My brother and I were talking about restaurants the other day, after having a nice dinner at a local restaurant. We agreed that there are basically six kinds of restaurants, arrayed according to a 2 x 3 matrix (to put it mathematically; the matrix arrangement is mine, not my brothers). Along one of the two matrix axises, we have three choices: the new start-up restaurants, where the staff and management (often the owner and his or her family) are very anxious to please and go the extra mile to listen and respond to every customer’s desires and suggestions. The second choice is the restaurant that has been around for a while and is more-or-less doing OK; the owner no longer jumps thru hoops to make each customer happy, but will respond to any complaints as he or she is satisfied that the place is doing OK and wants to continue the whole enterprise. <\/p>\n
Then there is the sunset restaurant, where the owner has decided that the place is not going to make it, and keeps the place going as long as possible just to wring out a few extra dollars in revenue as to defray all of the debt obligations that are not going to be fully paid off. The staff probably knows that the place is on the decline, and mostly just go thru the motions. Hopefully the cook will not take too many shortcuts so as to threaten food poisoning, nor let sanitation decline such that insects start showing up on the plate. But you know that some of the food being served is not quite as fresh as it might be in a better place. And you start hearing \u201coh, we’re out of that today\u201d more often from the waiters.<\/p>\n
So that’s one set of choices on the matrix grid. The other dimension holds two basic categories. The first is for restaurants that are more-or-less generic restaurants. The owner has gone around looking at other local restaurants, getting ideas on what pleases people in the neighborhood or in the \u201cmarketing group\u201d (e.g., perhaps the restaurant wants to cater more to business people than families, or to a younger crowd versus older types, etc.). She or he puts together a list of what seems to work, what people seem to like, and sets out to design a \u201cgeneric restaurant\u201d that will more or less please all of his intended customers, even if it doesn’t thrill them. They may not look back on a meal at a one of these generic restaurants as anything special, as anything to remember; but so long as the food and service are reasonably good, they may well go back. It’s always good to have a place that you can rely on, a place were things are more or less predictable.<\/p>\n
The other option here is a restaurant having something of a \u201csignature\u201d from the owner. Something is different, something is a bit risky, something reflects what the owner thinks a restaurant experience should be. Maybe the menu has some very different types of dishes, or maybe the decor and layout are a bit unique. This is the kind of restaurant that, if it works, you remember after you leave. If everything went right, you will remember it in a good way, and want to go back. If it didn’t, you the customer will probably be less forgiving than if a more generic place is having a bad night.<\/p>\n
So, according to a 2×3 matrix, there are six resulting options: new and generic, new and unique; established and generic, established and unique; and declining and generic, or declining but still unique. Of course, there are further dimensions to restaurant identity. One big restaurant dimension is cuisine: American, Italian, Chinese or other Oriental, Mexican or other Latin, Mediterranean, and lots of smaller national identities. Then there is the overall price level: is the place intended to be low price \/ high volume establishment offering a basic decor and food experience, or a high price \/ lower volume experience with nicer decor and fancier food? Does the restaurant provide mostly a fast-meal with take-out options (e.g. a Chinese or pizza place with a small, not-too-fancy dining room), or a slower dining experience? <\/p>\n
And then there is the difference between the national chain restaurant and the local home-grown establishment. The chains try to be distinctive, they try to create the image of a place that is special (e.g., having interesting bric-a-brack along the walls); but they really are generic after all, as the \u201cspecialness\u201d is mostly just a designed-in illusion, something done in all of their restaurants.<\/p>\n
I do enjoy eating out once in a while; a good restaurant experience makes life a little nicer. There is also a social-participation aspect to it all, i.e. to eating in a room with other people and interacting with the waiter (and sometimes the manager or owner him or herself). It’s a little extravagance that is usually worth the price. Oh, but speaking of price, it seems to me that restaurant bills have been going up much too fast over the past 10 or 15 years. Is this true, or is it just a function of my old age coming on?<\/p>\n
Let’s do a little bit of math. Back around 1984 or so, right after finishing all of my schooling and settling into a steady career groove, I went out to eat a lot, usually more than once a week. This was just another component of my social life (back when I had one!) Despite the 30 years that have passed since then, I specifically remember thinking that $20 was a good rough estimate of the bill for food and drinks at a decent dining establishment. What should that bill be today, if the cost of dining out matched the general inflation rate? Well, if you use the national overall CPI index from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics site<\/a>, $20 in 1984 should equate to $45.78 today. Hmmm . . . I guess you could get away with $45 today if you stick to a national chain or a lower-end place, but even the mid-level local places around me generally set you back at least $50 or more (before tip). <\/p>\n Digging just a little further, if we look specifically at food and beverage inflation in the NY Metro area, the $20 in 1984 would now be about $48.75. OK, that’s closer to the mark. Finally, if we look at the BLS index for NY Metro area specific to \u201cfood away from home\u201d, the 2014 equivalent of that 20-spot would be $49.37. So, restaurant prices did rise a bit faster than national inflation in general. But actually, the problem may be more a question of overall price trends in the New York area; the all-goods price index for my home region would inflate a $20 bill from 1984 into $50.87 today. Hmm, so restaurant prices aren’t really any worse in general than what has been happening for most everything in the metro region. <\/p>\n Well, part of it is just getting old. Today, a $50 \u201cBenjie\u201d is needed to do what a $20 \u201cHamilton\u201d once did in my neck of the woods. My mind is still living in the past, still remembering the good old days when I was younger and had the time, energy and social contacts to get out a lot. Things are different for me today, as a sixties-generian. Not necessarily worse in every way, not even in most ways. Probably better in more than one aspect. But certainly different. I do get infected by the nostalgia bug now and then, and those old days don’t seem like so long ago; so having to pay two and a half times as much now to eat out seems like a sign of impending social breakdown. (Another factor is that I wasn’t thinking at all about retirement back then; but now, the financial realities of an approaching \u201cnext phase of life\u201d when I won’t be working anymore [not full time, anyway] continue to stare me in the face, and make me think a bit harder about almost every expenditure.)<\/p>\n But no, a $50 restaurant tab doesn’t mean that the world is coming to an end. And I hope that my brother and I can still continue getting out to restaurants on a regular basis (he actually was a part of my restaurant circle back in the 80’s), and pondering what makes one restaurant different from another. And I will try to hold in my angst when the check comes around!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My brother and I were talking about restaurants the other day, after having a nice dinner at a local restaurant. We agreed that there are basically six kinds of restaurants, arrayed according to a 2 x 3 matrix (to put it mathematically; the matrix arrangement is mine, not my brothers). Along one of the two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,6,31],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4726"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4726"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4729,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4726\/revisions\/4729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}