Chain Restaurants, IMO

In my teen years, quite some decades ago, both chain restaurants such as Denny's and fast food such as Kentucky Fried Chicken opened in our town. In the following decades they were looked upon as inferior dining as people preferred the Mom and Pop and individual fine dining restaurants. While driving cross country and finding these unpredictable my feelings about chain food restaurants began to change. Applebees was always Applebees and breakfast, lunch and dinner chains were consistent in menu and in quality control in whatever city we came to rest.

In the August issue of The New Yorker, Atul Gawande suggests in an article titled Big Med that perhaps health care can apply the concepts of a quality chain restaurant, The Cheese Factory, to provide quality and consistency to hospitals and clinics.

"Big chains thrive because they provide goods and services of greater variety, better quality, and lower cost than would otherwise be available."