Starting off the topic is the subject of chain restaurants.\u00a0\u00a0 If a restaurant is doing well, thoughts of expanding might then be entertained.\u00a0 I would assume that’s only natural in the business.\u00a0 Some obviously have no interest in expanding and clearly some choose to expand.<\/p>\n
When does a restaurant stop being a local business or eatery and move into chain territory?\u00a0 Scott and I just had this discussion and I would be curious to hear your thoughts.\u00a0 If you’ve been a reader of OHC for a while, you know that we try not to eat at chain restaurants.\u00a0 Even if those places are only in Ohio or got their start in Ohio (think Bob Evans or Wendy’s), they are clearly chains and hold no interest to us.<\/p>\n
Scott presented me with the example of one of our favorite places, what if they decided to open another location, would that make them a chain?<\/p>\n
My answer was no, I would not consider that a chain.\u00a0 But if they opened a third location, then yes, to me that is a chain.\u00a0 Two restaurants, I think the owners would be able to handle and be very involved in the running and upkeep of the place.\u00a0 Still small enough of a venture that one would get a personal feel walking into the restaurant.\u00a0 The individual taste of the owner would still be present, and customer service would still feel like it is number one priority.<\/p>\n
Three restaurants? And that’s where I think things start to slide or get pushed to the back.\u00a0 I would think it would be very hard to oversee and run three restaurants.\u00a0 Clearly there would have to be other people involved at the other restaurants to make sure everything is running.\u00a0 The owner would then have to start delegating and start passing out more responsibility to others.<\/p>\n
To me, it seems like it would be very hard to stay involved in the day-to-day process of running a restaurant when you’ve got three or more on your plate.<\/p>\n
And that’s where I think it starts becoming a chain business, when the owner can’t oversee everything themselves and they need to put other people in charge.<\/p>\n
Now I’m not talking about restaurant managers, as that is a whole other situation.\u00a0 I’m talking about the owner being involved in food purchase, menu creation, and generally being on hand to address the variety of things that come up during their day.\u00a0 I think, once there are three plus restaurants the attention to detail one expects from a local restaurant starts to fade.<\/p>\n
I feel the same way about a business in general.\u00a0 A local specialty shop opens, does well and opens another.\u00a0 Then another and so on.\u00a0 The same rules apply, once you reach so many stores owner involvement gets stretched very thin.\u00a0 Tasks and responsibilities get handed off to others.<\/p>\n
Popularity can be a double-edged sword.\u00a0 You are so popular that people demand more, but if you create more there is the risk of losing individuality and gaining a generic sort of feel.\u00a0 For restaurants, think Friday’s.\u00a0 How generic does a Friday’s feel when you walk in?\u00a0 Putting up local sports souvenirs doesn’t help the atmosphere at all.\u00a0 And for businesses, think The Locker Room.\u00a0 The setting and atmosphere of those places, to me, feels like, “Get in, get your stuff, and get out.”\u00a0 The goal being to process\u00a0 people as quickly as possible in order to meet some sort of dollar agenda by the end of the work day.<\/p>\n
That is not something I like experiencing when I’m eating or shopping.<\/p>\n
So what are your thoughts?\u00a0 When does a business become stop being individual and become a chain?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Starting off the topic is the subject of chain restaurants.\u00a0\u00a0 If a restaurant is doing well, thoughts of expanding might then be entertained.\u00a0 I would assume that’s only natural in the business.\u00a0 Some obviously have no interest in expanding and clearly some choose to expand. When does a restaurant stop being a local business or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4KYWa-25X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8057"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}