The thing, though, is that more often than not they just absorb a couple of tidbits of food culture from the surrounding region, which you can get much better-done at any restaurant within five miles. IIRC, the only real difference at McDonald’s in Israel was that you couldn’t get a cheeseburger but you could get falafel or shwarma or something–but you could get that for the same price or cheaper at a local place and it’d be several times better. If, OTOH, you were there for a while, had already sampled the local cuisine, and you were just jonesing for an American meal or two, Burger King was the better place to go. Burgeranch, an Israeli chain, also offered an interesting take on the fast-food burger meal: 100 shekels or so ($25) got four of us a burger each, plenty of fries, four sodas, a bunch of some kind of battered beef hot dog thing, and one cup of chocolate rice cream each. Good, too, all of it. (Though the novelty helped. 
)
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. 
The difference being that, in LA and NYC, there are myriad other choices. By comparison, I’ve been in some pretty big towns inbetween that had nothing but Olive Garden, Hooters and TGI Friday’s. OK, and a Runza. Maybe there was some local flavor after all. 
Runza must be the least appetizing name for a food (or food chain) ever. But at least it’s memorable. The other name for runza is bierocks, which is not good for a family restaurant as it sounds like a mixed-up bar order.
There’s this NY based Hot Dog stand called Johnny’s Lunch that is trying to set up restaurants and its franchising and training headquarters in Toledo. I would say it’s a horrible marketing move for Johnny. Toledoans are serious about their hot dogs and between Tony Packo’s Hot Dogs and Rudy’s Hot Dog’s and other local Coney Island Style Hot Dog Restaurants (in the Greek Midwest style) I don’t seem them having a chance locally.
I’ve yet to try their Hot Dogs, but from the reviews I’ve heard they have a very underwhelming dog and there’s nothing to make them stand apart in our spicy market. Johnny’s lunch has an uphill struggle to say the least. It’s like if the Giants were to try to move their franchise to downtown Pittsburgh to compete against the Steelers. Not a great analogy, but I think it gets the point across.
Yeah, it just sounds like it should be an Italian place that gives you diarrhea.
A key component of the runza is cooked cabbage flavored with chopped onion, which does tend to disagree with some stomachs. A Nebraskan legend says that’s where the name came from, but I would bet it’s from Russian, this being a Russo-German specialty way back when.
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…
Another funny little factoid, according to that article, Johnny’s Lunch was founded by Johnny Colera. That sounds really appetizing… “Johnny Colera’s- our chilli sauce has that little something extra!”
Here’s a less than glowing review of Johnny’s food.
Given my location, there are a lot of really, really good burrito places around here, and the Chipotle nearby manages to hold their own in terms of quality. Fast service, decent food, and those oh-so-tasty salted lime chips of theirs. 
Middle America everywhere - regular football watching 9 to 5 working 2.2 kid raising middle class Americans. Not everyone in New York City or Los Angeles eats at Nobu.
Middle America is not a geographic location. Why wouldn’t you find it in the Los Angeles metro area?
Here’s another vote for Chipotle being a pretty decent alternative in a market with a LOT of burrito choices.
A LOT.