<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by MeLike2Travel:
When I look around at my choices of places to eat, it's becoming quite clear that the number of fast food places are drastically increasing. More and more are being built, and more and more real restaurants and mom and pop type places are disappearing. It's no wonder there are so many people in the US are obese. I think it's incrediby frustrating, and I wonder if this trend is occurring in other parts of the world.
Your thoughts?</font>
I live in the Wash DC area has to do with a number of things.
1. I think the increase in the number of fast foods is due to the family with two employed. I don't know what you call them. like Yupees or bupees or something. No time, buy fast food.
2. My employees are pretty close to minimun wage, yet they do not bring lunch(I do) they buy fast food every day for lunch. They buy fast food for dinner every day. I provide food for monthly company meetings. I once bought strange sandwiches (designer chicken & cheeses) on funny Italian bread things (foccacia). They allowed it was decent, but would prefer burgers or pizza.
3. I do not think the number of better class restaurants in the DC area has decreased. In fact, since 1963, the area has had a tremendous growth of better restaurants. The DC people do not rave about them like other areas, so they sort of go unnoticed.
There has been tremendous growth since 1990.
I do not think there has been much growth of better restaurants since Bush was elected and the economy soured.
The growth of fast foods since 2000 has also slowed.
Also note that fast food was mcdonald and other burgers and pizza and chicken. Now we have these franchise steak things and noodle things and seafood things that are between fine dining and FF.
FF is able to produce many $ per square foot and per employee $, and compared to the price of food raw materials, no one can compete.
[This message has been edited by slawecki (edited 10-31-2003).]