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I was reading\u00a0this article<\/a>\u00a0about how the Red Lobster brand is being considered to be sold off of or restructured into a bastardized spin-off of its former shell by parent company Darden, and I couldn\u2019t help but feel a little melancholy over the notion that Red Lobster in one way shape or form, is dying.\u00a0 One, I love lobsters, two, Red Lobster\u2019s periodic endless shrimp offer is among the best things in the world, and three, it should be nothing new for my six readers that I\u2019m a nostalgic kind of person who sure, understands the necessity of change, but at the same time isn\u2019t always the most readily accepting of it.<\/span><\/p>\n But the point of me writing this post is questioning the modern defiant trend of people who try their hardest to avoid eating at chain restaurants, like a Red Lobster, Chili\u2019s, Ruby Tuesday or Olive Garden.\u00a0 Even the article alludes to this notion:<\/span><\/p>\n It seems that consumers are turning their noses up at hoity-toity sit-down places like Red Lobster and Olive Garden these days in favor of cheaper chains like Chipotle.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I can\u2019t say that I agree completely, because comparing Chipotles to sit-down establishments is like comparing motorcycles to automobiles; both are means of transportation, but they\u2019re both also vastly different classes of doing such.\u00a0 If I were the one writing the article, I\u2019d probably replace \u201cin favor of cheaper chains like Chipotle<\/em>\u201d with \u201cin favor of trendy local independent gastro\/micro-pubs<\/em>,\u201d because I think that\u2019s a more accurate assessment to what I witness on a regular basis in the city I live in and the cities I\u2019ve been to.<\/span><\/p>\n Most everyone I know is kind of like this now.\u00a0 I\u2019m kind of like this now in the sense that I\u2019ve mentally got my list of preferred places to dine out at, and few of them are actually chain joints, but the difference is that I won\u2019t scoff my nose up in the air if one of them is suggested, and it sounds like a good idea at the time.\u00a0 Red Lobster\u2019s endless shrimp often times sounds like a better idea than dealing with a 60-minute wait at the pub with good beer and fish & chips but a quarter of the seating and metered parking any day of the week.<\/span><\/p>\n The thing is that I don\u2019t really understand where the defiance against the chains necessarily originated from.\u00a0 The most common response is simply the righteous cry of supporting local businesses, which I\u2019m completely all for doing, but I think people oftentimes forget that in spite of being a chain restaurant, there are plenty of cases that the Red Lobster or Chili\u2019s in the neighborhood is being run by an aspiring franchisee who happens to be a member of the exact same local community.\u00a0 Sure, they might have a little bit more financial backing, and their work is helping putting some extra coin in some other \u201cthe man\u2019s\u201d pocket, but when the day is over, they\u2019re still trying to do what all the local places are doing and make a living for themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n I get that there\u2019s an air of wanting to be hip to the scene, and know where all the cool, unique local eateries are, so that we can sound in-the-know to our communities, and have a good understanding of where to suggest or take people to get something interesting.\u00a0 But at the same time, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s that cool to contrarily crucify chain restaurants for pretty much no reason than that they\u2019re corporately-backed, or that you could find them anywhere from Los Angeles, California to Sheboygan, Wisconsin.\u00a0 Chains exist for reasons, and up until more recently, they\u2019ve done well for themselves because of said resaons; they\u2019re familiar, (fairly) consistent food that particular people, often times families with kids, can rely upon to get reliable menus and know what to expect.<\/span><\/p>\n Sure, they may not be doing so well in big cities with lots of local competition, but the big cities throughout the United States are still a segment of country as a whole.\u00a0 So whereas Red Lobsters and Outback Steakhouses might be reviled in San Francisco, Atlanta and Chicago, they\u2019re still probably doing just fine and thriving in Webster, Modesto, Kingdom City and all the other smaller suburbs and towns scattered throughout America.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was reading\u00a0this article\u00a0about how the Red Lobster brand is being considered to be sold off of or restructured into a bastardized spin-off of its former shell by parent company Darden, and I couldn\u2019t help but feel a little melancholy over the notion that Red Lobster in one way shape or form, is dying.\u00a0 One, … Continue reading Where will the chain-hating madness end??<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[159,131,56,15],"class_list":["post-38056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-advertising","tag-branding","tag-food","tag-og"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38058,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38056\/revisions\/38058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}