The Fast Food Thread

Juvarisx

Juvarisx

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Kirun said:
You're missing the core issue I was pointing out: the causal chain in his argument doesn't hold together. It doesn't matter whether he spent two minutes or twenty on "woke". He frames it as a contributing factor while ignoring the structural market reality that actually drives the industry's mediocrity.

Let's go through your list -

1. Lower quality workers
Worker competence didn't spontaneously collapse in a vacuum. When two giant distributors dictate pricing, sourcing, and margins across half the industry, restaurants have to race to the bottom. If you squeeze every penny out of the supply side, you get low wages, high turnover, and yes, people who don't care. That's not a cultural issue no matter how badly you want to blame a boogeyman, that's economics.

2. Frozen cheese company dominance
Right, 85% of the market. Another example of concentration. And who enables that? The same distributors who centralize supply chains because it's cheaper for them. This is exactly the monopoly dynamic being glossed over.

3. "Only" 50% market control
Saying, "They don't own the whole market, just half," is like saying, "It's not a monopoly, it's only a duopoly." In industries with low margins and high logistical barriers, controlling half is effectively controlling the game. That's why everyone's food tastes the same.

4. Woke CEOs
Whether you label them woke, asleep, or doing cartwheels is irrelevant. CEO incompetence only becomes systemic when market concentration removes accountability. If you can't easily switch suppliers or compete, bad leadership doesn't get punished by the market. There's no culture war explanation required.

5. Acceptance of mediocrity
Consumers can only choose among the options they have. When two firms gatekeep supply, "acceptance" isn't a preference, you're being held captive. Pretending this is just a cultural failing ignores the structural restriction of choice.

6. "No one cares"
People care plenty. It's precisely why fast food companies and the restaurant business continue to struggle. But average people just don't have leverage against a vertically integrated distribution system. You can't "care" your way past systemic consolidation.

So no, I'm not "defensive." I'm pointing out that invoking woke anything is a distraction from the actual, provable cause: a captured market with no competitive pressure.
Click to expand...

None of whatt you say is incorrect, however this is also a reason it all sucks now:

companiesmarketcap.com

McDonald (MCD) - Operating Margin

Current and historical Operating Margin charts for McDonald (MCD).
companiesmarketcap.com companiesmarketcap.com

This is just McDonalds but you will se it throughout the fast food industry. The operating margin for these places is double to triple what they were in the early 2000's. This is a combo of massive price increases, lower quality and cost cutting employees. All 3 will hurt the customer experience.
 
zzeris

zzeris

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Kirun said:
You're missing the core issue I was pointing out: the causal chain in his argument doesn't hold together. It doesn't matter whether he spent two minutes or twenty on "woke". He frames it as a contributing factor while ignoring the structural market reality that actually drives the industry's mediocrity.

Let's go through your list -

1. Lower quality workers
Worker competence didn't spontaneously collapse in a vacuum. When two giant distributors dictate pricing, sourcing, and margins across half the industry, restaurants have to race to the bottom. If you squeeze every penny out of the supply side, you get low wages, high turnover, and yes, people who don't care. That's not a cultural issue no matter how badly you want to blame a boogeyman, that's economics.

2. Frozen cheese company dominance
Right, 85% of the market. Another example of concentration. And who enables that? The same distributors who centralize supply chains because it's cheaper for them. This is exactly the monopoly dynamic being glossed over.

3. "Only" 50% market control
Saying, "They don't own the whole market, just half," is like saying, "It's not a monopoly, it's only a duopoly." In industries with low margins and high logistical barriers, controlling half is effectively controlling the game. That's why everyone's food tastes the same.

4. Woke CEOs
Whether you label them woke, asleep, or doing cartwheels is irrelevant. CEO incompetence only becomes systemic when market concentration removes accountability. If you can't easily switch suppliers or compete, bad leadership doesn't get punished by the market. There's no culture war explanation required.

5. Acceptance of mediocrity
Consumers can only choose among the options they have. When two firms gatekeep supply, "acceptance" isn't a preference, you're being held captive. Pretending this is just a cultural failing ignores the structural restriction of choice.

