How the Cheesecake Factory defied the restaurant industry’s rules of success
vox.com
vox.com
Interestingly, one restaurant that had even more of this nostalgia vibe for me as a kid in the late 80’s, early 90’s was Pizza Hut.
I remember going there for parties and celebrations and having a nice sit down dinner. However, in the late 1990s, it went downmarket to try to compete with Dominos. The sit down experience greatly declined.
Pizza Hutt sure beats most Korean Pizza joints, at least (their primary competition in Beijing).
We had one of the few sit down pizza hut restaurants in NYC and went there a lot with my family. Later on I worked near by and went for the lunch buffet frequently with coworkers. Then the pizza changed at some point and I didn't care for it.
No I crave Tommy's in Gettysburg PA. They still make pizza using the original recipe and same sit-down atmosphere right down to the textured red plastic "glasses".
I wonder if it's an american thing specifically
Nobody can really copy them because you can’t do it unless you start from a truly ground up perspective. Others who seem superficially similar on the surface simply can’t deliver a comparable experience because of this.
Is there any good public writing going into detail about this? Lots has been written on how Costco is Costco but all my info on CCF has been from geeking out with insiders who are also passionate about system design.
I mean, it's a themed casual dining experience along the lines of Rainforest Cafe, Buca di Beppo, Hard Rock Cafe, Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., etc. What "rules" are they breaking?
In short, it's about making an experience that draws people in who are looking for the comfort/familiarity/ease of a chain, while not just relying on that. The Cheesecake Factory is an above-average restaurant masquerading as a Sysco-food-reheating-service.
The very large menu is a feature--something for everyone--that would be a bug if a lot of other restaurants tried it because the execution is often so dismal once a particular level of size or growth (or both) is reached.
Nothing else is close to vegan, unless you're into ordering Chicken Lettuce Wraps without Chicken.
Vegetarian bumps that to 52 menu items.
It also does limit the choice of dressing, for example anything with mayo is off limits.
They just haven't figured out how to keep vegans from spoiling in a commercial kitchen yet. They're high maintenance, a bit too big for the freezer, and the vacuum packer tends to deprive them of oxygen.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/when-herbivores-ar...
Horses sometimes eat chickens too.
Which is an actual item on the menu
https://www.thecheesecakefactory.com/menu/appetizers/thai-le...
[0] https://aviyer2010.com/2012/09/05/the-cheesecake-factory-and... [1] https://www.upkeep.com/learning/how-to-calculate-restaurant-...
> Proteins, sauces, veggies, the dressings that go in their gigantic salads, the chicken marsala and mushrooms — it’s cooked on the spot. If there’s any part of the Cheesecake Factory that resembles an industrial machine, it’s the multiple stations and line cooks needed to create handmade food for every meal. ...
> “Their quality, their execution, and consistency across the country — it is always the same. And that’s a compliment! That’s impeccable,” pastry chef and Food Network star Young says, “The sauces, the dressings, everything is made in-house. That level of consistency doesn’t happen anywhere else.”
This is in the last section, titled "The Cheesecake Factory is a marvel." That section is the most interesting part, because it talks about the execution required to make a large amount of a wide variety of food from scratch, at scale, consistently.
And yet, I drive by there every morning on my way to work, and twice a week there's a Sysco truck backing in to their parking lot. What exactly are they delivering, if not pre-made.
If I wanted to spend $150 eating out, I'd want something slightly less nasty than their crap. It tastes like microwaved Stouffers.
Rather than them being supergenius restauranteurs, it really does look like they just managed to survive the last decade when so many other chain restaurants went tits up since 2008. That coupled with covid cabin fever that seems like it never went away, makes for the sort of busy some mistake for grand success.
Sure you could send your chef to the farmer’s market to pick tomatoes but that is more costly and sometimes he’d return empty handed.
I'm guessing that for the pasta, they're boiling water. The rest of their menu looks like cheeseburgers and sandwiches. So maybe they're frying up a frozen patty once in awhile. Are they baking the bread and buns for these sandwiches themselves?
