[QUOTE=Fish]
The point at which a chain of good restaurants becomes a chain of crappy restaurants is precisely at the point where some genius invents, in the name of corporate efficiency, a way to standardize all the food products sold. This is done to make it easier for the pencil-pushers — for instance, it makes it possible to track sales, usage, waste, profit, margins, etc., and compare the efficiency of one store to another.
This is also the point where the interests of the corporation outweigh the interests of each individual kitchen: corporate mandates you must buy Cheese Brand X, because it’s part of our national brand identity, even though in Pennsylvania this cheese costs $0.08/slice and in Arizona it costs $0.14/slice. And we’re going to go with this well-known national distributor to ship our products, even though the gas tax in Washington is $0.XX per gallon, and the gas tax is $0.0X in Oklahoma, which alters the shipping costs in every store. And let’s talk about minimum wage, too — and produce costs — and health standards that vary from place to place — and we’ll fix all these variables at a level convenient to our corporate bean-counters without regard to how difficult or expensive this makes the business for local operators.
The stores that are still Good Chain Restaurants are where the kitchens come before the corporation. That’s the way I see it, anyhow, and I’m probably wrong. 
[/QUOTE]
I think you are absolutely right here, and to continue your example:
All of the state managers have a national meeting, and the Arizona manager gets his ass chewed because his cheese costs are too high. The Penn. manager is held up on a pedestal because of his cost cutting measures, even though if you looked another level down, he was a poor manager, but because of the price difference, he still beat AZ manager, and gets to go on a company cruise in the Caribbean.
When AZ manager tries to point out that he is being unfairly judged, he is told to be a “team players” and to “use his tools more effectively”.
So, he goes back to AZ with the mandate to cut his food prices or find a new job.
He rolls this nonsense on down to the individual managers and to the individual cooks who now start to hate their job, because even though they are doing it absolutely right and correct, they are getting dumped on for reasons outside their control. Turnover is high and good people won’t work there.
When faced with no other option, the AZ manager starts to cheat the system resulting in poor food quality and customer complaints. He has met his food budget, which corporate thinks is about damn time, and now the customers are complaining.
Corporate sees no link between the two. Cooks, waitress, and managers at individual restaurants get fired because they take the blame for the customer complaints.
Meanwhile PA manager continues to work 3 hour days, drink beer, and jerk off his dog in the evening while continuing to pile up accolades for meeting the “numbers”.
Soon, all quality people move on, leaving the imbeciles to run everything causing a reevaluation of the number system.
Rinse and repeat until the corporation crashes..
)
