I suppose you’ve been smoking the same stuff that the ad writers were when they came up with that “Happy cows…” BS.
Anyway, the “Most chains are at least mediocre” is where a lot of people’s thinking leads to when they’re trying to pick out a restaurant, which helps support chains. Not that I’m criticizing, just that this is the typical thought process. “Well, we could go to that unknown place, but at least we know that TGIMcApplechili’s will have something that’s OK. Let’s go there instead.” People don’t want to waste time and money on an unknown lowish-price dining experience, and chains offer the assurance that they are something known.
Basiaclly they start to suck when they start simplifing to make it easier for franchisees to throw together quickly. They They really start to suck when they get bought out by a national corporation. Case in Point: Chipotle from Denver. When they were small they were A+(They had Actual authentic Moles)… As they started to get bigger they went to A-, when McDonalds bought them out they went to C.
I go to local places to ensure that my dollars stay in the local economy, also. That’s a big part of it for me. A lot of the people who own restaurants around me live near me, buy my wife’s jewelery, shop at other places where I know the proprietor, etc.
My other major beef with chains is that I can’t shake the feeling that they’re put together by focus groups, marketers, 25 year old jerk-offs who just came out of “restaurant management” colleges. The primary time that I’ll eat at a chain is when I go out with co-workers, which is every couple months. We recently went to a new TGI Fridays. There’s a “thing” on the wall, a collage basically, that has like a picture of the Beatles, a picture of Alf, a football, a Goodfellas movie poster.
At “cheeburger cheeburger”, (besides the name), they put “trivial pursuit” cards on the tables.
They just sprinkle the restaurants with random shit which apparently is designed to stimulate the conversation for retards.
Not to mention that the food is clearly “quality controlled” to portion size, placement, cost, etc. There are prices at this place Rocky Run that are like $3.63 for a beer. That’s not what beer costs. Beer costs $3.50 or $4.00. $3.63 is the location of the peak of some price/demand curve from some two-bit piece of shit business software.
That’s all incidental to the food quality itself, but it makes it impossible for me to enjoy it even if it is good. And when I’ve been able to pay attention to it, it isn’t.
So, even if I wanted to send my hard earned dollars to the shareholders of Yum Foods Incorportated, I’d need a “chain” place to at the very least NOT ANNOY ME. Once the accountants and “brand builders” get ahold of a place, that’s pretty much it for me.
McDonald’s, whether in California or Wisconsin or any other state, uses sharp American cheese on its sandwiches. That’s 100% American cheese (e.g., Kraft Deluxe), not that rubbery, tasteless American cheese product (e.g., Kraft Singles, as little as 51% cheese) or American cheese food (e.g., Kraft Velveeta, less than 51% cheese).
It’s also very unlikely that a McDonald’s in California would be importing Wisconsin cheese, due to federal dairy price supports, which work to artificially equalize the price of milk throughout the U.S. Kraft has a cheese plant in Tulare, California that would be a more likely source.
Well, I wouldn’t know. I’m just extrapolating from my experience. At the place where I worked, we could’ve made some damn fine sandwiches by throwing ingredients together from probably no more than 500 miles away, but every single food product (every single one) was cooked, sliced/assembled, etc. in Washington State and sent to us frozen, and we would thaw them and sell them exactly as we received them. Very few customers thought to ask how fresh our food was.
What do you consider to be a franchise or chain restaurant? Blue Water Grill and the various Dos Caminos and Rooby Foo’s in Manhattan are excellent restaurants. They are also part of the B.R. Guest network of high-end restaurants. What about the various Stephen Starr restaurants in Philly?
And I don’t care what anyone says. Bertucci’s pizza is as good as any pizza I’ve had at Lombardi’s, John’s, Patsy’s or Benny Tudinos.
What people are talking about is the mid-range franchise family restaurants found in every shopping mall and highway off-ramp in America - TGI Fridays, Outback, Bennigan’s, Steakhouse, Applebees, Olive Garden, Pizza Hut, Uno’s and Ruby Tuesday’s.
The reasons they are medicore is
They cater to an unsophisticated middle America pallete.
They are designed to be affordable to those middle income familes (IOW, you can’t expect the same quality steak for $15 at Outback that you would get for $35 at Ruth’s Chris
They are usually in areas where there is little competition from any decent restuarants
The same corporate standards and branding are applied to all locations giving them a medium, but generic, quality
They are not staffed or managed by the Bobby Flays and Emeril Lagasses of the world (with the exception of Emeril’s perhaps). The bigger the chain gets, the more likely you will be getting nth rate chefs who are simply following a template.
Of course the most amazing thing is seeing the chain restaurants in Times Square. Why would you come to Manhattan, the restaurant capital of the world and eat at TGI Fridays? It’s because you are a fanny-pack wearing dumb-shit from Wherever USA who doesn’t know shit about the city so you get excited seeing the same restaurants from back home, only with a 70’ sign.
Awesome. I’m imaging a price*demand chart showing profit the same at 3.50 (but going up) and 3.75 (now going down), so obviously the line must peak right in the middle at 3.625. Round up to 3.63 and maximize the revenue!
You haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen 30 of your fellow Americans file right past a falafel place and walk right into a McDonald’s in freaking Israel. Those guys were nuts–I did not fly across the damn Atlantic and over a continent or two to eat a Big Mac without cheese.
“Middle America” being where? There are 22 Applebees restaurants in the Los Angeles area, 30 in the New York City area. There are over 100 Pizza Hut restaurants in the Los Angeles area.
There are 4 million residents of Los Angeles, and that doesn’t include its suburbs - that’s 1 Applebee’s per 175k residents. It also doesn’t include the thousands of commuters (such as myself) or the thousands of tourists that come to the city daily. Some of them at least are bound to have no palette. Besides, The Apple Pan accommodates less than 30, and most of the snotty yuppies and all of the tourists are too afraid of Pico-Union to discover the jewels within.
I’ve seen this sort of thing before, but in those cases, it was usually done because the prices posted/on the menu/etc. were pre-tax. Check the fine print on the menu for “prices do not include sales tax” or similar wordings. Anyway, if this is the case, the beer listed at $3.63 on the menu may well work out to a nice, even $4.00 once the tax is applied.
That’s actually a good question. I got out of the habit of going there a while ago, and havn’t tried it again since, even after the divestiture. But my gut feeling is that they still have the lowest common denominator type menu rather than good stuff. But I will make an effort of getting to one and checking it out.
I dunno, if I were in a foreign country, I’d make it a point to eat at their local McDonalds at least once, just for giggles. I saw this cable TV show on how they differ around the world, and many, if not most, have local touches that I think it’d be fun to experience.
(Heck, the ones in Hawaii, actually a part of the US, serves plenty of stuff served nowhere else in the country.)
I’ll freely admit that I have one of those unsophisticated Middle American palates. I am what I am. And this thread has really got me jonesing for O’Charley’s bread, Sbarro’s pepperoni pizza, Waffle House’s waffles, Applebees’ chicken tenders, Cracker Barrel’s biscuits, A McFlurry, Sonic’s chili dogs, and a vanilla cone from Hardee’s. I’m pretty hungry right now, if you can’t tell.
