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> In his book “Ten Restaurants That Changed America,” historian Paul Freedman credited the company with pioneering “several key concepts in the American way of

> In his book “Ten Restaurants That Changed America,” historian Paul Freedman credited the company with pioneering “several key concepts in the American way of dining out: roadside locations, a family-friendly ambience, franchising, predictability and serving comfort food long before that term was invented.” This, incidentally, is a superb book. I greatly enjoyed it and I’m not even American.

jhap 4y ago
I second the book rec, I thought it would be fairly predictable and lame, but it turned out to be completely awesome.
anyfoo 4y ago
That honestly sounds like exactly the things that annoy me, those chain restaurants and franchises with always the same audience and food. Visiting is equivalent to going to a FedEx: You know what to expect, but you don't go there for pleasure. That's good and expected for fast food (i.e. McDonald's), but fast food is something you do on the go: Using drive through or picking up, or when I was younger sitting in only transitionally with my friends to gulp down the fast food in the middle of our night out. Luckily at least in the cities there are still a wide variety of individual restaurants, often better than where I'm from, especially (but not exclusively) if it comes to non-local cuisine. The chains take up space but they are still easy enough to ignore.
- Tostino 4y ago
  What you are looking for in a restaurant is not the same as everyone else. There are plenty of people who are more than happy to have their same comfortable meal over and over, these places are catering to those folk. Repeat business is better for profitability than always having to acquire new customers, and this model encourages that repeat business for the customers that it fits well with.
  - anyfoo 4y ago
    I guess I don't understand why that needs chains. In the parts of Europe that I am originally from, there are far less chain restaurants than here. And as I hinted, it's still pretty common for folks to have "their" restaurant in the neighborhood and to eat there all the time, same food or not. Maybe mixing it up some time with another restaurant, maybe not.
    - Tostino 4y ago
      I don't honestly think it's necessary by any means, and don't personally like them. But they do eek our their existence through appealing to the "familiar" for their customers, because no matter where you're at, you know X will taste like home. I don't personally subscribe to that, i'd much rather see what a new place has to offer, but i'm not everyone.
      - anyfoo 4y ago
        Ah, I think I can understand that aspect (even though it also does not fit me personally).
    - throw7 4y ago
      You're right... it doesn't need "chains". "Chinese" restaurants fill the same needs. I think maybe even "Mexican" restaurants do to some degree also. I'm not familiar with Europe, but in my limited travels, "doner kebab" shops kind of seem to fill the same niche.
      - monkeybutton 4y ago
        Pho. I know exactly what to expect and what I want to order walking into any Pho restaurant in the country and they're all owned and operated by different people.
        Spooky23 4y ago
        Maybe not. Many Asian restaurants use unique, exclusive suppliers. I don’t know about Pho places, but many neighborhood Chinese restaurants are really outposts of a fully vertically integrated enterprise. Even vegetables come from specific farms in Central America and have a distinct supply chain.
- kube-system 4y ago
  The popular situation in which someone would go to one of these restaurants is this: It's 1975 in America. You're on a family road trip. It's hot, you've been driving all day, and you've got two whiny kids in the back seat. Everyone is getting hangry, and you need somewhere comfortable to pause. You want somewhere where you can sit, get something that the kids will eat without fuss, and maybe an ice cream would be nice. The obvious answer is Howard Johnson. Drive throughs didn't exist at this time, and even if they did, you wanted to get out of the damn car anyway.
  - anyfoo 4y ago
    Thanks. As mentioned elsewhere, I did not know that aspect of "roadside restaurants". It makes sense as a "pit stop" kind of thing with families, and seems to fill a similar role to the big gas station+restaurant combinations you find along the Autobahn for example. Another aspect is that if in Europe you've been driving for 8 hours, you may well have crossed a country border (or multiple), and everything is very different anyway. McDonald's again being your best bet if you want anything really predictable in that case (and you can even order without speaking the language usually).
    - kube-system 4y ago
      The road-trip culture in the US has spawned all kinds of interesting business models that make little sense out of context. My favorite example is Breezewood Pennsylvania: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breezewood,_Pennsylvania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breezewood,_Pennsylvania It's a "town" that almost nobody lives in. It exists solely because of a poorly-conceived connection between two major highways. Millions of people stop to get gasoline, food, use the restroom, or stop at a hotel there just because they have to stop anyway at two stop lights. There's no reason the highways couldn't be directly connected today, but local lawmakers would never allow this because it would destroy their only economic purpose.
