Chapotraphouse

Immigrant pops are seriously the one thing keeping some poor neighborhoods worth living in. In my hometown, we used to have huge food deserts. Then asian grocers started setting up shop with beyond reasonable prices, and even though their American brand slop selection was barebones, all you really needed was a cookbook and some daring and you could figure out how to use the new ingredients. Same has gone for restaurants for much longer than that too.

Then, because fewer people have cars in poor neighborhoods, smaller grocers get by on the foot traffic, and suddenly you have walkable neighborhoods.

In general I feel like people have been downright eager to abandon fast food. Used to be there was no better way to max calories per dollar than fast food, but now you really are just better splitting the giant burrito and keeping the other half for lunch tomorrow. Keeps better in the fridge too than anything that lists grease as the second ingredient too

If we have to pay a living wage, our prices will double!

...aaannd even if we don't have to

“Go away, poors! Slop is a rich people thing now!”

“Wait, why aren’t rich people buying proleslop? Wait, poors, where are you going? Don’t you have to eat proleslop?”

You just dont understand McDonald's HAS to charge that much, its the market its making them /s

So there's two things going on here.

One, is you can still get cheap food at McDiddy's IF you use a bunch of online coupons from either the McDiddy's app or other food ordering sites so stoners getting delivery still buy it while allowing the company to try and charge out the ass for walk in customers, because corpos want everyone to do fucking everything on the app now.

Two, McDiddy's actually make most of their money from real estate speculation, the burger joint is really just a tax payer, so they've been trying to squeeze their customers on the burgers and for a while didn't care that much it was causing declining sales cuz they were still making bank on the real estate. Now they over played their hand and the burger shacks aren't making enough to even cover the taxes now, but once corpos have decides that their shitty burger is worth $15 they have a hard time justifying dropping it back down to the shareholders.

there's a thai takeout place that's walkable to me that has the absolute best deal in town. just incredible food with fresh veg in exciting curries. tiny menu, but rotates. all under $13. it's a two person operation in a tiny place doing constant business through a door window. it's everybody's favorite. go there enough and you see everybody, eventually.

even among the places that aren't trying to fleece their customers by overcharging for cheap slop, too many joints try to be everything to everyone and end up with crazy overhead from infrastructure needed to support the complexity. it's like everywhere got the walmart brain worm and wants to be the one-stop-shop for whatever customer experience. like what kind of pervert goes to burger king for a milk shake, or starbucks for a brownie and a CD? those people are not a demographic to cater to, they are a pathology to be avoided. just do the thing that people think of when they think of your place, and do it with total focus. don't try to be The Cheesecake Factory with the 26 page menu, that place is an affront to god.

more places should just do a tiny menu, dovetail as much of the prep as possible, and work on perfecting the processes. people will become adventurous if everything you make is badass.

$40 for 2 people gets you the fattest most excellent street tacos with 2 of the cane sugar cokes near me. So good!

How the c-suite will read this: we need to force our employees to pretend they work in a sit-down restaurant. also, give customers a packet of taco seasoning to sprinkle on their fries for that authentic ethnic experience.

flying my mcdonalds flag at half mast today…