6. "No one cares"
People care plenty. It's precisely why fast food companies and the restaurant business continue to struggle. But average people just don't have leverage against a vertically integrated distribution system. You can't "care" your way past systemic consolidation.

So no, I'm not "defensive." I'm pointing out that invoking woke anything is a distraction from the actual, provable cause: a captured market with no competitive pressure.
Click to expand...

Ok. Here's my reply.

1. Worker competence did fall off the cliff and it has nothing to do with wages. Wages are comparable to any point in history. 20% of workers being druggies is a cultural issue. It's the literal definition of a cultural issue. MoG.

2. It's not just the distributors. It's the companies deciding where to get their cheese to save them costs. In and Out has their own set of suppliers and they dominate the markets they go to. Because they care about what they serve.

3. Two companies having a little over 50% of the market is not a duopoly. It can limit options especially from a price-based standpoint but it isn't a forced decision. It's up to the company leadership. 'We were helpless before the all-powerful distributor' has never been an excuse that worked for a failing company.

4. You must be part of company leadership somewhere. We are completely unable to change things! Except....that's not true. You get rid of bad executives no matter how many Kirun excuses they make.

5. Consumers have the ultimate choice. This is one of the dumbest excuses I've ever heard tbh. Consumers have the ultimate choice of where to spend their money. Thousands and thousands of dead and forgotten companies prove this. No one can force them to spend at a place. I can't believe you just said this.

6. If people cared, they would quit going there. That's how you show you care. It's a simple and proven way to show how you care. That's why Cracker Barrel did an abrupt U-Turn in the middle of wasting money towards their idiotic plan. Because feedback was massively negative. It's why Bud Light cratered. Because people cared enough not to buy their slop. It's why Chi's-Chi's went belly up within a few months of serving toxic food. You care by spending somewhere else.

There's nothing like a captured market for fast food. This is a clown shoes excuse from someone who doesn't really understand the market and loves excuses. The Super Size Me film almost immediately destroyed the supersize meals at McDonalds. Lots of examples of people caring bringing almost immediate change. They are businesses. They are there to make money. They will change if people quit giving them money. It's very simple.
 
moonarchia

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zzeris said:
Ok. Here's my reply.

1. Worker competence did fall off the cliff and it has nothing to do with wages. Wages are comparable to any point in history. 20% of workers being druggies is a cultural issue. It's the literal definition of a cultural issue. MoG.

2. It's not just the distributors. It's the companies deciding where to get their cheese to save them costs. In and Out has their own set of suppliers and they dominate the markets they go to. Because they care about what they serve.

3. Two companies having a little over 50% of the market is not a duopoly. It can limit options especially from a price-based standpoint but it isn't a forced decision. It's up to the company leadership. 'We were helpless before the all-powerful distributor' has never been an excuse that worked for a failing company.

4. You must be part of company leadership somewhere. We are completely unable to change things! Except....that's not true. You get rid of bad executives no matter how many Kirun excuses they make.

5. Consumers have the ultimate choice. This is one of the dumbest excuses I've ever heard tbh. Consumers have the ultimate choice of where to spend their money. Thousands and thousands of dead and forgotten companies prove this. No one can force them to spend at a place. I can't believe you just said this.

6. If people cared, they would quit going there. That's how you show you care. It's a simple and proven way to show how you care. That's why Cracker Barrel did an abrupt U-Turn in the middle of wasting money towards their idiotic plan. Because feedback was massively negative. It's why Bud Light cratered. Because people cared enough not to buy their slop. It's why Chi's-Chi's went belly up within a few months of serving toxic food. You care by spending somewhere else.

There's nothing like a captured market for fast food. This is a clown shoes excuse from someone who doesn't really understand the market and loves excuses. The Super Size Me film almost immediately destroyed the supersize meals at McDonalds. Lots of examples of people caring bringing almost immediate change. They are businesses. They are there to make money. They will change if people quit giving them money. It's very simple.
Click to expand...
If the market has an opening, someone will step up to fill it. Even in fast food. If all the big names serve the same low quality shit, it opens the door for a mom and pop shop to build a business based on quality burgers. The town I grew up in still has one of those from the 60s. I just googled it, it's still in business. Small tourist trap, 10k population now. Was 5k when I was growing up.
 
