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Comment by jollybean | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how well such a type of restaurant would do on it's own, outside of an IKEA.

Basically Scandinavian 'fast food' - healthy but also very 'hearty' and simple enough for Western tastes. The brightly lit, simply decorated rooms, kind of a 'cafeteria' feel where families can eat.

Like 'Denny's' but for middle class and urbanites.

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The term "healthy" is obviously pretty meaningless, but I would not say that meatballs, mashed potato and brown sauce is healthier than pizza or steak or something.

It matters. Pizza has a huge amount of cheese and with burgers you have 'fries' which are deep fried. Meatballs and potatoes with veg are a bit more healthy. It's also the other things: Ketchup is full of sugar etc.

Cheese is not inherently unhealthy and the meatballs are also (deep?) fried. And the brown sauce is made from cream.

Denny's is already for the middle class, though?

> Denny's is already for the middle class

Lol what?

I can't think of anything less middle-class than a Denny's?

>I can't think of anything less middle-class than a Denny's?

American middle class means $40k and living paycheck to paycheck.

That's shrinkflation of middle class, basically. At this pace, middle class in 50s will be your own tent under a good bridge.

It's funny - in the UK I think we'd say the middle class is getting smaller but the standard is staying the same, while in the US you look at it as the middle class stays the same size but the standard falls. Different approach to social statistics!

Depends on where you live. Minimum wage workers make ~$30k a year near me. Well north of that if the are tipped since min wage is the same for tipped and untipped workers.

I would never consider minimum wage middle class.

Neither. From my experience, Denny's was a fairly horrible experience. We benchmarked it as the lowest end.

Depends on where you live. The Denny's in the Agoura/Thousand Oaks part of metro Los Angeles were always nice upper middle class restaurants when I was there visiting. The Denny's in the southern states on the other hand tended to be much lower scale.

The middle class may be visiting Denny's at 2am but if they are going there for a dinner before a movie, those people ain't middle class.

Waffle House, or maybe lower class, but it’s enjoyed by a lot of middle class.

I love Waffle House and Denny's but they are a bit 'working class' in taste - giant dishes, a bit greasy etc..

I mean - I have nothing against and if I'm travelling or drunk it's the 'best in the world'...

But it's not going to work for college educated, 'green', progressive kids, it's a bit 'off brand'.

For example 'Chipotle' - that's a modern chain - it's 'clean' food, simple, authentic, not hugely expensive.

Basically, 'Swedish Chipotle': clean, healthy, quick, inexpensive, simple.

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