They also have alot of weird appetizers. Are they wrapping those spring rolls themselves, or do those come frozen out of a box and ready to deep fry? Fried cheese sticks, asparagus, and zucchini... are you telling me those are hand-breaded, or do they come frozen out of a box?
(Before you answer, consider carefully if someone who has never wrapped a spring roll before can get it right on even the 10th try after watching a 40 second tutorial video on the ipad they have bolted up above the prep table.)
There are half a dozen soups. Are those not coming out of a can?
Crusted/breaded chicken... that's not coming out of the box frozen?
https://www.thecheesecakefactory.com/menu
Oh, looks like you can get onion rings. Are those not coming frozen out of the box to be deep-fried? French fries?
When I get the crispy pineapple chicken and shrimp, are you telling me that they cut up a pineapple that morning for when that's ordered, or do they cut up the pineapple when I order it? Or, is it frozen in a plastic bag, like those god-awful stir-fries you get in the frozen section at the grocery store?
Did they slice the corn off the cob that morning themselves, or does that come out of a plastic bag, all flash-frozen?
Do they have a rice steamer in the back, or is that in one of those plastic per-serving bags that are microwaved?
The only stuff on this menu that are both "made themselves" and "not fast food" are the steaks (and good luck getting a good one there).
This place shares its menu (literally) with Fazolis. There are CCF-branded items on Fazolis menu the last time I went there. This is TGI Friday's level bullshit. They aren't some big-data driven Nostradamuses (Nostradami?), the link's just a gussed-up press release.
I don't really eat at the cheesecake factory so I can't speak to that.
They're not doing them. Any of them. If someone made such extraordinary claims, reasonable people would require extraordinary evidence.
I've provided quite a bit of corroboration to the idea that they're not doing any of it. Sure, my case is circumstantial, but I think that's permissible outside of a criminal courtroom, where the accusation is "non-crime, doing it like everyone else" without so much as the hint of slander.
You're all nuts. Nothing said on HN outside of a very narrow focus of technology should ever be taken for granted.
Have you worked in a commercial kitchen? I thought it was pretty tough but quite rewarding to make big portions of tasty food.
It would surprise me if CCF isn’t doing this with some of their ingredients.
Assuming you don't order alcohol, and avoid specialty foods (lobster in the Midwest, proper steak pretty much anywhere) it shouldn't be hard to get a meal for two under $50 in most casual places. If I'm willing to spend more than that, we're going straight to fine dining
If you are getting an appetizer, dinner, and dessert, then add another $20 to $30, but very, very few people should be eating that many calories and sugar/sat fats.
If you ignore the tiny chain at #1, look at the gap between CCF and their #2 competitor in sales per location. I think at some point I read that CCF was second only to Apple Store in revenue per square foot (I think in prime real estate corridors, excluding luxury or some similar criteria, it was a while ago).
Edit: first watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myRFzVmH1tg . Best way to analogize it is that CCF is the Katie Ledecky of casual chain restaurants. Because people who write about business and tech don’t really go to casual chain restaurants, nobody appreciates their accomplishments like they do Costco or In-n-Out.
Personally I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten in one. I like a good fast casual burger now and then it’s often a good choice late night or at an airport. Sometimes I’ll break down and eat at some casual chain at an airport or in some suburban location. But if there’s a location with a CCF there are probably other options I’m inclined to choose first.
A tip if you ever do go: When the bread arrives, eschew the butter and ask for a side of ranch dressing to dip the bread in. It sounds weird (I don’t even like ranch normally) and everybody I’ve ever told about it looks at me skeptically, but once they try it they instantly become a convert.
They are completely different menus and dining experiences. Though if The Cheesecake Factory ever adds soup dumplings to their menu, I bet they will be pretty good and cheaper.
Thus, CCF is viewed as a class shibboleth because the problem CCF solves extremely well is getting together a group of people with lots of picky eaters who are all different kinds of picky eaters but who all still want good food and you have to pick a place you can all go. You're simply never expected to run into this problem if you run in upper middle class circles but it's a nightmare scenario for everyone else in cities without a CCF and having a CCF in your city solves it in a way that is a meaningful upgrade in your quality of life.