Kirun

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zzeris said:
Ok. Here's my reply.
Click to expand...
1. "Worker competence fell off a cliff and it has nothing to do with wages."

If wages were "comparable to any point in history," we wouldn't be dealing with the largest real-wage erosion in 40+ years, record housing costs, declining purchasing power, and a labor market where even a studio apartment requires two jobs. People aren't less competent because culture got bad, they're less invested because the economic incentives for competence have been gutted.

Also, citing "20% druggies" as cultural rot ignores the fact that the opioid epidemic was chemically engineered and commercially incentivized. That isn't evidence of a moral failing, it's one of the the many downstream effects of predatory pharmaceutical monopolies. Culture didn't randomly shift. It reacted to structural conditions (engineered with help from the Govt., Corps, etc.).

2. "It's not the distributors, look at In-N-Out."

In-N-Out works precisely because it vertically integrated and opted out of the Sysco/US Foods ecosystem. That's the exception that proves the rule: to escape distributor constraints, you must become your own supply chain. If the solution requires being a billion-dollar family-owned enterprise with fanatical brand control, guess what? 99.9% of restaurants can't replicate that. You're pointing to a unicorn and treating it like a blueprint.

3. "A little over 50% isn’t a duopoly."

It's clear you don't work in logistics and supply chain systems. In highly consolidated supply chains, 50% is hegemony. When two companies control half the logistics infrastructure, they don't need to own every transaction to dictate pricing tiers, sourcing availability, vendor relationships, and ingredient standardization. No one said restaurants are physically shackled to Sysco. They're just economically cornered by the cost structure those firms impose.

"It's not a monopoly if I technically have choices I can't afford!!” is a fantasy-market argument, not a real one.

4. "Just fire bad executives."

Corporate governance doesn't work like a video game menu, dude. Share structures, private equity ownership, and debt covenants all insulate leadership from performance-based accountability. If CEO replacement were as simple as "care harder," Boeing wouldn't still be run by the same management philosophy that turned airplanes into cost-saving death traps. Bad leadership thrives when market alternatives are eliminated. That's one of the many consequences of consolidation.

5. "Consumers have the ultimate choice."

This is Econ 101 but backwards. Consumers can only exercise choice from the options available. If every mid-tier chain is pulling ingredients from the same distributors, offering the same quality floor, that's not choice, it's a menu with different logos. Thousands of failed companies don't prove consumer power, they prove how brutal the market is for anyone who isn't plugged into the Sysco/US Foods pipeline.

You're mistaking choice of store for choice of supply chain, and those aren't the same thing.

6. "If people cared, they'd quit going there."

People did boycott Bud Light and Cracker Barrel. What changed wasn't the food supply chain, it was brand messaging. Those examples do nothing to support your point, because none of them required altering the logistical backbone that feeds the industry. Try that same boycott against nationwide frozen cheese suppliers, FDA/USDA distribution constraints, and/or corporate-backed logistics systems. You can't boycott your way out of infrastructure. Consumers have power over brands, not supply chains.

You're treating systemic constraints as if they were personal responsibility failures. It's the same logic as saying, "If people really hated traffic, they'd just choose to drive on roads without congestion." That isn't how complex systems work. You're moralizing market consolidation and replacing supply chain economics with cultural scolding. The video itself documents that the industry is structurally constrained, then retrofits a culture-war explanation for vibes. You guys keep letting these controlled, bozo "influencers" (he works for mega Jews, btw) distract you with red herring after red herring. Stop doing that.
 
