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The purpose of this study was to examine the global perceptions of social equity in the fine dining business model as a result of the surprise announcement for the 2024 planned closure of the Michelin three-star restaurant, Noma.

This study used critical discourse analysis to inductively analyze 91 source documents retrieved through a lexical database search. The analysis yielded five overarching themes and six subthemes.

Findings from this study serve as a benchmark in retrospect for capturing a rapidly accelerating global conversation from January to March 2023 around the long-term viability and social sustainability of the fine dining business model.

Against the backdrop of labor challenges in the restaurant industry due to the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath, the announced closure of Noma precipitated criticism of the stage (unpaid intern) system and the intense pressures of attaining and maintaining Michelin star status.

Results from the discourse analysis suggest certification for fine dining restaurants, perhaps through the Michelin Guide, for demonstrating a commitment to social sustainability as a qualifier to achieve a Michelin star.

Findings from this research reveal a palpable change in societal tolerance for a more socially sustainable fine dining restaurant business model that advances equitable solutions for its workers while assuring the economic sustainability of restaurants.

This study drew upon a foodscape lens to reveal a juxtaposition between well-executed environmentally sustainable initiatives in the fine dining business model and the threats to the social sustainability among its workers.

In the years following the publication of A Theory of Consumption (1923), Hazel Kyrk’s book became the flagship of the field that would later be known as the economics of consumption. It stimulated theoretical and empirical work on consumption. Some of the existing literature on Kyrk (e.g., Kiss & Beller, 2000; Le Tollec, 2020; Tadajewski, 2013) depicted her theory as the starting point of the economics of consumption. Nevertheless, how and why it emerged the way it did remain largely unexplored. This chapter examines Kyrk’s intellectual background, which, we argue, can be traced back to two main movements in the United States: the home economics and the institutionalist. Both movements conveyed specific endeavors as responses to the US material and social transformations that occurred at the turn of the 20th century, notably the perceived changing role of consumption and that of women in US society. On the one hand, Kyrk pursued first-generation home economists’ efforts to make sense of and put into action the shifting of women’s role from domestic producer to consumer. On the other hand, she reinterpreted Veblen’s (1899) account of consumption in order to reveal its operational value for a normative agenda focused on “wise” and “rational” consumption. This chapter studies how Kyrk carried on first-generation home economists’ progressive agenda and how she adapted Veblen’s fin-de-siècle critical account of consumption to the context of the household goods developed in 1900–1920. Our account of Kyrk’s intellectual roots offers a novel narrative to better understand the role of gender and epistemological questions in her theory.