Rally’s/Checkers/Sonic — I see ads for them but there aren’t any around.
Sonic; meh
Long John Silvers: can be a nice change from regular fast food. But you gusy have lots of good, fresh fish.
Panera Bread: meh
Boston Market: meh
Chick-Fil-A: Not bad, but boring. I eat there at airports.
Dunkin Donuts: Ok
Krispy Kreme: Ok when hot
Olive Garden: meh
Red Robin: used to be great but there are so many in that burger line now…
Golden Corral: less than men.
Cracker Barrel: fun, but basically coffee shop fare with some flair.
There’s a Sonic in The Pruneyard, just minutes from the SJ border. Or at least there was the last time I was there, about a year ago.
A couple of years ago, Chili’s was running a promotion on TV/radio/table ads about winning a vacation for two to Hawaii. We’d be at Chili’s on Sunday morning watching NFL games reading and seeing the ads. We’re in Hawaii - what’s in it for us???
I still see national Chili’s ads in Oregon - Find Oregon Chili's Locations: Lunch, Dinner, Happy Hour | Chili's
When did all the Chili’s go away? On their locator map the closest is on the far side of Texas.
Red Lobster – we get ads for them, but a search on Red Lobster’s own website show that they’re simply not in new England, except for Connecticut – no restaurants in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, or Maine.
Similarly with Long John Silver’s
Maybe they know better than to try to sell seafood in New England.
Krispy Kreme doesn’t advertise here, but for a time it did – they had an abortive attempt to sell in Massachusetts, putting up three locations that I know of – Route 1 in Saugus MA, Revere Beach Parkway in Everett, and the mall at Prudential Center in Boston itself. Two of those locations had donut-making machines you could watch.
The experiment didn’t last long. They’re gone now. The locations are a bank, a Kelly’s Roast Beef, and a Godiva Chocolate now.
Popeye’s. All the locations in this area were mismanaged into the ground some time ago yet they still taunt me with commercials showing the yummy goodness that is not to be 
I have a feeling “coffee shop fare” means different things to us. (To me, it’s like cakes and stuff.) Cracker Barrel is basically a giant gift shop with a Southern Style version of one of those mall restaurants like Applebee’s or TGIF attached to it. It’s a reasonable place to get stuffed for a not unreasonable amount of money, but I avoid it unless someone in our group is hankering for southernesque food on a road trip (which seems to be the only time I ever end up at a Cracker Barrel.)
I seem to recall several Red Lobsters in Mass (Tyngsboro, Burlington, etc)… never could figure out why anyone would go to them when even the supermarkets around here sell lobster cooked to order. Still, it’s hard to believe that 99 outlasted them.
Sonic didn’t have any MA locations at all until 2015, yet we were still bombarded with those ads. At least they’re pretty amusing.
Their own website shows zero red Lobsters in New England (outside of Connecticut).
99, on the other hand, originated locally. They’re all over the place here.
I agree about the Sonic. I never saw one outside of California until one popped up on Route 1 north of us. A quick websearch turns up five in Massachusetts and one in Rhode Island. After I visited one for the first time I was unimpressed. I didn’t go back until my daughter, MilliCal, wanted to try it out. I don’t think she’s been back since.
Dennys is the chain I call coffee shops, but maybe “diner” is a better term.
Like I said, not bad.
2008, and very suddenly.
There’s also a Sonic in Hayward. That’s less than an hour from San Jose, unless the traffic is really bad.
There’s no universe in which Dennys is not a diner. Coffee shops sell coffee, cakes, biscuits and pre-made sandwiches, stuff like that. More importantly, they have fancy coffee - not just filter coffee but things like lattes, flat whites, cappuccinos, mocha, and so on.
I’d call it a coffee shop, too. There are different types of coffee shops, and the more pretension ones (with multiple coffees and no food except sweet junk), I might term "coffee house.” Maybe it’s a regionalism, but places like Denny’s have been called “coffee shops” since before the current popularity of coffee houses.
Example popular usage citing diner as coffee shop is Monk’s Café, which is a fairly typical coffee shop.
Might be a regionalism them, because if someone said “Let’s go to a coffee shop” and then took me to a Denny’s, I’d be perplexed to say the least.
The nearest Hardee’s is 3 states away, as is the nearest Tim Hortons.
Wait a second… where are you from? I never hear Americans say “filter coffee”; we say “drip coffee.” “Filter coffee” I last heard used in South Africa.
I grew up in New Zealand but have spent my adult life in Australia.