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Fucker

Fucker

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Juvarisx said:
None of whatt you say is incorrect, however this is also a reason it all sucks now:

companiesmarketcap.com

McDonald (MCD) - Operating Margin

Current and historical Operating Margin charts for McDonald (MCD).
companiesmarketcap.com companiesmarketcap.com

This is just McDonalds but you will se it throughout the fast food industry. The operating margin for these places is double to triple what they were in the early 2000's. This is a combo of massive price increases, lower quality and cost cutting employees. All 3 will hurt the customer experience.
Click to expand...
I don't know what McDonald's has done to their food, but most of it is inedible now. Fries/McNuggets come out of the fryer and are hard as rocks almost immediately. That 40% operating margin, increased profits on the back of declining sales, means they are extracting value from their products. I don't know how much worse they could make their products before people give up on them entirely. I'm amazed they are still in business.
 
Fucker

Fucker

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Kirun said:
1. "Worker competence fell off a cliff and it has nothing to do with wages."

If wages were "comparable to any point in history," we wouldn't be dealing with the largest real-wage erosion in 40+ years, record housing costs, declining purchasing power, and a labor market where even a studio apartment requires two jobs. People aren't less competent because culture got bad, they're less invested because the economic incentives for competence have been gutted.

Also, citing "20% druggies" as cultural rot ignores the fact that the opioid epidemic was chemically engineered and commercially incentivized. That isn't evidence of a moral failing, it's one of the the many downstream effects of predatory pharmaceutical monopolies. Culture didn't randomly shift. It reacted to structural conditions (engineered with help from the Govt., Corps, etc.).

People did boycott Bud Light and Cracker Barrel. What changed wasn't the food supply chain, it was brand messaging.
Click to expand...
Fast food/chain restaurant employees have always been lowest denominator. Teens who didn't know any better or burnout adults. What has changed is the quality/value proposition of the food. Things that people have tolerated before have become intolerable because the food has become expensive shit.

You are dead on about Bud Light/CB. Cracker Barrel had declining sales before their genius move to rebrand/remodel. It blows me away that there are so many CEO's who do not understand their core businesses. CB, instead of fixing their FOOD decided to embark on a wildly expensive remodeling campaign. I may be in the wrong here, but if customers are complaining about the food, I'd fix the FOOD instead of putting up new light fixtures and paint. They still haven't fixed their FOOD since the big debacle.
 
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zzeris

zzeris

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Kirun said:
1. "Worker competence fell off a cliff and it has nothing to do with wages."

If wages were "comparable to any point in history," we wouldn't be dealing with the largest real-wage erosion in 40+ years, record housing costs, declining purchasing power, and a labor market where even a studio apartment requires two jobs. People aren't less competent because culture got bad, they're less invested because the economic incentives for competence have been gutted.

Also, citing "20% druggies" as cultural rot ignores the fact that the opioid epidemic was chemically engineered and commercially incentivized. That isn't evidence of a moral failing, it's one of the the many downstream effects of predatory pharmaceutical monopolies. Culture didn't randomly shift. It reacted to structural conditions (engineered with help from the Govt., Corps, etc.).

2. "It's not the distributors, look at In-N-Out."

In-N-Out works precisely because it vertically integrated and opted out of the Sysco/US Foods ecosystem. That's the exception that proves the rule: to escape distributor constraints, you must become your own supply chain. If the solution requires being a billion-dollar family-owned enterprise with fanatical brand control, guess what? 99.9% of restaurants can't replicate that. You're pointing to a unicorn and treating it like a blueprint.

3. "A little over 50% isn’t a duopoly."

It's clear you don't work in logistics and supply chain systems. In highly consolidated supply chains, 50% is hegemony. When two companies control half the logistics infrastructure, they don't need to own every transaction to dictate pricing tiers, sourcing availability, vendor relationships, and ingredient standardization. No one said restaurants are physically shackled to Sysco. They're just economically cornered by the cost structure those firms impose.

"It's not a monopoly if I technically have choices I can't afford!!” is a fantasy-market argument, not a real one.

4. "Just fire bad executives."

Corporate governance doesn't work like a video game menu, dude. Share structures, private equity ownership, and debt covenants all insulate leadership from performance-based accountability. If CEO replacement were as simple as "care harder," Boeing wouldn't still be run by the same management philosophy that turned airplanes into cost-saving death traps. Bad leadership thrives when market alternatives are eliminated. That's one of the many consequences of consolidation.

