Worth the wait at the counter

Almost everything about getting a meal has become easier. You can order from bed, pay without speaking to anyone, and watch a small dot cross the city towards your door. Each step that disappeared was a small effort, and each disappearance felt like a gift. People will give up a great deal for that gift: money, privacy, the habit of knowing who cooks for them.

On a corner in Sayeda Zeinab there is a fiteer maker with no delivery at all, and a queue. You stand. You watch the dough tossed and stretched until light comes through it, folded over, slid into the oven. It takes a while. Nobody in the line seems to mind. Some of them drove across Cairo to stand in it.

That is the countertrend, and it is easy to miss when every line on every chart points the other way. Some people bake bread at home when a sliced loaf is sold at the end of the street. Some walk when they could ride. Some will wait twenty minutes for something made in front of them, precisely because it was made in front of them.

The contest to be the easiest option is crowded and unforgiving. Someone will always remove one more tap, one more minute, one more reason to get off the sofa, and whoever does it leads only until the next one does it better.

There is quieter ground available. Be the thing that asks a little more of people and gives back something they cannot get the easy way.

Not everyone will want it. The ones who do are not comparing you with anything on their phone.