This, incidentally, is a superb book. I greatly enjoyed it and I’m not even American.
Their hotels weren't anything remarkable but the restaurants were special. Perhaps tastes changed and once the restaurants retreated the hotels followed.
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.
I don't personally subscribe to that, i'd much rather see what a new place has to offer, but i'm not everyone.
I'm not familiar with Europe, but in my limited travels, "doner kebab" shops kind of seem to fill the same niche.
Whole peanuts, halves, crushed, peanut butter? Mixed in or on top? Egg or no egg. Same with cilantro. How wide of noodles? Etc.
I try not to be picky so just ask for Pad Thai, Thai spicy. Usually good, but definitely not consistent.
A chain like say, Applebees will at least give consistently OK food that tastes about the same across restaurants, IMO.
I noticed the good places slice up fresh chilis and mix them in well. The bad places just dump some red pepper flakes on top at the end.
I'm sure it happened, but I'd imagine very few customers lived within a couple miles of a HoJo and would eat there regularly.
That makes sense to me. Almost no matter where I traveled in the world, I sometimes wanted to just get some food in me and move on, say because I was transitioning through a place or simply did not have the energy for more. As a then single guy, McDonald's was always a good option for that: You know what you get and it's quick and easy.
These days, a lot of chains like these have become less necessary, since Yelp and the like are everywhere. But in pre-digital days you didn’t know which local restaurant was good and which would send you to the clinic.
In alot of out of the way places, they were the restaurant. So they carried a nostalgic appeal even for locals.
In Europe, are there chains that project a sense of cultural cohesion across the nations?
If you find yourself in Manhattan, it’s easy to see. Storefronts with 50k people walking by every day are vacant and the rents are absurd.
Even in my little city, commercial leases are nuts. My wife tried to open a bakery, but the high value spots aren’t available, period unless you enter into a multi unit lease. She ended up doing a bakery trick and flipping the business a few years later.
I assume you meant truck? If so, we're considering the same thing for the same reasons (though not baked goods).
Would love any advice or tips or pros/cons you have to share.
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.
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).
My favorite example is 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.
As I understand, the state government basically passed a law requiring the turnpike to pay the state government tons of money and now they're sucked dry for cash, and that's why the rates are skyrocketing.
Breezewood is a spot, as you said, where two major highways intersect. As such, millions of drivers pass right through there each year. Building a few gas stations and quick-stop restaurants makes perfect sense. Nobody "lives" at the Eiffel Tower, or at Hartsfield-Jackson, or Wembley Stadium, but restaurants there sell a whole lot of food.
Similarly populated areas with a normal highway interchange don’t look anything like Breezewood.
Much like your examples, these things are typically built proportionally to the surrounding population.
but with electric cars coming, perhaps with a bunch of chargers and an hour to kill these kinds of restaurants make sense again… (though many interstate rest stops now have fast food courts…)
Plane tickets are now much, much cheaper than the cost of gas, tolls, and possible hotel stays.
... 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.
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.