As a result, people vastly underestimate the difficulty of this problem and how poor CCF's competitors are compared to it and how much brand loyalty people who don't have this social coding have towards this company for perfectly logical reasons.
CCF's great accomplishment is not just realizing this but then designing their entire restaurant from the ground up to totally holistically solve this very hard problem and their near monopoly level profits are a reward for their hard work.
I suppose it varies, but it only needs to be true some of the time for CCF to be profitable.
It's more about people in peer groups preoccupied with class distinctions, vs, say, 90% of Americans who could not give less fucks about it.
Region plays a role in the distribution and size of such peer groups though.
Added: Per another comment, people can also be picky not with respect to not eating unusual foods but with respect to not eating mediocre food.
What does it look like when somebody gets “socially in trouble” for being picky? What actually happens to them (socially) in this instance?
I’ve never seen or heard of anything like this, so I’m really curious about it.
It’s not even really pickiness per se. If some group always wants to just eat fast food I’m going to be less inclined to join them. No value judgement. Just not my thing.
And, here's the hook to what you say regarding it being a regional thing: this class distinctions are also applied at the regional level. E.g. whole states can be considered "lower social class" (regardless if they have millionaires or well off upper middle class people and so on).
In "high class" states or circles within a state, though, the stigma would a quite real thing (even if it's just an inconsequental matter, as seen from outside).
It's not about wealth levels either, as class concerns are just as high in stressed-to-appear-appropriately-high-class aspiring classes, that make less than what a developer does, but their circles are all about class distinctions and their shibboleths. The stereotypical "New Yorker" reader would be a total weirdo about such matters, even more stressed and awkward about following all the BS rules than people actually belonging to the 0.1%.
But even if you are a billionaire, you can be the low-class butt of the joke to "old money" types.
(That's my understanding of the US class system on this matter - there are some quite good books about it, "Class" by Paul Fussell is quite good. It's also a subject that certain kinds of literature and journalism wont shut up about).
Indeed.
Living in Hawai'i it would strike me how popular CCF was for people that came all that way (typically middle class Americans) and have access to tons of great variety in ethnic places they may not at home, along with local joints that would serve familiar food with the option of local flavour. But some of these comments put it in good context, that it is the familiar and safe choice and has a special or semi-fancy vibe to a large subset of those people.
I don't think I've eaten in one since I was a preteen and may have only been once, but come to think of it, at the time I grew up rural 45 minutes to the nearest small city, eating at cheesecake factory did seem like a special occasion.
Nobody gives a fuck if you go and eat in a "middling" establishment equivalent to CCF in these here parts, even if you're old money. And nobody cares of most other US shibboleths of class.
Whereas in the US it's as if something like CCF or, god forbid, Olive Garden, has leprosy, for some types of "high class" or wanabee so, people.
When I go to Europe or Asia, I have high confidence I can walk into a random restaurant/cafe and get good food made with high quality fresh ingredients on sight. Of course not every restaurant/cafe is good, but enough are.
Europe. I've tried such american restaurants like CCF, and they're not just "reheated factory produced food". Even Olive Garden isn't that (the prepare stuff on-site, contrary to myth). In fact, they're better than many local ones.
I'd say it's less about liking good food than liking to signal class status. The same people have no issue eating shoddily made chinese take-away or in-and-out or total prepackaged factory crap sold in their upclass super market, because those are not associated with a class stigma.
You see the most obsession with class concerns in areas where you have people who are class mobile: There's a lot of nouveau riche and upper-middle class people in tech, because tech has been a massive boom industry. Likewise you see a fair amount of class concern among people falling down the social ladder, such as the generations that grew up within environment of an old-money fortune, but for whatever reason that money was lost.
I feel like everyone is talking in circles just wanting to be right on the internet.
In Australia at least where there are some chains for casual/fast food but not so much for restaurants, I haven't sensed this stigma because that dining niche is occupied by the local hotel's restaurant or a pub with low to no pretenses but a decent to quite good meal.
