Stores you hate...stores you love

fractalmstr
Mon, 11 May 2015 16:17:21 +0000

“You don’t go to a chain restaurant for exquisite, high-quality food… you go for consistency, reasonable prices, good/fun atmosphere, and reliability.”

I genuinely don’t understand this. I can’t think of any product where I am willing to sacrifice the actual quality in exchange for such things.

Have you ever been to a Medieval Times? Hooters? Any dinner-and-a-movie venue? These are extreme examples where people forgo food quality for ambience/entertainment.

“1) you finally found one you REALLY like and then out of nowhere it goes out of business…”

It goes out of business because everyone is going to chain restaurants instead.

And what does that tell you?

“2) atmosphere not as refined as what you find in chain restaurants (chains spend a lot of money on architecture and overall design of their restaurants to lure/satisfy customers).”

Yes, they do that to distract you from the awful food. That isn’t a joke, by the way, the décor and activities and assorted gimmicks are all meant to distract you from the fact that the food itself has been cost-reduced to the point where you could make just as good a meal with a microwave and the offerings in the freezer case at the supermarket. Hence the running joke: “Appleby’s, for when you’re too tired to microwave that yourself!”

Again, you are missing the point… For some people, eating out is considered a treat. It’s more than just filling your stomach with good food - you can do this at home with higher quality food, for much less money! People like to eat out for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is ambience/atmosphere. That “gimmicky” decor/architecture pays off for many of these chains as people clearly don’t mind eating average food in an above-average atmosphere.

If people were looking for only the highest quality food, chains would go out of business, plain and simple!