      - kstrauser 4y ago
        If you've never been to Little America, you haven't lived. https://wyoming.littleamerica.com https://wyoming.littleamerica.com
- wdb 4y ago
  When I grew up McDonald's was something for birthday parties or special occasions not really drive through, you went there with the goal to eat :)
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    Yeah. McDonald's didn't have drive-thrus when I was a kid. My mom would take me there once or twice a year and it was always a highlight. I would always get a happy meal with an orange drink. I loved their orange drink.
- B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
  > those chain restaurants and franchises with always the same audience and food. Visiting is equivalent to going to ... a teleportation booth, according to an amusing (or terrifying) SF story from decades ago. You could come out in any other location served by the franchise. Homogenized spacetime mumble handwave ... Sorry, forgot whodunnit. Maybe Analog magazine around 1990.
  - Throw6away 4y ago
    Larry Niven. It’s a theme of his collection “A Hole In Space”, about the social impact of teleportation booths.
- scarface74 4y ago
  That’s exactly what I want - to know what I’m going to get. When I travel for business and now that my wife and I are traveling more for leisure, we look for an Embassy Suites. We know we are going to get a two room suite, a decent breakfast, a nice happy hour every day and good customer service. We did the AirBnb once. While it was definitely a decently nice place, we missed the gym, cleaning, restaurant downstairs, easy access by Uber (we were in a gated community), etc. In fact, my wife and I are planning to be digital nomads for the next couple of years starting later this year. We will definitely be staying in Hilton chains - Embassy, Homewood, or Home2Suites - we will be comfortable and the two room suites give me a place to work. Not to mention the side benefits of points you can rack up with the cobranded card. Other brands may be as good, Hilton is just what I’m familiar with.
surge 4y ago
Cracker Barrel essentially fills this niche now.
- kube-system 4y ago
  I'd throw Denny's, IHOP, and Applebees into the same category.
  - jxf 4y ago
    I don't think Applebee's is in there -- a bit too corporate. But I'd put Waffle House in for their place.
    - justbaker 4y ago
      Waffle House is a billion times better than Applebees. They Cook the food in front of you versus microwaving some frozen shit. AND it’s open 365 24/7 pretty much even when there’s inclement weather. I always know what to expect… the hash browns are the best shredded hash browns around. Applebees is a dying company only popular in smaller areas.
      - Aloha 4y ago
        Waffle House is the most underrated chain in America. It's the same food you'd cook at home, but for only slightly more.
        justbaker 4y ago
        I’m still struggling to get my hash browns the same quality. Better than denny’s/ihop hash browns but Waffle House sets a high bar for those.
- nsxwolf 4y ago
  I was just at a Cracker Barrel in Wisconsin and it seemed like there was a lot of cost cutting going on. I miss the days when we’d all complain about gigantic portions in American restaurants.
rmason 4y ago
When I was growing up Howard Johnson's were everywhere. Their hotels were in every mid-size town as well. In the mid seventies there were over 500 hotels and 1000 restaurants. Just like Sears Roebuck it was classic Americana and you could easily make the assumption that it would be there forever, but by the year 2000 it had mostly disappeared. I admit to not knowing why. Their hotels weren't anything remarkable but the restaurants were special. Perhaps tastes changed and once the restaurants retreated the hotels followed.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- donthellbanme 4y ago
  - ChoGGi 4y ago
    I suppose it's okay to complain about foreign investors owning residences, but not businesses?
    - SantalBlush 4y ago
      - tamaharbor 4y ago
        Applejinx 4y ago
        You might be pushing a narrative, not the truth. If restaurants in general are on such margins that behaving badly is the only way to keep them in the black and immigrants are capable of spotting this as quickly as native citizens or more so, then what you're observing is capitalism crowding out good places and replacing them with garbage, and immigrants gambling on the prospect of taking failing places and making them succeed in the only feasible way. If you then take this situation and spin it as wicked immigrants ruining everything, you're in the wrong and pushing a narrative for your own purposes. There are analogous situations in the context of inner-city crime and whether that's down to racial or economic drivers, and people who ignore economic drivers to attribute everything to easily spotted racial signifiers. Pushing a narrative.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

jhap 4y ago

I second the book rec, I thought it would be fairly predictable and lame, but it turned out to be completely awesome.