I'm not sure it's that, since 99% of the consumption of those same snobs are heavily corporatised consumerism. It's just the expensive kind marketed to more affluent suckers. They're for example OK with Starbucks, the kind of "heavily corporatised consumerism", and all kind of BS upscale consumerist brands like Lululemon.
Related side story: when I lived near SF, I saw in the news that the lone Olive Garden in the city (in Stonestown Galleria) was going to close. I asked out loud "Who on earth eats at the Olive Garden in San Francisco when there are so many other options for authentic Italian?" My wife, who was sitting next to me, got a sheepish look on her face. It turns out she drove into the city all the time specifically to go to that Olive Garden. She said it reminded her of home and she liked the nostalgia of it haha
The "high-low" aesthetic the article mentions is important, too, I think. You can go there in a lot of contexts and it doesn't feel weird, because it isn't any normal genre of restaurant you have associations with, nor does it have a hokey theme. Teenagers can go, families can go, couples can go, coworkers can go. People go for dessert, people go for takeout, people go for drinks and appetizers.
The problem with chain restaurants is that the more they offer the more likely it's pre-prepared frozen/canned food that they just reheated or dropped in a fryer.
I don’t think it’s an “upper middle” thing but it is the class thing. It’s the default. The mass produced essential corner store or bar. And anyone can be seen there, and the food is customizable and nobody ever gets embarrassed or loses face for picking the place and the service is consistent.
It is the quintessential Hydreuma — for every thirsty Roman.
It’s absolutely a class indicator. You could order a steak well done at The Factory and you’d fit right in. It fits in with people who have a concept of “fine dining”, which they may not go to much but understand what it means. In other circles in big cities, fine dining is equally rare but spending $75-150/pp at a “casual” (meaning no tablecloth) restaurant is normal. $100 for casual dining is the exact opposite of what The Factory is about.
Outback Steakhouse, The local diner (more so if family owned), Applebees and TGIF.
Is CCF viewed as higher quality/status than these? I occasionally eat at Outback but not the others, partly location, partly because I find CCF overpriced for very mediocre food.
But, I’m not the target audience. I’ll pick a local ethnic place over a chain almost every time. And only use chains when forced by co-workers who won’t deviate from a generic “American” menu.
But, yeah, most of my friends and people I travel with would think nothing of going to a Chinese restaurant and eating with chopsticks.
Not a judgement and we’d probably have a perfectly good time and dinner at a CCF but it would have pretty much a zero chance of happening.
I do find it interesting though how many people this simple observation seems to upset.
The typical American chain restaurant is going to serve you something that starts with low-quality ingredients, then gets a bunch of sugar, corn syrup, seed oil, artificial food coloring, emulsifiers etc added to it until it roughly approximates the flavor, texture and color of higher-quality ingredients (at the cost of being unhealthy). Then it has various chemicals added to it to act as preservatives or maintain texture or appearance during shipping and storage and re-heating. Then it's packaged into cheap single-use plastic bags or containers that slowly leach endocrine disrupting chemicals into the food, or rapidly leach them during reheating in a microwave.
The end result is that you get something that is edible, but probably kinda gross tasting unless your palette gets used to packaged foods and fast foods, and which is going to make you fat, depressed, distracted and tired.
There's a reason America has an obesity epidemic, diabetes epidemic, falling fertility rates and widespread prescriptions of drugs for depression, anxiety, adhd, etc, and it's the food the average American is eating.
Completely tangential, but a local Korean place (Haru K-BBQ) has fried chicken as one of the “Western” items. However, the fried chicken itself is a reason to go because they do such a nice take on this item.
I honestly think that some fusion fried chicken joint might be the next Chipotle type hit. Indian Korean Japanese Chinese Mexican styles of fried chicken all under one house
The scrambled eggs came in a carton, though they are cooked. Other eggs are more likely to be cooked onsite
Bacon is often pre-cooked and just warmed, though cooking fresh bacon still happens.