5. "Consumers have the ultimate choice."

This is Econ 101 but backwards. Consumers can only exercise choice from the options available. If every mid-tier chain is pulling ingredients from the same distributors, offering the same quality floor, that's not choice, it's a menu with different logos. Thousands of failed companies don't prove consumer power, they prove how brutal the market is for anyone who isn't plugged into the Sysco/US Foods pipeline.

You're mistaking choice of store for choice of supply chain, and those aren't the same thing.

6. "If people cared, they'd quit going there."

People did boycott Bud Light and Cracker Barrel. What changed wasn't the food supply chain, it was brand messaging. Those examples do nothing to support your point, because none of them required altering the logistical backbone that feeds the industry. Try that same boycott against nationwide frozen cheese suppliers, FDA/USDA distribution constraints, and/or corporate-backed logistics systems. You can't boycott your way out of infrastructure. Consumers have power over brands, not supply chains.

You're treating systemic constraints as if they were personal responsibility failures. It's the same logic as saying, "If people really hated traffic, they'd just choose to drive on roads without congestion." That isn't how complex systems work. You're moralizing market consolidation and replacing supply chain economics with cultural scolding. The video itself documents that the industry is structurally constrained, then retrofits a culture-war explanation for vibes. You guys keep letting these controlled, bozo "influencers" (he works for mega Jews, btw) distract you with red herring after red herring. Stop doing that.
Click to expand...

Good post. I guess we’re talking about two different issues. You’re looking at large corporations who are probably somewhat constrained by limited large scale supply choices but also have the power of being a large customer. I see the 85% ingredient control as a much bigger issue depending on business but the goal is making money not bringing quality. On the differences though, you’re just completely wrong.

1. Wages are comparable. The issues of affordability are much bigger than just wages. That’s a low IQ commie excuse. I guess you think a $30 hour min wage would fix this? Of course not. Much bigger than the comparable pay rates. If 80% are not taking drugs, it’s personal choice. I love the commie excuse of blaming others. Drug use is a choice and the government did not require it.

2. On this, I look at ways to improve the product. In and Out has always done this. Smaller companies do this. Cracker Barrel used to make their own food. Outback used to make their own food and maybe still do. Acting like they have no choices is an excuse. They CHOOSE to use cheaper, crappier products.

3. These companies are not powerless. You love excuses.

4. Rod McMullin was fired from Krogers. Ashley Buchanan from Kohls. Both this year. You can fire shitty executives. Another choice that leaders of these companies aren’t using but they can. People are responsible for their choices no matter how much you hate that thought.

5. Customers can choose not to visit these places. It’s the most basic choice. The easiest thing they can do. Yet, you act like this is asking the impossible. It isn’t. Businesses didn’t fail because they couldn’t work around the supply chain. It’s because people quit eating there.

6. Good point. But consumers have the ultimate control. As Fucker Fucker so ably said, if I was in leadership in the food industry, if people complain about the food, I’d fix the fucking food. It’s pretty basic. If the food sucks don’t eat there. If the customers say my food sucks, blaming Sysco isn’t going to fix anything.
 
TJT

TJT

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moonarchia said:
If the market has an opening, someone will step up to fill it. Even in fast food. If all the big names serve the same low quality shit, it opens the door for a mom and pop shop to build a business based on quality burgers. The town I grew up in still has one of those from the 60s. I just googled it, it's still in business. Small tourist trap, 10k population now. Was 5k when I was growing up.
Click to expand...

This is why Austin has its own burger chain P. Terry's that I simp for in here.
 
