this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
568 points (96.7% liked)
Memes
45190 readers
2039 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Fast food restaurants have lost the plot and violated their balance of fast/cheap/Meh. Now it’s fastish/over priced/meh and below
There’s a McDonald’s near me. I’ll never spend less than $20 there on a full meal, or I leave hungry. Unless I get just an Al a carte McGriddle or something.
There’s a cash only breakfast place across the street. A huge chicken friend steak with gravy and potatoes, corn, hash browns, pancakes… mmm…. $10.
Which means you should never spend more than $0 there. They'll just keep raising the prices for as long as you'll pay them.
Bingo.
Sounds like some damn good reasons to go to the locally-owned restaurant and try to ensure that they get to stay in business. It always sucks when the mom-and-pop/family-owned local places go out of business because people just go to the chains all the time.
They’re always poppin
That's good to hear. I always like seeing local folks doing well in their own communities more than any chain.
I feel like Jimmy johns and chick fil a are the only truly fast restaurants anymore. For JJ you do have to go inside, but they often make your sandwich and complete payment in less than a minute, maybe 5 minutes max.
Meanwhile I've been to other drive throughs where even with very few people in line, it somehow takes 10/15 mins to get your meal. Plus, it's often incorrectly made and expensive
Chick fil a is homophobic; that might be keeping demand lower than it would be otherwise.
There are plenty of other mediocre chicken sandwiches that don't come with a side of hatred.
I mean it’s an overtly Christian organization
It's still damn popular here in gay-loving California, anyway, and has no problem hiring gay people besides. The people who own the chain suck, but that doesn't mean all the individual restaurants do.
Hey I'm in California too! ✋️🌞🤚 But people around here do not universally love gay people as much as the rest of America thinks - as you know, a disturbingly large percentage of us are bigots. They don't care who profits.
Yeah, it varies wildly depending on the area. Like anywhere else, rural areas tend to be full of bigots.
The one by my work always has people lined up down the block around lunch time and still 10x faster than the BK next door and they don't fuck my order up every other visit.
I dont agree with their views, but I really dont think it's affecting their demand as much as you think. Lines are always insanely long - they just move them through very efficiently. By taking orders/payment as soon as you enter the line and knowing which car to give the food to when you get close to the window, the line never stops moving
How much do I think demand would otherwise be?
It was due to the Celebrity Chef "everyone has to be a professional chef" era that we're coming out of. People didn't want to change their eating habits, but they wanted to feel fancy like rich British food man on TV, so they started demanding gourmet experiences from restaurants that had no business attempting to offer gourmet experiences. Everybody fancied themselves a foodie without actually trying to go out to nice places.
But places still serve the same crap from what I've seen. Is it just the prices that are "gourmet"?
Nobody is demanding a fancy meal from McDonald's.
The fast food industry went all in on a bet about 20-30 years ago, and now they're starting to cash in.
They wanted to get people dependant on eating their crap every single day. They view not just each other as competition, but the concept of you cooking for yourself as direct competition for their crap. They want you sitting in their drive through 3 meals a day. They don't want you to even consider using your own kitchen.
Their food is designed to trigger an addictive response. The food is cheap too produce, and really not very appealing to even look at. And yet, drive by any random McDonald's at 1030 am and it will be 4 cars deep in the drive through.
Now that an entire generation and their kids are hooked, they can raise the prices until people can just barely afford it.
All about the moola