Toast is factory made bread, though the final toasting was done onsite. Most Americans have never had real bread.
The above is breakfast - the meal most likely to be made on site. Lunch and dinner are far worse.
[sigh]
I was about to argue this (because I'm bored!), but then I remembered an anecdote. My mother-in-law (typical rural Midwest small town ex-housewife) mentioned to me one day that the rolls that I made were delicious.
I was a bit confused because I hadn't made any rolls. I had baked a couple loaves of bread though. Didn't think much of it until an hour later I went into the kitchen and thought, "why the hell is the top of this loaf all picked at?"
Then I recalled the comment. I had made challah, a braided Jewish bread. She had never seen braided bread before and thought the braids were rolls all smushed together.
I’ve also definitely found frozen stuff I can order like soft shell crab and soup dumplings that make super easy meals.
As for chains, Maggiano's used to do an eat-one-take-one deal, where for a $5-10 add-on you could get a pre-chilled pasta dish to take home, but I'm not sure they still do. That deal was great for takeout. A hot meal for tonight, leftovers for tomorrow, throw the chilled one in the freezer.
They typically have a number of households on a weekly rotation and deliver in temperature controlled trucks. You can buy food when they show up at your house or if you're well-organized, preorder.
They probably also ship.
Ignore the "salmonella vanilla" remarks: that was a long time ago :-)
CCF thrives in upper middle class areas.
Only a few blocks away is Bryant Park Grill. Prices at the two restaurants are surprisingly similar and both have over 500 seats. However, different people will enjoy their meal, or be uncomfortable or even offended at either one.
- https://bryantparkgrillnyc.com/
- https://www.olivegarden.com/locations/ny/new-york/nyc-times-...
It could also explain why Yelp restaurant reviews are so baffling. They need to figure out how to cluster reviewers by what “language” they’re actually speaking on restaurants.
So is the picky eater problem a shibboleth of an SES class higher or lower than upper-middle?
I can see lower classes being picky because of limited exposure to novel foods, but higher classes because of unrealistic culinary expectations.
Upper-class = won't
The word "picky" demonstrates the social wrapper in action:
lower-class "can't eat that food - I'm scared of it / it might throw off my digestion / not be worth the price"
is disguised as the upper-class "I could eat that but would rather have..."
to save face.
This is changing or has already changed. People in the upper middle class love to exclude certain basic food groups like meat, milk, bread etc. as a projection of their identity.
Have no idea how people have the stomach to invest in the prepared food business.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CAKE/cheesecake-fa...
What will also be interesting imo is seeing what CCF looks like in another 20 years after we've (maybe) gone through another recession. Will they cut back the menu to save labor costs from needing so many people who can cook wildly different dishes at the same time? Smaller restaurants with less kitchen space? More centralization of food prep that is then shipped into an individual location flash frozen?
Businesses that try to expand too much (in all senses of the idea) will face scaling issues and potentially need to cut scope to increase efficiency and lower costs, or be forced to raise prices to compensate. CCF has been around for 45 years according to Wikipedia and has only gotten bigger and more complex at the individual store level. For a restaurant, that is an incredible feat and deserves a lot of analysis that can hopefully be shared with smaller chains or owner-operators to help them find profitability with their existing "small" menus.
Their market cap has not gone anywhere in 10+ years and they earn meager profit margins, so I assume people whose job it is to analyze the businesses have mostly predicted there is not much room for expansion.
But just still being around in 20 years would be a huge accomplishment (which I think it will achieve). I could roll off a dozen sit-down chain restaurants that were pretty damn popular not very long ago that are dead or on their last legs. TGIFriday, Tony Roma, Marie Callendar, Houlihans, Macaroni Grill, Claim Jumper...
I'm also making that prediction. Restaurants are especially susceptible to enshittification. I remember when I worked at Ruby Tuesday in the 90's, it was upscale enough that all servers wore a shirt and tie. They were big on polished brass and wood interior, coupled with above-average food made mostly fresh. These days, it's a glorified Burger King with a salad bar.
