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There's a weird thing happening in the US where all the restaurant suppliers have consolidated. What that means is you likely won't see competitive prices anyw

There's a weird thing happening in the US where all the restaurant suppliers have consolidated. What that means is you likely won't see competitive prices anywhere else not due to scale but due to the input price being fixed regardless of who you are. I believe McDonalds is still somewhat independent in it's sourcing. IDK about wendy's. But Burger King is absolutely just another Sysco reseller at this point. That means a lot of the smaller burger stands end up just selling the same stuff as every other burger stand. Food that tastes a lot like my high school cafeteria did (hint, also Sysco). The only real lever any food business can pull is in facilities and staffing. The price of the food is fixed and there's no real competition to be had.

alostpuppy 1y ago
This is fascinating take and makes SO much sense.
- treis 1y ago
  Fortunately it's not true. Sysco has 17% of the market according to Morningstar: https://www.morningstar.com/company-reports/1327868-sysco-remains-well-positioned-in-food-distribution-with-its-cost-advantage-and-service-ability https://www.morningstar.com/company-reports/1327868-sysco-re...
  - cogman10 1y ago
    Sysco isn't the only one, but it is one of the few. If you start looking at the distribution centers of these companies and the competitors, you get a pretty clear picture of how concentrated things are. The drop off for the distribution centers of the top 3 is stark. [1] [1] https://abasto.com/en/advice/food-distributors/ https://abasto.com/en/advice/food-distributors/
mlsu 1y ago
This is it. and: true across the board, not just restaurants...
- cogman10 1y ago
  Yup, and I really hate it. Monopolies and oligopolies are really terrible in just about every way imaginable. Everyone that isn't an oligopoly gets screwed. This is also simply the natural end state of free market capitalism. Every one of these giant businesses knows that by swallowing up smaller competitors they can ultimately improve their revenue without improving quality or actually innovating/competing. Companies like sysco should have never been allowed to merge with other distributors and they should absolutely be broken up.
  - mlsu 1y ago
    it's just incredible. Internally, these huge corporations behave exactly the same as a good old fashioned USSR bureaucracy: endless meetings where no work gets done a huge class of bureaucrats (manager, senior manager, VP, senior VP, director, senior director ... what's next? commissar? secretary?) who don't actually do any of the line work and instead exist only to perpetuate a process huge amount of process that does nothing for the bottom line or indeed for anyone at all random party lines that you must accept or be fired (new director came in. Now we're doing a 30 minute velocity retrospective every week. you must attend, comrade!) party language determined from on high, that changes once every 5 years (blockchain is our five year plan! huh? blockchain? no no, AI is our five year plan!) party princelings who rise not on merit but purely on positional signifiers alone (Comrade, I know you've been a party loyalist for 25 years, but your senior director position is being given to a new princeling. He's 26 years old. He came from Stanford, and was on the forbes 30 under 30. They say he was a protege of Peter Thiel!) and, most importantly: everyone at the bottom, who pays for all of it, and must take it completely seriously.
    - cogman10 1y ago
      It's always wild to me when people talk about the efficiency of private industry. There's not a private business on the planet that's super-efficient.
    - TimTheTinker 1y ago
      The difference is that unlike USSR bureaucracy, these corporations' continued operations depend completely on the decisions (buy or not) of customers who they cannot coerce -- so their feet are far more held to the fire of market reality than totalitarian regime leaders. They do not have the power to force people not to vote with their wallets (not to mention with their feet). As frustrating and corrupt as our market economy is, the oppression under regimes like the USSR and East Germany was unimaginably worse. That being said, yes -- we badly need another round of legislative reform like the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and all the regulatory actions that followed.

alostpuppy 1y ago

This is fascinating take and makes SO much sense.

treis 1y ago
Fortunately it's not true. Sysco has 17% of the market according to Morningstar: https://www.morningstar.com/company-reports/1327868-sysco-remains-well-positioned-in-food-distribution-with-its-cost-advantage-and-service-ability https://www.morningstar.com/company-reports/1327868-sysco-re...
- cogman10 1y ago
  Sysco isn't the only one, but it is one of the few. If you start looking at the distribution centers of these companies and the competitors, you get a pretty clear picture of how concentrated things are. The drop off for the distribution centers of the top 3 is stark. [1] [1] https://abasto.com/en/advice/food-distributors/ https://abasto.com/en/advice/food-distributors/

mlsu 1y ago

This is it. and: true across the board, not just restaurants...

cogman10 1y ago
Yup, and I really hate it. Monopolies and oligopolies are really terrible in just about every way imaginable. Everyone that isn't an oligopoly gets screwed. This is also simply the natural end state of free market capitalism. Every one of these giant businesses knows that by swallowing up smaller competitors they can ultimately improve their revenue without improving quality or actually innovating/competing. Companies like sysco should have never been allowed to merge with other distributors and they should absolutely be broken up.
- mlsu 1y ago
  it's just incredible. Internally, these huge corporations behave exactly the same as a good old fashioned USSR bureaucracy: endless meetings where no work gets done a huge class of bureaucrats (manager, senior manager, VP, senior VP, director, senior director ... what's next? commissar? secretary?) who don't actually do any of the line work and instead exist only to perpetuate a process huge amount of process that does nothing for the bottom line or indeed for anyone at all random party lines that you must accept or be fired (new director came in. Now we're doing a 30 minute velocity retrospective every week. you must attend, comrade!) party language determined from on high, that changes once every 5 years (blockchain is our five year plan! huh? blockchain? no no, AI is our five year plan!) party princelings who rise not on merit but purely on positional signifiers alone (Comrade, I know you've been a party loyalist for 25 years, but your senior director position is being given to a new princeling. He's 26 years old. He came from Stanford, and was on the forbes 30 under 30. They say he was a protege of Peter Thiel!) and, most importantly: everyone at the bottom, who pays for all of it, and must take it completely seriously.
  - cogman10 1y ago
    It's always wild to me when people talk about the efficiency of private industry. There's not a private business on the planet that's super-efficient.
  - TimTheTinker 1y ago
    The difference is that unlike USSR bureaucracy, these corporations' continued operations depend completely on the decisions (buy or not) of customers who they cannot coerce -- so their feet are far more held to the fire of market reality than totalitarian regime leaders. They do not have the power to force people not to vote with their wallets (not to mention with their feet). As frustrating and corrupt as our market economy is, the oppression under regimes like the USSR and East Germany was unimaginably worse. That being said, yes -- we badly need another round of legislative reform like the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and all the regulatory actions that followed.