The "late great"
 

A lousy experience got me thinking....

How many once great restaurants/chains have gone down the tubes? When? How? Why?

I'll go first with my experience this evening at "House of Blues"....

First of all, I'll concede that you couldn't really call this place "great". But on my first visit in a city where I traveled often on business, the place made for a fun evening with good basic food and reasonable prices. I went every time I was in town and was never disappointed. I frequented multiple locations in other cities and got the same positive experience each and every time. I should say here that I was more than a little skeptical at first...then more than pleasantly surprised.

Bravo! Great concept!

Fast forward a few years....

Everything about the place has gone downhill except the prices!

I was under the impression that the operators "kept a lid on prices" as sort of an homage to the music, culture, and people being honored by the restaurant concept. With $10 burgers, $6 gumbo, etc., this part of the equation has clearly gone out the window!

Then there's the food itself. Wife's steak salad was unchewable unidentifiable mystery meat on rancid-looking "greens".
Son's shrimp po'boy (an $11 sandwich) was cold, chewy, off-tasting and came with soggy fries. My pepperoni pizza tasted vaguely of salted rubber with no discernable tomato sauce flavor.

When my wife ordered a pina coloda, she was told the frozen drink maker was "out of order tonight" Hmmm....this didn't seem to be any particular problem for the private party going on in the main dining room where there were multiple frozen drinks at any table. As a businessman, I've always found that a expending a little extra effort to satisfy a customer was preferable to lying to a customer....but I digress.

Anyway, there we were off in a depressing little side room with all the tourists overpaying for bad food with slow indifferent service ( and lies from the staff optional).

At some point the investors/operators will pull the plug on the House of Blues concept. There'll be all the news stories about how the "business model had become outdated", blah blah blah. The people putting out that line probably will actually believe it. The fact, however, will be that the original idea of providing a fun experience, decent food, and reasonable prices was abandoned by people who thought they could get away with "squeezing it"...raise the price here, lower the standards there....etc. etc. Perhaps nobody will notice....or at least "idiot, hick, tourists who don't know any better".

Yet what to me was most surprising of all in tonight's "debacle" is that, per the menu, the place had become so arrogant as to put the executive chef's name on the whole mess! I can assure you that if it were me, I'd rather avoid responsiblity for something so abysmal, rather than claim credit for it!

It's been my experience that I never really enjoy "dining" at chain restaurants -- it's their atmosphere that seems to be the attraction.

Well, I'm sorry. I respectfully disagree. I've been a businessperson long enough to understand that good concepts can, will, and should be duplicated.
I agree, however, to the point that sometimes atmosphere is sometimes the only thing that comes across in chain operations.

Another...more common....example of what I was thinking with "late great" was Chi-Chi's. Never really authentic....but a fun place where you could get pretty good food at reasonable prices. After a few years this had run its course and become universally bad food in dirty, unappealing, if not surly surroundings. Come to think of it....same goes for El Torito, which has limped along for more than half a century.