As a whole, Americans are demonstrating that they care more about the food quality than the service at a restaurant, by eating at restaurants that, holding price approximately equal, sacrifice service in exchange for better food, rather than eating at family-dining establishments that do the opposite.
I read the article. It doesn't read like he understood 'the rules' at all.
> Overton told Thrillist in that same interview that he wouldn’t have made the menu so big and expansive if he had known more about the industry and how restaurants are supposed to operate.
Is it like "discounted" (not as in lower price, but as in to hold a low opinion of)?
0: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=slept%20on
The cost of energy and labor to deliver big, heavy goods to an individual's house is obviously more than the cost for individuals to go to a giant store and get it themselves.
If Amazon had opened a store like Costco selling bulk goods, then it might have made sense.
https://concierge.costco.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1001211
some details have been outline in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndqsvTIveR0
It just seemed like an overpriced, overcrowded version of every other American chain that couldn’t really figure out what it wanted to specialize in [1], so it just offered everything. The “serve everything” food chain seems to be an overcrowded space in the US.
Maybe I’m in the minority, but I never really understood the appeal.
1. Besides cheesecake, but I don’t think that many people really go there for cheesecake. Most people are usually too full for dessert at restaurants like this.
Your statement isn't indicative of anything in regards to quality of the product.
Which is why they are my favorite restaurant (from a business pov): they've made a restaurant work around a dessert upsell.
I think one of the theses of the article is that a lot of its success derives from the nostalgia it earned getting associated with "special occasions" for millennials growing up. And the other being that, while nobody may be clambering for any particular dish from the menu, it's a pretty easy inoffensive choice for a group of people who all want different things.
I'm generally with you, but the nostalgia thing seems to fall squarely in the category of "either you get it or you don't"
The appeal is that if you have a large group of people, everyone can find something they likes.
and the quote in the article "I have a deep love of chain restaurants period, but Cheesecake is the pinnacle." just sounded like a sponsored message.
I recall going there a couple years ago and the menu had advertisements. I asked the waitress and she cheerfully said "Lots of people really like it!"
... and only later did I realize that was probably a script.
I suspect people go there because of fear someone won't find something on the menu - not play to win, play to not lose.
Upper class in 1998 could be steakhouses but could be McDonald's.
The one thing I can't understand is the "overpriced" comment. Recently went with a fairly large group and was pretty shocked how low the total price per person was. Granted, a lot of that was because with the famously large portions a few folks shared, but it was still a better value than the vast majority of other places.
She says Dairy Queen food is better lol
- drive to the strip mall
- chain restaurant
- menu has everything
- with a ton of calories
- ads in the menus?
- good food
- price to quality ratio is good
It's interesting what people will do for the sake of feeling "fancy". I have a friend that keeps taking me to the boogiest restaurants for the most mediocre food and I don't enjoy the stuffy ambiance. I don't think he does either, but then he gets to tell people and show the photos and JFC I can't live like that.
Honestly it makes me sad, American "culture" is so ill-defined that... we apparently epitomize showing it off by pointing at our corporate largess. Look our big menu and even bigger microwave! Gross! America actually has a lot of cool stuff, cool sub-cultures, great local food. In non-pretentious settings even. But I guess that depends on why you're going out for dinner...
Their burger is actually really good.
My gripe is the portion sizes are just too big. So much waste. I wish I could order half portions at 3/4 the cost.
I then went recently as part of a family get together, and it was just plain great. My meal was really, really good: well seasoned, not overly salted/cheesy/creamy but still delicious, the veggies were crisp and fresh. Service was fantastic and prices were great.
In terms of the portion sizes, go for their "skinny" or whatever they call it menu. I had a shrimp pasta dish - it didn't taste like it was "light" or "diet" at all, but primarily the portion size was just much more reasonable. If you do get one of their giant dishes, lots of them, especially their Italian dishes, make for great leftovers.
