Why Chain Restaurants Exist

Cafe Society
1

Today in Little Rock, Arkansas I decided to go to a mom & pop restaurant that came highly recommended. After checking out their menu online I was encouraged by the fact that their menu had a limited number of items and that it changed daily. It’s my fault, really. I assumed that the limited and changing menu meant that they made their own food. By Emeril’s ghost how could I be so wrong?

The mashed potatoes were instant, the gravy was powdered, the chicken fried steak was frozen and my pie was topped with Cool-Whip. The best part of my meal was the Coca-Cola. I should have known something was up when I could see all those chicken fried steak patties were exactly the same shape. Unfortunately, I was with someone who was really craving some fried chicken and I didn’t just turn around and leave like I should have. It wasn’t until I sat down to eat that I noticed 90% of the people there were over 60. I would have been better off going to Chili’s. Hell, I think I would have been better off going to The Cracker Barrel.

Anyone have any bad experiences eating local?

2

You need to reevaluate your friendship with the person that gave you that recommendation.

3

Well, of course. A good number of ma & pop’s just aren’t any good. But if you know how to do your research (or through a lot of trial and error), it’s not that hard to find a good one in any well-populated area.

4

Chains exist because of quality control. Take MacDonald’s. You do it there way or you lose your franchise. They have inspectors who make sure. Thus I am assured of getting the same thing in any part of the US at the golden arches. And if I am hungry, I like it. Chains that do not do some level of quality control go out of business.

5

Occasionally. OTOH, my general rule – never eat at a chain restaurant when traveling – has served me well. I’ve had some wonderful food in places I never heard of (favorite example: I was looking for a place for dinner in Hazleton, PA and was driving toward town when I spotted the Beltway Diner. Which had its own left turn lane. I figured someone liked the place, so we went in, and made it a regular stopping place on our trips to and from DC).

6

I think its about consistency. People go to chain restaurants not because they’re willing to settle for bland food, but because they feel like eating at Applebees/Chili’s/Denny’s, probably know what the menu choices are/how the food tastes, and what specifically they want. At most chains you can at least expect the food to be consistent in quality.

7

I travel a fair amount for work, and I try to follow this rule, but some times I just can’t.

I mostly go to small, middle-of-nowhere towns in VT, NY, and NH…you’d think there could be some great, local, mom-and-pop diner in these towns with good food…you’d be wrong. Plenty of towns I go to have, near as I can tell, no good local places. All bland-as-fuck, probably made from instant/frozen/canned ingredients. So sometimes I go to a Chili’s or Applebee’s because while it might not be great, it will be ok at least.

I mean…these are places that fuck up burgers…a clearly frozen, pre-formed patty, no seasoning, served with those crinkle-cut fries you got in elementary school lunches, and cooked in an oven, not deep-fryer, so they’re soggy as Hell.

A good example would be the town I’m in right now. Last night, I saw this local little BBQ joint…now, I should have known, BBQ in the north has, like, an 80% chance to be shit…and this was. It was supposed to be a Carolina style pulled pork sandwich…blank pork, and covered in what was clearly pre-made tomato based sauce. The fuck?!

So tonight I went to the nice-looking restaurant attached to my hotel. Got a NY strip steak…bland as Hell, and perhaps a few days passed when it should have been served. No seasoning, not even salt or pepper, cooked horribly (asked for MR, got a medium, and the outside was way too charred.) Veggies were just boiled to death, and even the baked potato was bad…their bread was pretty good, though.

8

I LIVE in a small, middle-of-nowhere town in VT, and I can vouch for this. I’d kill for a great little mom-and-pop type place - a hidden gem no one else knows about. I’ve looked everywhere for one. We found a beautiful little diner up the road a ways, tucked off the main highway, right on a river, serving good old fashioned American diner fare and a large menu of ice cream products. Perfect, right? I could just picture me taking the kids there as they grew up for a special treat. They’d always have the memory of going to that little place with their dad. I was so excited that I gave it several tries before I decided my first impression was right. All their food was boring, tiny portions, way overpriced, and took too long to get to you. The ice cream was crap, too.

There’s no good food anywhere near us. None at all. The (very few) chains are the best of a bad lot. We like our own cooking far more than anything we’ve found eating out.

9

I think you mean “world” not “US” there. I’ve had McDonalds in Scotland, England , Italy and France, and the food that was common to each was identical to that in all the others.

I think it’s not only the store-to-store quality control, but also the quality control over time that keeps people coming back. I mean, a Big Mac today tastes substantially if not identically to the ones from my childhood, no matter where in the world I may buy them. Couple that level of consistency with palatable food, and many people who are somewhat food risk-averse will happily choose that over a local restaurant whose quality changes depending on who is doing the cooking, or one who may not have the purchasing power to always guarantee high enough quality ingredients.

I tend to think the best compromise is the local or regional chain- something like the Pappas group restaurants in Houston and other parts of Texas maybe. Ones big enough to wield some purchasing power and exercise some pretty good quality control, but not so homogenized that they are trying to win customers in Minnesota, Kansas, Virginia, California and Texas with the same food.