Lanx

Lanx

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lurkingdirk said:
I got a McRib. It was disgusting. I threw more than half of it away. I sure as hell wasn’t going to eat that crap.
Click to expand...
you probably got the first batch of mcribs or the cleaning rib



here look at that video, what do you notice? that sauce is almost filled to the brim, what happens when you pull out a tray that has liquid in it? it sloshes around, if it's that full and it sloshes around, that means it's sloshing the top of that heater and dragging in all the yummy bits of crud

guess what part never gets cleaned? yea the inside
 
Lanx

Lanx

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zzeris said:
Good post. I guess we’re talking about two different issues. You’re looking at large corporations who are probably somewhat constrained by limited large scale supply choices but also have the power of being a large customer. I see the 85% ingredient control as a much bigger issue depending on business but the goal is making money not bringing quality. On the differences though, you’re just completely wrong.

1. Wages are comparable. The issues of affordability are much bigger than just wages. That’s a low IQ commie excuse. I guess you think a $30 hour min wage would fix this? Of course not. Much bigger than the comparable pay rates. If 80% are not taking drugs, it’s personal choice. I love the commie excuse of blaming others. Drug use is a choice and the government did not require it.

2. On this, I look at ways to improve the product. In and Out has always done this. Smaller companies do this. Cracker Barrel used to make their own food. Outback used to make their own food and maybe still do. Acting like they have no choices is an excuse. They CHOOSE to use cheaper, crappier products.

3. These companies are not powerless. You love excuses.

4. Rod McMullin was fired from Krogers. Ashley Buchanan from Kohls. Both this year. You can fire shitty executives. Another choice that leaders of these companies aren’t using but they can. People are responsible for their choices no matter how much you hate that thought.

5. Customers can choose not to visit these places. It’s the most basic choice. The easiest thing they can do. Yet, you act like this is asking the impossible. It isn’t. Businesses didn’t fail because they couldn’t work around the supply chain. It’s because people quit eating there.

6. Good point. But consumers have the ultimate control. As Fucker Fucker so ably said, if I was in leadership in the food industry, if people complain about the food, I’d fix the fucking food. It’s pretty basic. If the food sucks don’t eat there. If the customers say my food sucks, blaming Sysco isn’t going to fix anything.
Click to expand...
1. think about how many "good" employees your standard mcdees/chains lost b/c other places were doing "livable wage" $30/hr or they quit b/c their mcdees hired a blue haired bitch that starts at 30$/hr while they all have 18$/hr that they got raises from and they can't "align" their low wages to the new blue haired hired bitches $30 wage

it's probably why we don't see those silly stories about wages no more
 
Fogel

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I can speak to some of this being in food manufacturing. To address the issue he brought up about the cheese supplier Leprino having a large share of the market, while they certainly force smaller manufacturers to buy what they have available, they will jump through hoops to give the big players like Domino's what they want. The way it works is Domino's will go to Leprino with a request for a cheese with a certain flavor profile, melt/pull, quality, price etc and then Leprino will R&D it out. The only thing Leprino has some control over is the price but they'll still have to haggle with a high volume player like a Domino's. But an ingredient vendor is not in the drivers seat when it comes to dealing with the larger food companies.
 
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Breakdown

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LOL at anyone trying to blame shitty fast food workeers on drugs. LOL. Such boomer brain rot shit.

Drug addicts dont work at Fast food places. They suck dick for drugs, rob shit, or are just homeless pieces of shit.

Seriously where are you seeing Fast food workers that are strung out on heroin in most of the US? They dont work.

Fast Food workers consists of 3 groups. This applies to your panera breads, chiptoles, starbucks etc too, the fast casual crowd.

1) Shitty American Inventors and DREAMERS that are lazy, work there because its all they can do, but dont care about trying because thats white people shit
2) Shitty entitled white fags who think that just because they took a job and showed up they should be rich. They dont care about results or effort, just showing up and they dont want to work hard they want to do work that "is meaningful to them". 2 weeks after getting these jobs they become full blown Communist reddit retards.
3) Old people who spnet their lives boozing, doing drugs and being lazy pieces of shit, but now have to suck it up and work shitty fastfood jobs as a results of their bad decisions. They bust their asses and are the only ones at these places worth a damn because they are old enough to still understand you have to try at work, but they are old, slow, and probably dying of something. They are also usually the breakfast crews because they will show up at 5 am unlike the American Inventors.