I think you answer your own question with this bit:
> I'll admit, I loved Cheesecake Factory as a kid, but then as an adult I feel bad to say I was afflicted by a bit of the "anti-Cheesecake Factory snobbery": it was too kitschy, too "chain theme restaurant", too "American excess" with its giant portions and million menu items. I hadn't been in years (there is also not one close to where I live).
A lot of my friends and coworkers have the same view. If it is a chain, it is most likely bad (which is a statement that has a decent chance of being correct) but then extends to "and people who like to eat at chains are bad eaters."
My experience with The Cheesecake Factory is like yours:
> I then went recently as part of a family get together, and it was just plain great. My meal was really, really good: well seasoned, not overly salted/cheesy/creamy but still delicious, the veggies were crisp and fresh.
It's really good food. My wife and I eat there a couple of times a month for "fancy dinner". I feel like so many independently owned restaurants go overboard in either their "conceit", trying to find a way to stand out that winds up being over the top and puffery, or they are aiming for an experimental/possibly-outlandish food menu that winds up falling flat. So many of these places feel like "celebrity chef wannabe outlet that sells a ton of alcohol to make up the profits."
Meanwhile, The Cheesecake Factory merely...exists. Doing its thing, pretty well, with enough variety that it doesn't get boring.
People who think like this are not worth being around. Snobbery fueled by raging ignorance.
Trader Joe’s is a chain. What are people ignorant of when they shop there?
Chain doesn’t mean “bland”. It means “repeatable”.
Someone who grew up only knowing about Velveeta, and never experiencing a French fromagerie might think, "Hey, I like this but it seems there's more to the world than Velveeta, I wonder what those thousands of other cheese are like." But instead of curiosity, many turn into this insane Trumpy parody like "Velveeta is the greatest cheese god and america ever created and all other cheese is evil commie propaganda!" bullshit. Its like they have to build their identity on the virtue of being proudly ignorant snobs and then accuse people that call them on it for being educated snobs.
No skin off my back, but try to consider the breadth of what is going on here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Element_Fresh (I guess Covid killed it, too bad).
Even Denny’s in Japan does Dennys better than the USA. It is possible to be a chain and not be horrendous with portion sizes, and better food.
One time back in the day I was dating a girl and she somehow got gift certificates to eat at a place called “Golden Corral” which is a buffet. It was not the kind of place I’d considered eating at.
We get in and are sort of shocked at the place - you go through a literal corral after paying and they give you a massive cup for soda. There’s food everywhere and the place is anarchy. But the food was, to my taste, terrible and made from cheap, processed ingredients (too much salt, sugar in everything, fats were cheap oils, select grade meat, etc) and just bad. And the people there seemed to love it. So we had a laugh about the place and food and people that ate there.
But it occurred to me that those people worked hard to afford to take their families there and it was special to them. So better not to judge them and just be grateful that there’s places for different tastes, cultures, and budgets. To them, they were eating like kings.
CJ was quite good back in the day but I have not been to one in years -- in my opinion, quality declined a bunch and doesn't match up with their prices. Cheesecake Factory, on the other hand, has maintained high quality, tasty food in generous portions (in my opinion).
The portions are so large that if we plan on getting a cheesecake we order it so it comes after the meal. We actually don't like the cheesecakes so much; I like a thicker/heavier or a fluffier cheesecake, and the CCF cheesecakes are kind of right in the middle.
Go at lunch time, they have an entire page of "lunch-size" entrees.
But after kids your lifestyle changes (fancy restaurants at 8:30pm fade away) and you do different things, often based on their nap routine. So cheesecake was a place we tried since it’s super family friendly and near places we shop at. And it was surprisingly good.
We tried other chains and some were ok but many were not worth it imo. Cheesecake was the best overall in our assessment.
Lol, yes, exactly, that's the consensus opinion (not "surprisingly," except among food snobs), and it's why the place is packed every night while many of its competitors have gone out of business. Sorry it took you so long to realize it.
She's a great doc.
Texas Roadhouse and Cheesecake Factory both have large physical locations which are always packed, while lots of other restaurants have dead sections for much of the day. They also both locate their restaurants in specific areas. CF tends to be in or near upscale malls and shopping centers, while TR is often in deep suburbs that are mostly lined with only fast food, where it's actually the most expensive restaurant in the area.
