Update 8/8/2025 – I wrote this the day before a certain post by a popular developer services company. I’ve seen some comments this is a rebuttal – it wasn’t meant to be! But clearly there’s a lot of similar messaging going around the industry right now.

As a restaurant owner – I’m astounded at the rate of progress since microwaves were released a few short years ago. Today’s microwave can cook a frozen burrito. Tomorrow’s microwave will be able to cook an entire Thanksgiving Dinner. Ten years from now a microwave may even be able to run the country.

Recently I was watching a livestream of a local microwave salesman. He suggested that restaurants should cook all their food in a microwave.

We all need to transition to this way of cooking, because clearly this is where the future is going. I expect in a few short years kitchens will be much smaller. Gone will be stoves and ovens and flat tops. Restaurant kitchens will only be a small closet with a microwave. I predict this will happen by 1955 at the latest.

Many chefs I know get upset at me when I tell them this. But this is the truth: If you can’t cook everything you make in a microwave thats a skill issue. You need to learn now because when everything is cooked in a microwave you’ll be out of a job. When microwaves are everywhere you’ll be so far behind you’ll never learn how to use a microwave. Chefs who use tools besides microwaves are luddites. They live in fear of the future.

If you want to learn how to use a microwave I would suggest starting with my $49.99 two week course. You should also subscribe to my blog.

Recently I was banned from my favorite chef subreddit for posting pictures of all my microwaved food. I was told I was spamming. These are the types of emotional people I deal with. But much like any other discriminated against group I am fighting for acceptance. If my microwaved food triggers you then you clearly are not ready to accept the future of all food.

At my restaurant I’ve moved all my employees to exclusively using microwaves. After I threatened to fire any employee that complained everyone told me the microwaves were great. But I only threatened them so everyone would love the microwaves.

Thats not to say there haven’t been growing pains. When a great steak comes out of the microwave I get really excited. But more than half the steaks that come out of the microwave get sent back by the customer. To solve this problem I now run ten microwaves in parallel cooking ten steaks. One out of the ten steaks will most likely be good. The number of microwaves has required me to upgrade my restaurant’s electrical system and I now have a small nuclear reactor installed in the parking lot.

I saw online another restaurant owner suggested deploying one thousand microwaves for each chef. This sounds like a great idea. The restauranteur also has heavy investments in microwaves and might be over leveraged. I try not to think about that too much.

One of my chefs mentioned that if they could cook the steak on the grill they could get it right the first time. This is not an acceptable attitude in the microwave era. Chefs have fragile egos and they all seem to enjoy cooking (???) so it’s obvious they’re just too attached to the food. Also they’re worried I’m planning on firing all of them. That’s true but not relevant here.

I’ve solved this by putting blindfolds on all my chefs. In no circumstances are they to look at the food. I don’t look at the food either. Looking at the food is how restaurants in the past operated. We don’t work that way any more. Have there been several poisonings? Yes. But the food gets out much faster now.

What’s that you’re saying? In a world where everyone has a microwave that microwaved food will be a commodity? That my chefs and my quality are actually what will distinguish my restaurant when everyone has microwaves? Microwaved food is extremely copyable and will become more difficult to build a unique business around? If I make my chefs exclusively use microwaves they’ll forget how to cook and I won’t be able to even pivot back?

Listen. First – you need to calm down. This is the sort of emotional response I’m talking about. You’re clearly irrationally anti microwave. And that sounds like a next quarter problem – and we don’t talk about next quarter problems.

Second – you need to realize I’m an idea person. Ok? Who else would have thought about putting pepperoni on a pizza? And if I didn’t have a microwave no one may have delivered that idea at all. With a microwave I was able to deliver that idea much faster. The new economy will be purely idea based. Is the quality of a microwaved pizza worse? Sure. But by 1960 cooking pizzas in ovens will be a thing of the past. I don’t have any evidence to back that up. But any rational person can see in a few short years ovens will be gone.

And finally – what do you think is going to happen? That microwaves are just going to go away someday? That we’ll all go back to cooking exactly the way we used to? Well you didn’t say that but thats what I want to talk about. Because clearly there is no middle ground and everything has to be done in a microwave. You’re being very inflexible about doing everything in a microwave and that won’t serve you well in the new microwave era. And we all know that a microwave is the solution for everything, has no underlying problems, and the rate of progress on microwaves will be infinite.

Anyway, I have to go. I’m busy tracking the minutes my chefs are running their microwaves so I know who to fire. This is a foolproof system that there is absolutely no way to game.