As Goes the Middle Class, So Goes TGI Fridays | Hacker News Reader

As Goes the Middle Class, So Goes TGI Fridays

eater.com

28 pointsjpatokal13 comments

i don’t think it’s because of millennials or income inequality...

it’s because the food has gone to shit to maximize shareholder value. starboard value partners actually had to put together a strategy to make their restaurants (olive garden, red lobster) stop serving shit food

http://www.shareholderforum.com/dri/Library/20140911_Starboa...

i remember when both of those first opened 25 years or so ago. they were the cheesecake factories of their day, and they served awesome meals. then, they went to steam bags and microwaveables.

speaking of good restaurants that have gone downhill, i am so disappointed with pf chang’s, it used to be delicious and now makes meals that taste like salty tv dinners.

> One thing about millennials is certain: Their habits are the straw man of choice for explaining anything in decline.

Jeez, ain't that the truth.

I opened the article, read the first couple paragraphs, and immediately did ctrl+F "millennials". Was pleasantly surprised.

Nope, it's not because of the middle class or anything related. Simply because the food is terrible and has gotten worse and worse in recent years. People are realising there are better alternatives out there, not just ones that reply on brand recognition with little else going for them.

Add the fact it's easier to find out how good or bad a restaurant is via reviews, and you've got a situation where terrible chain restaurants are going the way of the dodo as people chose alternatives with decent food.

Good riddance.

My memories of tgi Fridays and Applebee's are those of mediocre fattening foods, boredom, and frequent sickness.

If more people are cooking, good for you USA.

I doubt more people are cooking, it's just that the largest chain restaurants have gradually let themselves go to shit and left themselves in a position with no demand.

There are more options than ever for good, casual food. And there are as many options as we've always had for not-so-good cheap food, like McDonald's.

The problem Friday's has isn't that everyone suddenly loves to cook. It's that they suck, everyone now knows they suck, the prices are unreasonable for how much they suck, and there are obvious choices that suck less.

They've always been shit, are you saying they're worse now? Hard to believe.

You may find it hard to believe, but the only reason these chains were ever viable businesses is that middle-class people would go there, by choice. Yes, they got worse.

Sticking with the example of Friday's, it used to be a reasonable place to go out with people. Not an amazing culinary experience, but comfort food of a sort. Now there is nothing comforting about it. The last Friday's I was unwittingly led to was more like Urban Decay: The Restaurant.

> everyone now knows they suck Not necessarily suck, but tools like Yelp and Google Reviews just made it easier to view opinions and find more options.

My thoughts exactly. I went to Chilli's like 10 years ago because there was nothing else on the freeway and we were hungry.

What a large dumped pile of garbage. I was hungry but even hunger could not entice me to plough through a fraction that.

Awful, awful stuff. Make the plates half the size, a third the size and give ne something I'm willing to taste and eat.

I'll stop by a Chick filler if there's nothing else.

My wife and I like to get wings at a downtown bar in Kearney, Nebraska. They have 9 flavors that are out of this world. Their wings make Buffalo Wild Wings' offerings seem like freezer bag junk. Also, the BWW wings are about half the size of the bars' wings.

Our grown kids like to go hang out at BWW and probably don't notice the lack of quality in the fare because of the alcohol they consume.

Millennials didn't kill TGIF; OK Cupid did. TGIF's heyday was in the 80s, when people actually met in bars:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-t-g-i-fri...

It's hard to imagine a world where people would go to TGIF looking for love, but this was actually a thing in the 80s.

Surprisingly TGI Fridays is fairly popular in Norway and Sweden. I thought it was a joke when my Norwegian friends suggested we meet up there

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