What happened to cheap food? Diners, Automats, and affordable eating [video] | Hacker News Reader

What happened to cheap food? Diners, Automats, and affordable eating [video]

youtube.com

27 pointscarabiner18 comments

Price, quality (food + service) and convenience--pick two. That creates our modern digest: fine dining (quality + convenience) and fast food (price + convenience).

You'll notice two things. One, the unfilled gap, quality and convenience, which most Americans remark upon when visiting e.g. Japanese convenience stores. (Diners and fast casual try to fill this niche.) And two, the forced joining of food and service quality.

We saw one side of this union broken in family dining, e.g. Ruby Tuesday's and Chuck E Cheese: price + service, with convenience trumping food quality. Automats are the inverse. Price + food, with service quality being sacrificed. Unfortunately, this means suppressing labor. And that is controversial [1]. (Apart from, as the narrator points out, for those of us with access to company cafeterias, airport lounges, IKEAS, et cetera.)

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/11/nyregion/nyc-restaurants-...

There used to be cafeteria restaurants beyond IKEA and corporate campuses though. In Seattle we had Bakeman's, where you could get a freshly made sandwich, soup, and slice of pie for like $11 (yes it'd be higher today with inflation, but even in 2016 it was still very cheap for a fresh meal in central Seattle). In Russia they still have stolovaya, very much like the IKEA cafeteria: https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g298484-d3201436.... I ate at them in 2009 and loved them.

I really wonder if something like a food truck serving rice & lentils with a side of yogurt for $5 a plate would be economically viable in any US city. Some people just want food that tastes OK, is fairly healthy, and frees them from doing dishes that night.

> Some people just want food that tastes OK, is fairly healthy, and frees them from doing dishes that night.

That would be amazing. I'd love to have such an option.

Essen is like this in Manhattan, probably the closest spiritual successor to Horn & Hardart and the automats there is. A big buffet cafeteria. Not too cheap though, though OK for manhattan commuter office worker lunch prices I guess

Unfortunately in most markets cafeteria style restaurants, especially affordable ones, are rare. A shame, it's my favorite genre of restaurant

The cuts in the video are so distracting that I genuinely couldn't watch it past the first minute. Why on earth was every sentence recorded separately and then spliced together?

Jump cuts are awful, but no-one on YouTube seems capable of creating a video without using them. Maybe read from a script instead?

In SF Eatsa opened up around 2016 as an Automat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWeocXaIPMo

To me, an automat has to be one where you put your money in and get your food right away. Eatsa was more of a fast food restaurant, but you got your food in a cubby rather than at a counter.

The last true automat I've seen in the US is one in Manhattan that I visited around 2008 (I think it was called Bamn!). It was, truly, nothing more than a novelty. The food wasn't good at all.

I’m guessing they closed because there was no Kroketten

Transcript or blog post please, there is no reason for this to be a video

Transcripts actually are available for this video and many other videos on YouTube - press the "more" button to open the video description and scroll down past the Chapters and Music sections to find the Transcript section, and press the button labeled "Show transcript" to open the transcript.

This section/button was not available/visible when I viewed this video on the mobile website, but was available on desktop version of site and on the iOS app, so if you're not seeing it, that may be why.

In general, this kind of shallow dismissal is against HN guidelines, but I think you might just not be aware that this feature exists on YouTube, or else I don't know why you would ask for a transcript when one already exists. That being said, the transcript feature has moved around, as it used to be under the three dot menu to the right of the Share button, and many people have made posts on the Google/YouTube support forums and on Reddit noting that they had trouble finding the feature when it was moved in the past.

I hope this helps you to consume content in ways that are meaningful to you. Having a preference is okay, but insisting that others adopt and share your preference is not fair to those who don't share your goals, ideals, or use cases.

I am aware of the feature. The styling makes it hard to read and the autogenerated transcript text is poor quality, so without a real transcript made by the author, it's useless. A real, literate piece of text intended for reading rather than autogenerated poorly, would be a lot easier to read.

What I'm railing against here is the video-fication of the web as literacy rates and attention spans keeps going down. I do not think it is consistent with HN's mission of intellectual edification to use this kind of lowbrow video content that doesn't actually use the video format for any useful visualizations that can only be done in video (eg 3blue1brown), but is merely text content that is made more engaging with a bunch of meaningless clip art and narration

I would agree with you generally, but not in this specific case. They explain how they used street photographs collected by the government as part of a special program. They also included topical photographs from the actual diner/automat chain that the video creator’s dad visited, as well as menu scans for pricing info. Furthermore, they sourced government relative cost of living data from a government report from 1900-2000. I actually don’t think they used clip art at all.

On balance, the video did make extremely excessive use of jump cuts, but I couldn’t really fault the video much beyond that. I thought it was cute how the video creator’s dad called her YouTube channel “her show,” it was just so quaint and wholesome.

Video literacy is a form of literacy too. Somehow I doubt that a person of any age who would watch this video for entertainment purposes has poor literacy.

There are services you can use to download the captions from YouTube videos, by the way.

I guess I disagreed with your original comment and I disagree with this response even more. Some things are just a matter of taste or preference, but other things you’re meaningfully incorrect about. On the whole, I think you’re just not a fan of YouTube videos that other folks enjoy but I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss the content in this manner. If you don’t like the video, ignore it, and hide the post if you must. I don’t think you could intellectually justify flagging the post, but do that if you think it’s against the guidelines. The guidelines make specific statements about complaining about votes or posts, which you’re kind of doing here so I don’t know what else to say while being constructive.

I get your point. Your view is widespread. The war is over, video has won. I know I have to accept this.

It just makes me sad, because there's no way around the fact it just takes _longer_ on a time-per-idea basis to consume content this way, no matter what I do, whether I use the AI generated transcript, use the speed up fourier transform feature at 2x, skim it with scrobbing time jumps, or whatnot.

PS: Blog posts support photographs. A slide show did not need to be a video. I'm OK with videos that really make use of the video medium -- this is not one of those.

I agree with you on pretty much all your points here, I just think that for the kind of slice of life content that this “video essay” has an audience for, there just isn’t a similar audience for if it were a blog post. I guess the shift to a semi-professional approach to content creation of this sort is driven by content creators going where the audience is, which is overwhelmingly on the side of video. It’s just easier to build an audience on YouTube and support that with Patreon I suppose.

I think the kind of content you’re looking for is probably on Substack and its competitors, but the major benefit to consumers and competitive advantage of YouTube is the recommendation algorithm and built-in user base of people with a Google/ YouTube account.

Right, I agree -- much of the web has turned into slow superficial low info density high entertainment density video stuff.

I kinda thought the whole point of HN was not to give in to the superficial wave, and focus on more information dense, less superficial, technically or intellectually interesting content. Again, I don't have an issue with video as a form, but with low info density high entertainment density video. It's like a fast food version of what I want. HN is for steak content not McDonald's content

We need food carts really. I like the idea of using large kitchens to bulk produce hot food as well, however the density and traffic are very high to justify something like that.

I feel like the concept of food carts is very American. Such a simple, entry level business that anyone can do who is passionate, however there have become so many rules they've become impossible.

American streets no longer feel American or that they embody our brazen and unique American culture, but instead have become this very British, "do you have a license for that?" ordeal. Everything clean and tidy all of the grass cut neat. No raw spirit or passion. It disgusts me. Let some people sell food for heavens sake

Central bank money printing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com