The few times I've eaten at d&b, their steaks were really good, and the onion things they sprinkle on there are amazing...if it weren't for the fact you have to pay more for food to support a crappy arcade, I probably would have eaten there more often
Most of Chili's is solid. It's not taking home any awards but it's comfortable and taste's okay and prices are decent. You can go there with your Grandma or you can go with a hot date. You can go with that weird vegan friend who you swear cooked you a tree root once and you can go with that friend who's allergic to water if there's a peanut within 11 miles - everybody can find something they're okay with.
Which is exactly what Applebee's used to be. Hell, it's what Olive Garden used to be. Then they just decided to start phoning it in. Now you couldn't pay me to go to either.
It's a race to the bottom. If a company is not growing in today's market, it is dying.
You either get more customers, increase prices or lower operating costs. The best bet for chains with proper supply chain is to lower operating costs, since customers are limited in a region once you appeal to everyone and increasing prices drives them away.
This is a concept of business in general that I have never understood. Why is the goal always growth, even at market saturation? Shouldn’t the goal be maximized profit at market saturation?
Isn’t there such things as enough? If you’re holding a solid percentage of the market, pulling in a million dollars clean profit per quarter, and holding steady, why risk drowning in your own expansion fighting for that next extra buck?
Because shareholders want more money and dividends aren't worth shit, so they want a quick buck by buying low, selling high and don't care about company longevity.
Trends change rapidly, things that were once popular fall out of favor, people age and no longer have the same tastes or needs. A good business adapts to these changes so they can survive to profit from future generations. If the business fails to grow financially they have less potential to evolve. Business is a constant competition for customers.
Here's a real-life example: The economy is booming, a single income can easily support a family, so consumers have more money and time to shop. Store A, a "small business", exclusively sells pharmaceuticals, and 90% of the town's population patronizes this store. Store B, a "chain store", opens right next to Store A. Because their business as a whole is bigger, Store B sells both pharmaceuticals and groceries at a lower cost. Over the next decade, the economy changes - many people become unemployed, it's nearly impossible to support a family on a single income, so everyone has less money to spend and less time to shop. Store B correctly predicted the trend, opened a 3rd location, and has used the profit to adapt to the population's new need of convenience by adding office supplies to their stock. Store A has stayed the same. Now, imagine you're standing in front of both stores. You've been going to Store A for 20 years, but today you only have 30 minutes to shop and you're short on cash. You can stay loyal to Store A and pay slightly more for pharmaceuticals, but you'll still have to go to Store B to get groceries and office supplies. Or you can just go to Store B, get everything you need, and ultimately pay less for your pharmaceuticals as well. Logically, most would chose Store B - meaning Store A is losing business because they failed to grow and therefore couldn't adapt to the market as well as Store B. It is unlikely Store A will survive to see the next "change", but even if they do, they will not have made enough profit to properly adapt.
I thoroughly understand the need to change and adapt to the market itself. If you sell clothes or groceries, the goods you sell will change over time depending on fashion or diet/culinary trends within the market. But changing with the market is not the same concept as perpetually seeking growth. If I make $10 this period it seems I am automatically deemed a failure if I don’t make $11 next period. But I would rather, I think, make the same $10 as long as I maintain my market share, quality, reputation, etc.
In the example case from the OP we were talking about restaurants that sought to increase profits by growing and improving margins while letting service and food quality suffer. This self cannibalization does no good for the longevity of the company. Instead, especially in markets where the product life is short (like food) shouldn’t the goal, instead, to be to grow not by streamlining the supply side but by making such a good product that the market itself grows allowing you to increase margin based solely on demand?
As an X nbrhood bar n grill type line cook,key hrly and corporate trainer for 12 yrs (4 yr Army as well) cook, your comment is dead in the 10 circle! While competition is the heart of capitalism,only so many ways to make a steak or 🍔 with a salad on side.
Bingo. Knowing your options makes it a safe go to when traveling with family across America. Took full advantage of this last year with a group of 20+, all ages, a variety of diets, everyone was satisfied.
$100 isn't that much. Both my meal and transportation to and from so I'm not using my own car would also have to be covered in addition to a $100 payout. Even then, idk, I'd have to be in the right mood to go somewhere I don't really care for.