Also heres some food for thought: When is the last time you saw someone working in the service industry in a yarmulke? I see plenty of Hijabs, Fox Motocross hats and Kangz shit, never noticed a bagel place full of steins though

Private Equity killed the service industry, the supply chain, and the american work force.
 
Furry

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Breakdown said:
LOL at anyone trying to blame shitty fast food workeers on drugs. LOL. Such boomer brain rot shit.

Drug addicts dont work at Fast food places. They suck dick for drugs, rob shit, or are just homeless pieces of shit.
Click to expand...

I dunno, I feel like this is oversimplifying it. I've seen the spectrum based on where I am/restaurant. I've seen everything to normal high school graduates who are nice working their first job, to people literally dealing drugs on the side through the fast food window. As for the yarmulke thing... the jewish people I've worked with over the years haven't worn it. Never asked why.
 
moonarchia

moonarchia

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Breakdown said:
LOL at anyone trying to blame shitty fast food workeers on drugs. LOL. Such boomer brain rot shit.

Drug addicts dont work at Fast food places. They suck dick for drugs, rob shit, or are just homeless pieces of shit.

Seriously where are you seeing Fast food workers that are strung out on heroin in most of the US? They dont work.
Click to expand...
I have had multiple managers at multiple major pizza chains that were on cocaine. One of my coworkers at Papa John's also delivered marijuana. Plenty of addicts in fast food. Generally they are the high functioning ones, which means they have a handle on it for now or they are on the downward spiral, but they are there.
 
Sludig

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moonarchia said:
I have had multiple managers at multiple major pizza chains that were on cocaine. One of my coworkers at Papa John's also delivered marijuana. Plenty of addicts in fast food. Generally they are the high functioning ones, which means they have a handle on it for now or they are on the downward spiral, but they are there.
Click to expand...
Our old grandma enchurrita got busted for distribution, half my store were at least stoners. Granted this was 20 years ago
 
Fucker

Fucker

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Breakdown said:
Private Equity killed the service industry, the supply chain, and the american work force.
Click to expand...
Brand consolidation and the relentless push for annual growth is what has killed fast food and chain brands.

Companies can achieve growth through expansion and making their operations more efficient. Once expansion stops fueling growth, companies find efficiencies wherever they can. The obvious is either reducing head count and reducing hours available to work. All these Starbucks workers whining about a livable wage and unionizing? Starbucks response was to limit hours to 19 per week. McDonald's franchisees find efficiency by keeping skeleton crews and working them like dogs. The local Subway has ONE employee per shift. If you really want to make an employee not give a shit about their job, work them like dogs.

They got blood out of that turnip, so they murder their food. Chain restaurants moved to centrally prepared then frozen foods made from cheap ingredients. All the others have a variety of ways to reduce food costs, all of them make the food worse. Absolutely the game for all of them is to see how cheaply they can make the food before it starts driving off customers. I got a slice of pizza. I opened the box, it had ONE slice of pepperoni on it. This is the level of absurdity they are pursuing.

I mentioned McDonalds mcnuggets and fries earlier. Straight out of the fryer and hard as rocks moments later. What the fuck are they frying them in? Soybean oil? Some kind of synthetic blend that lasts longer through many frying cycles?

Cracker Barrel has similar levels of absurdity. Centrally prepared then frozed food. Dudes, it's fucking breakfast. The fastest, easiest, and cheapest meal to cook. Somehow they thought people wouldn't notice boxed eggs and frozen potatoes.

So, when a company that owns many brands gets a new CEO, and that CEO wants to save money on ingredients, all the companies in that chain start shoveling out garbage. Most of the brands in the US are owned by 3-4 companies. Roark, Yum, and Inspire. That's a handful of people guiding dozens of brands, and the impact of cost saving are immediate. Customers leave, and they stay gone. Like all the brands in supermarkets, what we have here is the illusion of choice and the complete lack of any real competition in the markets.
 
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Kirun

Kirun

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zzeris said:
Good post. I guess we’re talking about two different issues.
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You're not wrong that we're looking at different layers of the problem, but you're misidentifying causal direction. I'm talking about the constraints that shape incentives. You're talking about individual choices as if they happen in a vacuum. That's why we keep crossing wires.