But really, the bread...
The portions are huge and stodgy, so you end up feeling as though you’ve over ordered, over eaten and either wasted food or taking leftovers out which you don’t want to eat till the memories of the first portion have passed a few weeks later.
Alternatively, if I'm wish my wife, we tend to just order an appetizer/salad and one entree. The portion size tends to be about right in that case in many instances (it's still dish-dependent).
Though most restaurants do not provide healthy food, so I rarely eat out.
taps on % of population in obesity sign
I’ve heard people say about restaurants many times, “this place is so great, they serve soooo much food.”
I'm not saying that as a value judgement, but if you grew up with food insecurity (I did), having a large variety of gigantic plates of high calorie food is like the absolute pinnacle of dining.
You actually see the reverse all the time when "regular people" see the portions and prices at a Michelin-starred restaurant. They think it's a ridiculous rip-off, without realizing that people go to those restaurants for _aesthetic_ reasons, rather than because they're hungry. The idea of consuming food as an art form rather than as something you need to survive is just completely ridiculous to them.
If you had to summarize Cheesecake Factory in one sentence, "a Las Vegas casino re-imagined as a single restaurant" would be it.
Also, the food is horribly calorific. The fettuccine Alfredo being mentioned here as one of the favorites is 2040 calories.
That’s almost the entire daily calorie needs of a man and well above that of a woman’s.
what's scary is 1250 of that comes from fat. That's more fat than 1.5 stick of butter...
I don't know if people realize that.
Can you imagine eating 1.5 stick of butter?
But 2040 kCal is so much that the body will turn the energy into fat even if it didn't start out as fat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis
also, the US government says you should eat a shitload of it, so you can probably just assume it's terrible for you.
I grew up in America, but in an immigrant household that does not use butter. I was mid 30s when I first saw part of a Paula Deen cooking show, and it explained the state of the people I was seeing around the country. She was throwing sticks of butter and cups of sugar into things left and right.
Eating like this a few times a year is fine and not really an issue for our metabolism. Most people probably wouldn't even notice.
As America developed into the 21st century, the restaurant experience was transformed into a solution for the working class, but the core product did not change. So now they have crazy high calorie meals with the price and convenience of the snacks at your local European cafe.
Since I moved to to the EU from the US, this is just blatantly obvious. Eating out here is expensive (at least in NL) so when I do go out to eat, I don't really care about nutrition macros. I'm usually there to celebrate and enjoy myself.
We're starting to see a shift in the past decade of restaurants realizing that they have an obligation to their customers to provide a "healthy" meal while struggling internally to balance that with the obvious; if stuff tastes really good (ie more fat and sugar) then people will want to come back.
Surprisingly, Taco Bell has been a leader in this movement and is slowly changing their menu to be more healthy and accessible to alternate diets while still maintaining loyalty with their customer base.
As inflation continues and entry-level restaurant workers continue to push for higher and higher wages, it will be interesting to see how the market reacts. Americans only eat out so much because it's (somewhat) affordable. Take that away and watch how these businesses transform again to cater to new customer demands.
I would say delivery services prove there's alot more room for restaurants pricing upwards.
cities with food scenes still exist.
If they're really cooking everything in house, they're doing a lot of unnecessary work for a spectacularly mediocre result.
Remember when you could actually eat at Olive Garden? Like you still classified it as "food"?
to most people who arent looking that closely it appears to be a restaurant. To people who are looking its a dirty factory of unhappy employees, with disgusting food that noone wants to eat.
But their mom dragged them there.
The cheesecake factory defined the disgusting corporate approach to insulting americans on a daily basis and will likely be out of business within a few months if its not already.
Also I would add, a big proponent and adherent of CF are people wearing GAP and OLD Navy Labels.
AKA: foreigners looking for a slice of american pie.
I wouldnt be surprised if they are cooking the books to go SPAC
CF has the same aesthetics as those chains because older lower middle class Americans /like/ that.