Very interesting question.
During Roman times, the concept of restaurants was essentially a matter of shared kitchens instead of each domicile maintaining a dangerously flammable kitchen in the crowded cities.
During the middle ages, it was thought that diet was the key to good health and hence professional cooks served as personnel health managers for the privileged so restaurants was a way of bringing such professional health services to the public.
Today, there's the concept of meal replacement services where a cook would come into your home once a month, cook up twenty meals and freeze them for you. Meal replacement also applies to food establishments such as "Boston Chicken" and "Kentucky Fried Chicken" where people can pick up a dinner on their way home.
Of course, most restaurants in our modern day and age are a luxury and not about economy of any resource but there are economies of scale that can be exploited to reduce the consumption of Earth's resources, it's just that we don't currently use restaurants in that way but we could.
During Roman times, the concept of restaurants was essentially a matter of shared kitchens instead of each domicile maintaining a dangerously flammable kitchen in the crowded cities.
During the middle ages, it was thought that diet was the key to good health and hence professional cooks served as personnel health managers for the privileged so restaurants was a way of bringing such professional health services to the public.
Today, there's the concept of meal replacement services where a cook would come into your home once a month, cook up twenty meals and freeze them for you. Meal replacement also applies to food establishments such as "Boston Chicken" and "Kentucky Fried Chicken" where people can pick up a dinner on their way home.
Of course, most restaurants in our modern day and age are a luxury and not about economy of any resource but there are economies of scale that can be exploited to reduce the consumption of Earth's resources, it's just that we don't currently use restaurants in that way but we could.