Let's go point by point -

1. "Wages are comparable, affordability is the real issue, drug use is cultural."

You've accidentally made my argument. Affordability is exactly what drives worker quality. Isn't it odd how worker quality keeps declining as affordability gets worse? When real wages stagnate while housing, healthcare, and transportation explode in price, the labor pool changes. You don't need a $30 minimum wage to see the effect, just look at inflation-adjusted earnings. You can scream "personal responsibility" until your lungs give out, but it goes incentives -> behavior -> outcomes. And that's not some Marxist take, that's basic economics.

You're treating widespread patterns like individual moral failings, which is what people do when they don't understand systems. Drug use didn't spike because millions of people woke up one day and said, "Let's ruin our lives." It spiked because opiates were legally marketed as non-addictive, doctors were incentivized to prescribe them, pharmaceutical companies lied, and entire regions got hooked. You can claim I'm just some "commie blaming others", but it was a multi-billion-dollar corporate crime wave with measurable outcomes that ZERO people were punished for.

2. "Restaurants CHOOSE to use crappy products. In-N-Out proves it."

Continuing to use In-N-Out as a baseline is like using the NBA to argue everyone can slam-dunk if they just care harder. In-N-Out succeeds because they vertically integrate, they can dictate terms to suppliers, they don't franchise, they limit geographic expansion, and they have supply-chain leverage no startup can replicate. You're confusing possibility with viability. Sure, any restaurant can theoretically opt out of Sysco, just like any citizen can theoretically start their own airline. The fact that a giant outlier can do it doesn't mean everyone else has the same runway.

3. "These companies are not powerless."

No one said powerless. The point is constrained. Power isn't binary man, it's relative. Sysco doesn't put a gun to anyone's head, but they make not using them economically irrational. That's how modern monopolies operate - through cost structures, not force. Calling that an "excuse" is like telling someone to "just build their own semiconductor foundry" when TSMC controls the world.

4. "Executives get fired. See Kroger and Kohl’s."

Those examples don't prove your point, they actually prove mine. Kohl’s and Kroger are public companies exposed to shareholder revolt. The restaurant supply chain is largely dominated by private equity-owned firms, where leadership is insulated. You can fire individuals, sure. You can't fire incentive architecture. That's the part you keep skipping.

5. "Customers can choose not to go there."

This is the most persistent misunderstanding in your argument. The issue isn't choosing a restaurant, it's choosing a supply chain. If McDonald's, Chili's, Applebee's, and half your regional chains source from the same distributors, consumers aren't choosing quality, they're choosing branding wrapped around identical inputs.

It's like saying, "If you don't like gasoline, shop somewhere else." Consumers don't control upstream logistics. They only see the final wrapper. And yes, you can say, "Well, just don't go to ANY of these places," and that's exactly what’s happening. Traffic at many fast-food and fast-casual chains is tanking. But you're missing or ignoring the downstream effect of that - declining demand doesn't magically produce better suppliers, it encourages companies to cut further, substitute cheaper inputs, automate labor, and chase margins any way they can. In a consolidated supply ecosystem, consumer rejection won't elevate standards, it'll accelerate the race to the bottom because there are no alternatives to that supply. When the entire grid is wired for cost-minimization, opting out doesn't magically reform the system, it'll just reveal that there's no alternative path through it.

6. "If customers complain, companies will fix the food."

Only if fixing the food is economically viable. Sysco and US Foods built their empires precisely by making every alternative costlier, riskier, slower, or geographically impossible. It's not that restaurants won't improve quality, it's that the current cost structure punishes anyone who tries. That's a rational market response to consolidation, but it isn't some moral failing on the customers part.

You keep treating systemic incentives like optional behavior. And that's true in a theoretical vacuum. But real markets aren't philosophical playgrounds. They're shaped by cost, infrastructure, and access. Your worldview treats structure as irrelevant and morality as causative. That's backwards.
 
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