Again, I have not tried this but I think you can place an order for pick-up from a Doordash ghost kitchen, rather than having it delivered. You can’t just walk in and order at the counter.
Wait, what? Chipotle is THE hangout place for high school and college age kids around here!
Then who will the Karens have to terrorize?
Someone took me to a small Mexican restaurant for lunch for their authentic south-of-the-border cuisine,errr, food. He told me that once the owner had bragged that even the flies in the window were imported from Mexico.
Their kids?
At least one of the local chains (3 locations pre-COVID, one post) I went to pre-COVID has remained all drive in since, much as @epbrown suggested. They were a working-class burger joint with slightly upscale, never frozen meat, but the menu was all burgers and fries. In the before times, they were almost always packed for dine-in during peak hours, and there was almost always someone in the dining room even at non-traditional hours, and the drive through was always full.
[ eta: I seem to recall, and the website confirms, that shortly prior to COVID they added a very limited breakfast (pre-11am) menu and a ‘grilled’ (read griddled) chicken burger option ]
But they seem to have done the math, and just having the drive through business (No pick up as far as can tell) and they went from having AFAIK 5+ staff during peak hours down to 2 or so. I’m sure that makes a huge difference. It also means I don’t go to them anymore - their location is a bit of bitch to get in and out of, the drive-through area is very short and their accuracy with drive through orders is below 80%.
-shrug-
Yeah, I don’t get that comment unless Chipotle has done something recently. All that hard wood and stainless steel is not cheap decor.
IMO there’s a difference between competent management trying to maximize profits albeit not in a highly customer-friendly way, and a couple of incompetents trying hard through neglect to kill their business.
Very possible, and I wasn’t passing judgement on the business itself - again, the one I mentioned was the one that survived COVID after all. I personally don’t go there anymore because a) the aforementioned hard to get in and out b) the also already mentioned incredibly poor performance with audio orders (no app) and c) the fact that like any other ‘fast food’ place, I’m no longer willing to pay $12 for a burger, fries and drink, even if they’re darn GOOD for such (and their fries were great, but like many, if you got a to go order expect them to be far past their peak after a drive home).
I don’t think this location is incompetent, I just think that especially in the area they are in (almost post light industrial area of town, no nearby office workers) that re-opening the dine-in area is more trouble than it’s worth. A LOT of folks seem (I drive by this place semi-regularly) to go through the drive through, get food, and park in the existing parking areas to eat, then leave. As I said, good when fresh, very typical when it’s cooled.
The music volume is controlled by the kitchen workers. And the background noise is much louder inside the kitchen, so they have to turn the volume up.
Thus high-quality dine-in restaurants will have 2 separate background music systems, one for front of house dining area, and another one for the kitchen area.
When we go out, we go to Chick-Fil-A or Culver’s around here, and it is usually at least half full. When I’m in Phoenix (like last week), In N Out is always packed to the gills. We had to eat outside as all the indoor seating was gone, and their drive-thru is almost always (like Chick-Fil-A) several cars deep. McDonald’s and BK do tend to be less busy on the inside, maybe like 25% full.
And I don’t buy that eating fast food is any more shameful than it was at any other time I was growing up. It’s not among my crowd, at least.
The thing that’s been annoying me is around the dining rooms are open but if you order inside, they’re just going to make your order to go regardless.
And they’ll ask you “For here or to go”?
I have no idea why they bother even asking.
Yeah. In-n-Out is basically the only fast food I get these days since McD and Taco Bell like doubled in price, but the dining room (not to mention drive thru) is always packed at any hour. Same aesthetic as always (neither Clown Chic nor “Starbucks’ depressed cousin”).
I don’t think there’s any stigma. Prices might be a more significant factor. Taco Bell in particular has gotten stupid expensive.
There’s a cheesesteak place that we order from occasionally that describes itself as a “virtual restaurant.” Their business is almost entirely through DoorDash or UberEats. Their website does concede that if you really want to, you can order online and pick it up yourself, but one gets the impression that they would prefer that you don’t. They explicitly say that you cannot go in and order a cheesesteak.
Curiously, they operate out of the local IHOP. Indeed, their stuff occasionally comes in IHOP bags. I’ve never tried going into that IHOP and trying to order a cheesesteak, but the evidence suggests that you can’t do that.
Is it called “Pardon My Cheesesteak” by any chance? If so it’s an IHOP “virtual brand”:
https://www.nrn.com/operations/why-ihop-remains-bullish-virtual-brands
The kitchen often controls the HVAC too. Which they have cranked to keep the kitchen temperature livable and meanwhile the front of house is meat-locker cold.
Too-loud music and a too-cold room are my too (!) largest complaints about restaurant dining. For sure more of a problem at small and mis-scale places. I don’t eat in fast food places enough to have an opinion on this bit.
Yup, that’s it.
Normally I avoid IHOP at all costs, so I have no idea if cheesesteaks are one of their regular offerings. They’re pretty good cheesesteaks, though.
Our local Chik-Fil-A got rid of its play area, which seems insane because it was a very popular place in our town. But the area was closed when covid hit, which I assume almost all play areas had been. Someone must have run the numbers and figured out that people were still flocking there to eat anyway, and more seating would be preferential, so now there’s a big seating area where the play area was.
This CFA also expanded its drive-thru area, as did our McDonalds, which had also closed its play area. That McDonald’s play area had just been a handful of usually-broken video games for a while, so I’m not sure anyone missed it. I rarely see anyone inside the restaurant anymore, but the drive-thru is always packed.
Our Panera added a drive-thru. And I think also Chipotle as well. I would venture to guess that covid had a big impact on these decisions.
People have said many of the reasons.
One is minimum wage increases cut into profits, so having fewer staff is desirable. Dining rooms need to be heated, cleaned often, etc. I think they were assumed to be highly necessary, and maybe in some locations they still are. But with a shift to take out and delivery they are often far from capacity.
Bright colours are welcoming and might encourage people to stay awhile. Minimalist colours are keeping with current design trends but there is research suggesting they keep things moving.
When fast food became prominent people had concerns about the safety of things like ground beef. Later, the successful strategy was to market to children to convince their parents to take them. Now, this is still done but parents may not need convincing since they are those children. This strategy is still practiced but has become more controversial.
Some of this trend applies to building exteriors. In some cases, gaudy colours don’t fit with the neighbourhood. Some restaurants have spent a lot of money on big redesigns. I don’t know if trendier design helps promote extensions into offering café type products; a few restaurants have a few more upscale or alcohol licensed venues to blur the lines further between the brows.
Years ago, I recall reading about the industrial design aspects to fast food establishments. Almost nothing is accidental about the store interiors. Everything from the floor plan to the decor and furniture have been thought out carefully to deliver a certain intended effect. For example, the booths and seating are designed to be just uncomfortable enough that one can consume a meal in say 20 minutes easily enough but are poorly suited to accommodate sitting in for longer periods of time. Other considerations are based on security (harder to hide people from employees in white minimalist environments), costs, and ease of maintenance.