I've had it with the Slop Bowl slander

It was once mostly used as a crossword clue (four letters… “Pigs at a sty”). Now, “slop” means so much more: AI-generated images and videos with negative artistic merit, designed to generate maximum user engagement ¹ , and, more broadly, any low-quality, soulless junk, ranging from music to streaming shows to — as we’ll soon see — food.

The (non-pig-related) “slop” began catching on as a word and cultural phenomenon over the past couple of years, fully entering the zeitgeist in early 2025, as shown by this Google Trends report:

And lately, I’ve found myself reading more and more calls to actively flee the Slop – to log off, to put my phone away, to “touch grass.” There’s still a big wide world out there, after all, filled with real physical things.

Except some now argue that the physical world has also been overcome by slop – in bowl form.

A couple of months ago, the term “slop bowl” entered the lexicon:

What is a Slop Bowl? In a recent video posted by the (mostly satiric) YouTube channel Good Work ² , host Dan Toomey visits “Slop Lane,” a strip in Midtown Manhattan populated by fast-casual spots serving “mush colored leaf and protein porridge.” He interviews office workers grabbing their daily “slop”; one guy says he visits Chipotle at least three times a week, and that sometimes “a couple of guys will team up and hit the same spot.” ³

And earlier this year, The New York Times ran a piece called “Living the Slop Life” which also discussed slop bowls in some detail. The piece attempted to link AI slop and slop bowls to a broader theme — our need to consume both digital and offline things that require minimal thought and promise maximum efficiency:

Stop. For a couple of reasons.

First, a grammar complaint: Software ate the world; now, it’s eating language. Spam began as a food, became an unwanted email, and now refers to trying to scam you out of your life savings over text. “Bandwidth,” “sync,” “double-click,” “hardwired” — these all have different meanings now than they did originally, none of them especially wrong, but the trend runs the risk of broadening words far beyond their primary intent to the point that they no longer mean anything.

In this context, slop began by describing a very specific thing — lazy, AI-generated content — and now is touching anything people don’t like.

Which brings me to my second point: If you look at the original definition of AI slop — low-effort, soulless junk — you can’t link that to Chipotle, Cava, and Sweetgreen. They’re actually good!

If the definition of a Millennial is having some familiarity with the world before the Internet, I can also remember a time before Chipotle. Visiting it for the first time as a ravenous teenager was a genuine revelation. As a time-strapped adult, getting a reasonably nutritious, minimal thought/maximum efficiency meal is equally valuable. Bowl are a welcome addition to the broader restaurant ecosystem.

And it’s easy to forget how revolutionary these concepts seemed up until fairly recently. Just 12 years ago, you can find interviews with Chipotle founder Steve Ells patiently explaining the basics of the fast-casual business model:

Or, as Restaurant Business’s Lisa Jennings says in the Good Work video: “The fast-casual concepts are defined by the fact that they're offering something better for you... these are places you can get a nutritious, filling meal. I think it's good money for the price for what you're getting.”

Put another way: I’ve never felt great after watching an AI slop video. I rarely regret a Sweetgreen run, though.

But now, some have latched onto fast-casual’s sluggish 2025 traffic counts to write articles like “Splat goes the slop bowl,” pitting the concepts as being behind the times against high-flying casual diners like Chili’s. Via Business Insider:

The problem with this line of thinking is that I don’t think consumers actually make decisions that way.

Competition between dining segments is mostly made up. Diners aren’t in one voice saying to themselves, “I frequent casual dining restaurants now because they’re a better value.” If you’re reading this, you’re unusually interested in the business of restaurants — but the vast majority of restaurant customers aren’t even familiar with the terms “fast casual,” “casual dining,” and “quick service.” They’re all just … restaurants.

Bowl concepts and casual dining concepts can coexist. One segment succeeding doesn’t mean another segment has to fail.

And in 2025, the restaurant industry is hard enough as it is. Pitting categories against each other is silly, and painting an entire category of restaurants as “slop” is using far too large a brush.

Thank you for reading. Didn’t expect to bring Industry Bites out of retirement for an unhinged defense of slop bowls, but the Muse leads to unexpected places. I’ll try to be back sooner rather than later.

And we’re making packaging bowls — among many other branded products — at FS Supply. Shoot me an email if you’re looking to create something new.

1  You know it when you see it: bizarre images of horses made of bread; long-dead celebrities giving life advice; slightly off-kilter LinkedIn thought leadership.

2  Think of it as the Daily Show for people who’ve memorized at least 25 Excel shortcuts.

3  This is consultant-speak for “getting lunch with a coworker.”