If I Eat at a Chain Restaurant, Does That Make Me a Bad Local Advocate?

(Source: Wikimedia Commons/Farragutful.)

A few weeks ago, I found myself reading through a list of businesses coming to the Waco-Killeen-Temple area. After scrolling through the page, I suddenly sat upright, nearly jumping off my couch. My husband looked at me, eyes wide. “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh!” I exclaimed, “We’re getting a CAVA!” 

My excitement climaxed into a spontaneous, joyful march around the living room. If you haven’t heard of it, CAVA is a fast-casual eatery, in the same family as Chipotle or Panera, offering delicious Middle Eastern-inspired bowls and wraps. I discovered it a few years ago in Dallas and it’s one of my favorite places to grab lunch on the go whenever I’m in a big city.

The variety of proteins like braised lamb and sweet-spicy harissa chicken, mouth-watering sauces (don’t skip the crazy feta) and unlimited toppings like Kalamata olives, pickled onions, and cucumber-tomato salad are among my most favorite foods. In a city saturated with BBQ, tacos, and donuts, I could not have been more excited for the variety. I made a mental note of the open date, ended my mini dance parade with a dramatic sigh, and returned to my seat on the couch.

A few moments later, I found myself still sitting there. Once the thrill died down, more sober thoughts marched into my mind. As someone who believes in the need for greater local resilience, what did it say about me that I was excited about a new chain coming to town? Knowing what I know about how they take money out of the city, drive small businesses out of operation, and weaken a communities’ social fabric, did my excitement mean I was now contradicting my own values?

The Importance of Values

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of knowing our values. Where we live, how we spend money, whom we marry…these decisions and countless more are all shaped by our core values. These decisions matter because it is through various choices and activities that our values become more real, more solidified, more a part of who we are as a person. Unless you put them to work in the real world, unless you actually live them out in your daily life, values will remain aspirational virtues or ideals. It’s only through action that they become truly integrated into who we are.

People who have identified their core values and aligned their lives and activities to those values are people who lead integrated lives. Not just that, but they’ve tapped into one of the most powerful sources of motivation: few things keep humans going through tough times like realizing their labor, suffering, or struggle is tied to a core value that matters to them. And this is especially true when it comes to being engaged in our communities. It’s why in my “Meaningful Action Toolkit,” I dedicate an entire step of the process to identifying your core values. Not only will they help you identify the kinds of activities that are best aligned to you, but they are your anchors: they will keep you focused, aligned, and motivated as you seek to participate more deeply in the life of your town. 

No Easy Task

All that being said, though, values can be tough to live out. When I decided to stay in Waco nearly three years ago, it was partly because I was discontented with having a lot of knowledge about cities and civics, but no real experience putting that knowledge or my beliefs to work in a real city, in a real community. Staying in this city and trying to get involved was a way of trying to make the ideal of local engagement a reality, part of who I am as a person. 

Surprisingly, this is harder said than done because, well, we’re human and come with a combination of passions, desires, weaknesses, and ideals. Often, they don’t get along. Despite how desperately I desire to attain a certain virtue, I often find myself hamstrung by my own weaknesses. But it can also be hard, because oftentimes, living out our values feels impossible given the design of our cities. Day in and day out, I find myself stuck in patterns of participation that run contrary to what I actually value. 

For example, it’s one thing to believe in the value of multi-modal transit. It’s another to actually find, let alone choose the options in line with that belief. Most cities simply aren’t designed to provide various non-car options for getting around town safely without taking on dramatic tradeoffs. Case in point: there’s a grocery store a mile from my apartment. Technically, the shoulder of the road has been converted into a bike lane, which I could use to bike there. But, with the lane being a mere three feet wide, separated from fast-moving traffic only by a faded strip of white paint, it’s simply too dangerous. So, like everyone else, I opt for the car, even though my values would have me bike or walk. 

Here’s another example. A week ago, I was talking to a friend from church who wants to get to know her neighbors better, but who feels unsure about how to start or how to cross cultural divides. Her family is white, while the neighborhood is mostly black and Hispanic. I get her feeling of “stuckness.” Since moving to my neighborhood four months ago, I haven’t even met my neighbors. As I’ve thought about what feels like yet another contradiction, I realize the reality is more complicated and this is what I explained to my friend. 

The reality is that most of us live highly customized, dispersed social lives, the nexus of which has nothing to do with where we live. Most of our friends don’t live within walking distance from us. Most of our daily problems can now be solved by Amazon or an app on our phones. Most of our leisure time is happily allotted to Netflix, not to porch-sitting. In this kind of world, proximity no longer governs our social ties the way it used to a century ago and “improvements” in technology have eroded our need to engage with people, at all. 

So while we might love the idea of building proximity-based loose ties, in reality, we’ll face a ton of resistance to putting that ideal to work in the real world. The social norms governing our neighborhoods have changed so drastically that meeting neighbors and building a sense of community on your street might very well be one of the most challenging things you could ever do. 

What To Do?

Back to CAVA. Here the lines are not so clear. I drive because my city is too spread out to walk and lacks the infrastructure to bike. I struggle to meet neighbors because of cultural and technological forces working against me. But let’s be honest, I don’t have to eat at CAVA. I could probably eliminate all chains from my daily life in favor of local businesses. Should this be my goal from now on?

Maybe so. But it’s highly unlikely for two reasons. First, as with most American cities, it’s simply impossible to find local alternatives to places like Target and Lowe’s. Many cities’ models of economic development don’t make it easy for small businesses to flourish, consequently making it harder for us to live out our value of shopping small and locally.

Second, I also realize that sometimes, the desire for the familiar (and delicious) will win out and I will opt for the CAVA bowl or the matcha latte from Starbucks. But even in these less-than-ideal moments of choosing the easier option, I think it counts for something if I can do so with awareness and grace. Participating in the imperfect patterns governing our cities from a place of mindfulness is a huge milestone because it’s a practice in rethinking normal. Even if we can’t perfectly live out our values as it pertains to how we participate in our cities, if we can learn to reflect on the patterns and what they imply about cities and human flourishing…that’s a huge success. 

Not just that, but we can also find ways to bring our values with us to these imperfect moments. For instance, I might not get to know my neighbors, but maybe I could meet all the baristas at my local coffee shop? I can’t bike to the store or for any other errand, but maybe I can put the bike on the car when we go to campus and use it to get downtown instead of driving. When it comes to finding a healthy lunch, maybe I can’t completely avoid chains like CAVA, but with almost a dozen local coffee shops, perhaps I can recommit to supporting them over Starbucks. 

In other words: baby steps count. Values are important and living them out is critical to making them real, but figuring out how to live them out sometimes takes grace and creativity. Most of us can’t afford to avoid Target, Starbucks, or Chipotle. Most of us can’t dodge car culture. But we can cultivate an attitude of mindfulness. We can challenge the stories we’re told about growth, prosperity, and freedom. We can look for clever ways to subvert the patterns. We can put our values to work, one small step at a time. 

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