luck guy is a choice pickup for the girls.那位幸运的男孩是女孩子们想勾搭上的人。