10

It’s pretty much the same in the Midwest. A lot of those homey little places whip up a prepackaged entree that was in the back of the freezer way too long. The magic ingredient is salt and their vegetables came from the Hy-Vee. The pies are usually pretty good, though.

11

My roommate works at an old fashioned mom and pop style diner, a real hole in the wall. It’s always fairly busy (24 hours a day) so I was excited a few days ago when roomie brought home some carry-out packs. He was so excited for me to taste food he “cooked”.

Nasty!

Yes, the mashed potatoes were watery grainy instant with gravy I later found out is canned. The meatloaf was a charred brick, the mixed veggies were unseasoned and probably from a can. The chicken and dumplings were greasy and had an oddly high ration of hunks of cartilage to actual meat. White beans were greasy and unseasoned with little bits of what I think was Spam. The only dish I could eat more than a bite of was the corn casserole, one of my favorites. It still wasn’t good, but it was good enough.

12

A couple of years ago, we had a memorably bad meal at a non-chain restaurant in New Mexico. We’d have had better food if we picked whatever snack foods were available near the checkouts at Home Depot.

Strike that. Our meal would have tasted better if we bought and tried to eat pipe fittings and masking tape. However many ways there are to mess up a hamburger, this place found most of them. It was to the point of wanting to say “This is terrible. Mind if I go back and cook my own?”

13

I’ve never subscribed to the mom-and-pop theory. In my experience they mostly suck. The exceptions to this rule are seafood joints on the coasts where they get fresh catch every day, and barbeque in the South.

14

The problem is, a lot of these places get their precooked, prepackaged foods from the same supplier. I know that many pizza places get their ingredients from the same supplier, and so do a lot of the Chinese places. And I could tell when a diner, which used to be one of my favorite places, switched from making their own mashed potatoes to using instant.

Yeah, I know that using those prepackaged foods is much cheaper. But most of those foods have had all the flavor carefully removed from them, and no amount of salt and pepper is gonna make up for that.

15

Interesting. I can only remember one bad meal at a small-town restaurant in the Adirondacks, where the hamburger was indifferent and the fries mediocre. But there also was a hole-in-the-wall place a few miles away that served some very good entries, including BBQ pork.

In general, I’ve had very good luck just choosing places. I don’t usually visit small towns, but even then, I’ve rarely been disappointed.

16

Y.e.l.p.

17

I find that a lot of the little mom-and-pops (especially around here) will have mostly unremarkable fare off the Sysco truck, but most of them will have a few things that are genuinely homemade and tasty. Unfortunately there’s not a very good way to ask what they are. You can ask the waitress what’s good, but the staff in such places has almost always lost whatever passion they might have had for the food, so you’re not likely to get great advice.

The clientele at most mom-and-pop type restaurants tends to be really old. Old people don’t want surprises, don’t want to pay extra for quality, and don’t want anything to take longer than it absolutely has to. I know I’m generalizing, but it’s my experience.

I’m an adventurous eater–it’s one of the great joys of my life. I have to remind myself all the time that the vast majority of people are really, really not.

18

My philosophy is: If you want to gamble in a strange town, eat somewhere you don’t know. It might be good, it might be bad.

But if you are more interested in a meal you can count on and less interested in gambling, find a favorite franchise. It may not be gourmet, but it’s probably consistent.

Besides, in my town, there are almost no franchises within 50 miles in any direction, so even Burger King, Wendy’s or KFC is a treat to me.

“Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom’s. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.” – Nelson Algren

19

People go to chain restaurants in expectation of consistency. Step away from the chains and you lose that consistency. That means sometimes you’ll get better food and sometimes you’ll get worse. Chalk this one up to experience and don’t go back there.

My personal “bad local restaurant” story involves a place called the Pok-A-Dot in Batavia, NY. Many years ago I used to live in the area and whenever I drove by there was always a bunch of cars at the Pok-A-Dot. It didn’t look like much but I figured it they always had customers, they must be doing something right.

So one day I was in Batavia and it was lunchtime and I decided to go eat at the Pok-A-Dot. Which was a mistake. Because the reason there were always customers at the Pok-A-Dot is because it was a smoker’s restaurant. (This was back when it was still legal to smoke in restaurants. Some restaurants prohibited it anyway. Some allowed it but didn’t encourage it. And a few made it the basis of their business.) This apparently was the place to go if you were a heavy smoker and wanted to go eat someplace where nobody was going to complain if you smoked through your meal.

I’m not a smoker but I can tolerate it most times. It does bother me if people are smoking around me when I’m eating. And this place had a solid haze. I probably should have just gone somewhere else but I was there so I decided to stay and eat.

Which was my second mistake because it turned out this place was serving the kind of food you could only get away with in a place where nobody can taste what they’re eating.

I’m surprised to see online that the Pok-A-Dot is still in business. I don’t know what’s keeping them going now that smoking is illegal in all restaurants.

20

Unless you go somewhere Yelp doesn’t. I’m in the second lArgest city in Illinois right now - looking for a decent bakery. No Yelp reviews here.