On Chain Restaurants/Coffee Shops and Your Freedom of Choice

I hate going to chain restaurants because they’re not accountable. Their corporate structure diverts any pressure away from decision makers to people who work in the individual locations. These individuals might have the best of intentions, but they’re not given the power to solve any real problems. Corporate demigods make halfhearted efforts to please people who are unhappy with them. We take these advances hook, line, and sinker, filling out their feedback forms and getting lost in their endless phone banks in the hopes that something productive will happen. Nothing ever happens and we’re left as unhappy as we were when the process started.

Why do we keep returning to these places? They have perfected a formula that maximizes their profits, which is understandable since they’re running businesses; however, this formula can be reached with sacrificing the quality of the product in the process. That’s not something that most chain restaurants are interested in doing. They feel like their product is high quality, even if the public is saying otherwise. Their bottom line is telling them that they’re doing great, so that’s the only thing they worry about. We make it so they don’t have any other worries.

We need to stop complaining about businesses online and start taking our business to the independent restaurants that need it. The same goes for coffee shops. Instead of going to Starbucks, you should go to an independent coffee shop and buy a cheaper, higher quality cup of coffee. Every major chain restaurant or coffee shop started as a hole in the wall place struggling to gain footing. We complain about not having alternatives when there are so many alternatives around us. If we don’t like Starbucks, we could go to another coffee shop and make them the new Starbucks.

I would never say I hope for the downfall of all the major chains. I go to them from time to time because there are so many around. You can’t drive down the street in most cities without tripping over a handful of Starbucks locations. That’s how they get you. Major chains know that you’re strapped for time, so they crowd the landscape until you see far more of them than their competitors. Look beyond the hoard of cookie cutter establishments and go off the beaten path. Never rest or settle until you have an experience that makes you a satisfied customer.