I Looked Into Why Restaurant Quality Is Declining. What I Found Is SHOCKING
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Couldn't bring myself to watch the whole thing, but my practice has always involved franchising. I don't know who Matt is talking to or who claimed capitalism needs to end so that Arby's can taste better—seems like a contrived attempt to hook viewers—but private equity was barely a blip on the radar in franchising when I started out. Now it's ubiquitous and particularly so in the past 10-15 years.
So, could declining quality be in part due to the "green eye shade" people taking over? It's very plausible.
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PE kills everything it touches - including sandwiches.
Take note B1G conference.
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Panera Bread fired all of their cooks and bakers. They microwave everything now, I've heard.
This is the future of fast-food, the automat:
Just add some microwaves. -
Panera is the most extreme example.
I had a 10 dollar gift card that’s been sitting in my car for a year so one day I was driving by and figured I’d go in. This is a Saturday at like 1pm.
I go in, there is like 1 worker I could see in the back, no customers. I ordered a standard meal thing that they sort of advertise as one of their main go-tos (like a soup and sandwich or something) and a drink. It still ended up being like 16 bucks or something crazy meaning it was well over 20. Obviously didn’t tip the machine.It came out, just a super generic kinda soggy microwave tasting sandwich and mediocre soup.
I was like how is this place in business? I cannot imagine a single person would have had this experience and decided to ever come back.
If I remember correctly like 10 years ago it was a kinda good place to pop in and get something for lunch when you’re at work. Like fresh baked stuff.
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Panera was sold to private equity in 2017
Before that Panera was pretty cool. Fresh baked stuff, pretty good food. Kind of spendy but above Starbucks swill level quality.Private equity turns everything to shit.
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Panera’s even openly admitted they ruined everything through cost cutting measures
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Never been to a Panera and not on my bucket list. Don't eat out a lot but avoid chain places as much as possible. Lots of great restaurants in the Portland area. Ordering a rib eye, a rack of lamb, scallops, oysters or a sea food pasta dish isn't getting you a microwaved meal. I last ate at a Denny's over a decade ago and how you screw up eggs, hashbrowns and sausage is a mystery to me. The Cracker Barrel in both Beaverton and Tualatin closed. Never been there. Not a fan of microwaved food and a lack of Bloody Mary's for breakfast. Plenty of non-chain breakfast places serving fresh food for breakfast and Bloody's. McDonald's still can't make a decent chicken strip. They should just buy Popeye's and call it good. There is a reason that Chick-fil-A had the largest sales per location of any fast food place in the US. Hire a chick and make her gay didn't work out well for Cracker Barrel. You think that was removed from the course list for a Harvard MBA? Nope, die before DEI is removed as a required course.
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What I find doesn't ring true here for me is the notion that somehow eating well at home is way cheaper than eating chain fast food—depending on what you are comparing, it may not be cheaper to eat at home at all. So, spending a lot and doing the work yourself has to be compared the predictability of a chain and the relatively low cost of eating the "slop", to use his term.
At some point you are just arguing with the market. Matt says people don't care enough for this to change. Well, I think that is true. Could quality decline to a point that that would change for a large segment of the population? Yes, of course.
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I should have guessed that fast-food restaurants would be the one thing H has some knowledge about.
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Eating at home is always cheaper. It does take some effort, but you can get a half pound ground chuck hamburger patty for $2.50 at Freddy's. A quarter pounder with cheese is close to six bucks at McDonald's. Convenience is nice though. When you are unemployed, you have a lot of spare time. No food stamps for pop and frozen pizza at 7-11 should be a part of Team Dazzler's Super Constitutional Rights.