anyfoo 4y ago

That honestly sounds like exactly the things that annoy me, those chain restaurants and franchises with always the same audience and food. Visiting is equivalent to going to a FedEx: You know what to expect, but you don't go there for pleasure. That's good and expected for fast food (i.e. McDonald's), but fast food is something you do on the go: Using drive through or picking up, or when I was younger sitting in only transitionally with my friends to gulp down the fast food in the middle of our night out. Luckily at least in the cities there are still a wide variety of individual restaurants, often better than where I'm from, especially (but not exclusively) if it comes to non-local cuisine. The chains take up space but they are still easy enough to ignore.

Tostino 4y ago
What you are looking for in a restaurant is not the same as everyone else. There are plenty of people who are more than happy to have their same comfortable meal over and over, these places are catering to those folk. Repeat business is better for profitability than always having to acquire new customers, and this model encourages that repeat business for the customers that it fits well with.
- anyfoo 4y ago
  I guess I don't understand why that needs chains. In the parts of Europe that I am originally from, there are far less chain restaurants than here. And as I hinted, it's still pretty common for folks to have "their" restaurant in the neighborhood and to eat there all the time, same food or not. Maybe mixing it up some time with another restaurant, maybe not.
  - Tostino 4y ago
    I don't honestly think it's necessary by any means, and don't personally like them. But they do eek our their existence through appealing to the "familiar" for their customers, because no matter where you're at, you know X will taste like home. I don't personally subscribe to that, i'd much rather see what a new place has to offer, but i'm not everyone.
    - anyfoo 4y ago
      Ah, I think I can understand that aspect (even though it also does not fit me personally).
  - throw7 4y ago
    You're right... it doesn't need "chains". "Chinese" restaurants fill the same needs. I think maybe even "Mexican" restaurants do to some degree also. I'm not familiar with Europe, but in my limited travels, "doner kebab" shops kind of seem to fill the same niche.
    - monkeybutton 4y ago
      Pho. I know exactly what to expect and what I want to order walking into any Pho restaurant in the country and they're all owned and operated by different people.
      - Spooky23 4y ago
        Maybe not. Many Asian restaurants use unique, exclusive suppliers. I don’t know about Pho places, but many neighborhood Chinese restaurants are really outposts of a fully vertically integrated enterprise. Even vegetables come from specific farms in Central America and have a distinct supply chain.
kube-system 4y ago
The popular situation in which someone would go to one of these restaurants is this: It's 1975 in America. You're on a family road trip. It's hot, you've been driving all day, and you've got two whiny kids in the back seat. Everyone is getting hangry, and you need somewhere comfortable to pause. You want somewhere where you can sit, get something that the kids will eat without fuss, and maybe an ice cream would be nice. The obvious answer is Howard Johnson. Drive throughs didn't exist at this time, and even if they did, you wanted to get out of the damn car anyway.
- anyfoo 4y ago
  Thanks. As mentioned elsewhere, I did not know that aspect of "roadside restaurants". It makes sense as a "pit stop" kind of thing with families, and seems to fill a similar role to the big gas station+restaurant combinations you find along the Autobahn for example. Another aspect is that if in Europe you've been driving for 8 hours, you may well have crossed a country border (or multiple), and everything is very different anyway. McDonald's again being your best bet if you want anything really predictable in that case (and you can even order without speaking the language usually).
  - kube-system 4y ago
    The road-trip culture in the US has spawned all kinds of interesting business models that make little sense out of context. My favorite example is Breezewood Pennsylvania: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breezewood,_Pennsylvania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breezewood,_Pennsylvania It's a "town" that almost nobody lives in. It exists solely because of a poorly-conceived connection between two major highways. Millions of people stop to get gasoline, food, use the restroom, or stop at a hotel there just because they have to stop anyway at two stop lights. There's no reason the highways couldn't be directly connected today, but local lawmakers would never allow this because it would destroy their only economic purpose.
    - kstrauser 4y ago
      If you've never been to Little America, you haven't lived. https://wyoming.littleamerica.com https://wyoming.littleamerica.com
wdb 4y ago
When I grew up McDonald's was something for birthday parties or special occasions not really drive through, you went there with the goal to eat :)
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  Yeah. McDonald's didn't have drive-thrus when I was a kid. My mom would take me there once or twice a year and it was always a highlight. I would always get a happy meal with an orange drink. I loved their orange drink.
B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
> those chain restaurants and franchises with always the same audience and food. Visiting is equivalent to going to ... a teleportation booth, according to an amusing (or terrifying) SF story from decades ago. You could come out in any other location served by the franchise. Homogenized spacetime mumble handwave ... Sorry, forgot whodunnit. Maybe Analog magazine around 1990.
- Throw6away 4y ago
  Larry Niven. It’s a theme of his collection “A Hole In Space”, about the social impact of teleportation booths.
scarface74 4y ago
That’s exactly what I want - to know what I’m going to get. When I travel for business and now that my wife and I are traveling more for leisure, we look for an Embassy Suites. We know we are going to get a two room suite, a decent breakfast, a nice happy hour every day and good customer service. We did the AirBnb once. While it was definitely a decently nice place, we missed the gym, cleaning, restaurant downstairs, easy access by Uber (we were in a gated community), etc. In fact, my wife and I are planning to be digital nomads for the next couple of years starting later this year. We will definitely be staying in Hilton chains - Embassy, Homewood, or Home2Suites - we will be comfortable and the two room suites give me a place to work. Not to mention the side benefits of points you can rack up with the cobranded card. Other brands may be as good, Hilton is just what I’m familiar with.