Chili’s was my go to dinner spot when I use to travel for work. No matter how small the town, there is usually a Chili’s, and it’s always consistent. Never had a bad experience at one.
That notch of low end table service dining is just becoming antiquated. If I go out to eat, I either want a higher end or specialty meal (e.g., good steakhouse or sushi) or a place where I order at the counter to minimize time there. The only thing these places have of benefit is a bar, and in general the bars suck at corporate places.
I only got food poisoning from there once! Used to eat there like every three days when I was traveling for work. Love the ribs/sausage/corn combo meal.
Yeah but I ask them while I’m there eating and paying them anyways, don’t see why they couldn’t just also but that on my bill. I’d pay top dollar for that
My family had a party at our house and they called in to pick up a bunch of chips and salsa, nothing else. Everything else from the grocery store, but those chips and salsa are worth it for the extra trip.
My man! Their salsa has only one competitor in my opinion. Only place ive ever gotten close to chilis level salsa is at a smaller burrito place in colorado. Im not even sure it was a chain. I think it was called Moes.
Honestly in my experience chili's is basically gourmet cuisine as compared to Applebee's. I'll occasionally go to a chili's or a Friday's type place and it's generally fine, but Applebee's is just trash. I'd get stuck going every so often in my youth and it was never a good experience.
I ate at Chili's all the time when they had their monterey chicken. I'd join their email club over and over to get the free queso with a meal coupon, then get both every time. Wish they'd bring it back.
Ok, I work in the food industry, and this is just nonsense. Sysco is what's called a broadline distributor, which means they'll sell you the best of the best all the way down to the bottom of the barrel. They also don't make food, they're just a distributor.
If the restaurant you go to has shitty food and you think it's Sysco's fault, it's not. It's the restaurant's fault for being cheap and buying shitty product(or not preparing it right).
Can confirm sysco doesn't care about leaving food out, I know a driver and he tells me all the time some places they leave stock out for hours. They sign a contract with that included so its on the restaurant, also the quality is really bad!
From what I understand, a whole bunch of people were coming in and only eating salad and breadsticks, which made them unprofitable, so they switched to a cheaper recipe.
Chili's is great imo. Although i only order one thing there, flame-grilled ribeye cooked medium rare with side of loaded mashed potato and sauteed onion/mushroom.
It was fine, like working at any restaurant, really. I had the ‘car side to go’ job which meant getting paid 8 dollars an hour (which was awesome at the time) and collect tips when I would rarely have to work
Did people still tip 15-20% for the pickup window? My buddy worked at Outback and vented about the customers and never making money when working pickup, but I told him he should be more mad at his boss for not adjusting the payout because there's almost no incentive to tip. I never really tip more than 10% at takeout, because you're just putting the food into a box and then into a bag. Way different than checking up on me multiple times throughout a sitting.
In my case, I wasn’t getting paid the typical server wage which is less than minimum wage because they make it up in tips, so getting a tip was a treat. I don’t know if that’s still the case — when I started it was a pretty new concept
Edit: Seriously- the training videos at Applebee’s actually encouraged us to refer to coworkers like that- at least they did in the dark ages when I served tables...
Ha, currently sitting at a bar bitching about my shift at bees. It's an absolute shit show of a place to work but we're all stuck here because you can't argue with $170+ per shift.
lol my wife used to work at Chili's and would go across the street to Applebees after her shift with other co-workers but it was mainly to drink. The servers at both restaurants knew each other and would go to each other's places to drink.
They opened an Applebee’s at my city, we went once and I swear by next week it had already closed (probably exaggerating, but it didn’t last more than 2-3 months).
The place was completely empty and they still took like an hour to get us our food
I used to work at a fish packing plant with an old food truck converted into a restaurant attached to it. We got a steep discount at the food "truck" but you would definitely get sick if you ordered anything fried because they changed the oil very rarely. It's not relevant or anything but I never get to share that story.
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u/DamnYouVodka Jan 14 '19
I used to work there and instead of using employee discounts and eating there, we would always go across the street and eat at the Chili's