surge 4y ago

Cracker Barrel essentially fills this niche now.

kube-system 4y ago
I'd throw Denny's, IHOP, and Applebees into the same category.
- jxf 4y ago
  I don't think Applebee's is in there -- a bit too corporate. But I'd put Waffle House in for their place.
  - justbaker 4y ago
    Waffle House is a billion times better than Applebees. They Cook the food in front of you versus microwaving some frozen shit. AND it’s open 365 24/7 pretty much even when there’s inclement weather. I always know what to expect… the hash browns are the best shredded hash browns around. Applebees is a dying company only popular in smaller areas.
    - Aloha 4y ago
      Waffle House is the most underrated chain in America. It's the same food you'd cook at home, but for only slightly more.
      - justbaker 4y ago
        I’m still struggling to get my hash browns the same quality. Better than denny’s/ihop hash browns but Waffle House sets a high bar for those.
nsxwolf 4y ago
I was just at a Cracker Barrel in Wisconsin and it seemed like there was a lot of cost cutting going on. I miss the days when we’d all complain about gigantic portions in American restaurants.

rmason 4y ago

When I was growing up Howard Johnson's were everywhere. Their hotels were in every mid-size town as well. In the mid seventies there were over 500 hotels and 1000 restaurants. Just like Sears Roebuck it was classic Americana and you could easily make the assumption that it would be there forever, but by the year 2000 it had mostly disappeared. I admit to not knowing why. Their hotels weren't anything remarkable but the restaurants were special. Perhaps tastes changed and once the restaurants retreated the hotels followed.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
donthellbanme 4y ago
- ChoGGi 4y ago
  I suppose it's okay to complain about foreign investors owning residences, but not businesses?
  - SantalBlush 4y ago
    - tamaharbor 4y ago
      - Applejinx 4y ago
        You might be pushing a narrative, not the truth. If restaurants in general are on such margins that behaving badly is the only way to keep them in the black and immigrants are capable of spotting this as quickly as native citizens or more so, then what you're observing is capitalism crowding out good places and replacing them with garbage, and immigrants gambling on the prospect of taking failing places and making them succeed in the only feasible way. If you then take this situation and spin it as wicked immigrants ruining everything, you're in the wrong and pushing a narrative for your own purposes. There are analogous situations in the context of inner-city crime and whether that's down to racial or economic drivers, and people who ignore economic drivers to attribute everything to easily spotted racial signifiers. Pushing a narrative.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]