The Downward Spiral

[Anonymous No.12404052]

Did you ever witness a restaurant you frequent suddenly going downhill fast in terms of quality? Why does this happen?

[Anonymous No.12404082]

>>12404052
i would go to leafland every couple of years to visit some family and there was this restaurant that was a mexican restaurant for a long time and was pretty good and cheap. it got bought out by someone else, had a british name, but they kept a lot of the mexican food, added some french dishes for some reason (they were pretty terrible), and at the end of the meal the gave out fortune cookies. it made no fucking sense and the quality of the food really took a huge dive. they again got bought out and turned into an italian place but for some fucking reason kept a bunch of the mexican dishes on the menu. really not understanding this obsession with keeping some of the mexican dishes when your restaurant isnt mexican at all. they got bought out AGAIN and now its just another mexican/spanish restaurant. its a lot more expensive now but the food is very good, but those transition periods between the initial restaurant and what it is now were just horrible. it was like eating at a chain restaurant but worse

[Anonymous No.12404091]

>>12404052
Usually a change in management. BoH leaves when they get a new boss who doesn't know that they're doing and then FoH catches on when their tips start going downhill because of the lack of customers. Then they hire whoever the fuck they can get while trying to change things without knowing what they're doing and end up understaffed with a shitty staff who doesn't know what they're doing. Add poor money management and it only takes a few months before they close shop however much capital they might have gone in with.

[Anonymous No.12404092]

>>12404082
just realized i didnt actually answer your question at all sorry, but have the bump anyway because i too would like to know why this happens
market changes and peoples' taste change i guess, i really dont know. shit sucks though but i imagine theres tons of behind the scenes stuff going on that the consumers dont know about

[Anonymous No.12404907]

I went to a fairly new local diner type place a number of times recently. Food was always on point. Nothing fancy or special but it was good enough to keep coming back for. One day I noticed that the guy that usually did the cooking was not there and some woman was doing the cooking instead. Some dishes were just bland, some were oversalted. I figured the original cook moved on and they hired whoever they could even if they weren't very skilled.

[Anonymous No.12405062]

rotisserie chicken place I frequented in. the manager was a fucking cleanfreak who was one of the nicest dudes I've ever met. everything every single surface would be sparkling and as soon as you got up and left, you'd see him frantically clean every nook and cranny of the table and chair you were on. chicken was top-notch fucking tasty stuff, and the chips were THRICE FRIED in beef tallow "for extra taste" which i thought was wonderful.
sadly, all things pass, and one day he told me he only bought the place to fix it up and then sell it to another owner as a way of making some good money. turns out the next owner was the greasiest, hairiest new yorker and his sweaty son. they fucked up everything I loved about the place and i'm glad I left the area. last I heard, it closed down due to rats.

[Anonymous No.12405180]

>>12404091
yeah there was a whole chapter about the reasons restaurants fail in Anthony Bourdain's book Kitchen Confidential. It was very interesting.

[Anonymous No.12405491]

>best italian place in town
>Upstate NY so that actually means something
>Ingredients sourced from farms in the area for all but one menu item
>Pasta made by hand every morning
>Sauces made in house
>Original owner was off the boat, next owner was his son for 15-20 years
>Passes the torch to his own son last year
>Pasta started getting made weekly
>Because the time for the pasta was taken off the shift sauces were made weekly too
>Then the pastas werent made at all
>Sauces were still made but they started using lightly salted water instead of stock
>Bread went from dough going into a brickfire oven to frozen tiny loaves going into a convection oven
The place was truly dead to most of the city when the sysco truck started showing up. Now the best place in town is good food with an EXTREMELY political atmosphere. Pretty good if you get it as takeaway though

[Anonymous No.12405496]

>>12404052
almost every single restaurant i’ve seen fail, including my dads, started when family joined BoH to cut costs

[Anonymous No.12405921]

American style pizza place. They refurbished the kitchen and changed the oven. Nothing else. Pizza has been feeling off ever since.

[Anonymous No.12406678]

I think things start going downhill when a restaurant has poor revenue and they try to make up for it by cutting costs that affect the quality of meals served - cheaper labor, cheaper food sourcing, smaller portions, etc

[Anonymous No.12406721]

>>12404052
Scenario 1:
>Open a place with high hopes, much of your money was invested in it, and your livelihood depends on the success of this establishment
>Lovingly make a dedicated menu and recipe
>Business profitability is decreasing and is slower than expected
>Try to sell the place a year later but nobody buys it
>Stuck with restaurant and owner desperately tries to stay out of the negative margin and will do anything to stay alive.

Scenario 2:
>Owner manages to sell unprofitable restaurant but very cheaply
>New owner makes massive cuts to make place more profitable; new owners don't really have passion for the original recipe that they did not make so they don't give a shit if quality goes down

Many people don't realize that many restaurants are not profitable. Even your popular local restaurant is probably struggling with money. That's why that "popular place in town" suddenly closes down and people in the neighborhood wonder what the hell happened, with all the Boomer grandmas exclaiming "I thought that place was doing so well!" It's a little known fact.

[Anonymous No.12406746]

>>12406721
Also to note: Scenario 2 is the more likely explanation. Ownership changes in restaurants are often very quiet (compared w/ other businesses) and without fanfare. Most customers will never notice it.

Many failing restaurants change hands every few years and the quality drops little by little every subsequent owner as each owner has a different idea on why the previous owner failed to make a profit. I noticed this in the local pizzeria. The quality of the pizza and toppings noticeably dropped every time there was a new owner.

[Anonymous No.12406819]

>>12404052
In my experience it's usually because the owner/head chef is a good cook but doing too many drugs

[Anonymous No.12407009]

>>12405491
>an EXTREMELY political atmosphere
What, are mao and marx painted on the walls?

[Anonymous No.12407030]

>>12407009
No JFK was assassinated in the restaurant last year

[Anonymous No.12407038]

>>12407030
:0

[Anonymous No.12407053]

>>12404052
>local Mexican meat market in Southern California
>used to go there at 12-13 and buy candy, the lady who owned it was really nice
>had a part where you could order Mexican food
>owners decide to sell meat market
>next owner for some reason hires completely new staff for the kitchen
>all of the food is seriously over salty
>left in hot pots for fucking hours until my friend got food poisoning
>changed owners again to some middle eastern faggot
>completely turns meat market into liquor store
>completely ignores the restaurant part
>basically just a convenience store with an unused restaurant now

I fucking miss my comfy meat market, lads

[Anonymous No.12407062]

>>12407053
I miss meat in my mouth too anon

[Anonymous No.12407104]

>>12404082
When restaurants change hands the new owners usually request a copy of the old business's PMIX for a year or so back either as part of the buyout or just as a courtesy (if you are selling your restaurant/property those numbers don't really do you any good anymore) so the new owner looks at the top sellers and keeps them while changing the concept thinking it will keep the regulars around or sometimes this comes in a more hands on way by the owner talking to the regulars themselves. So that's why that happens.
>Food turned to shit
The issue comes from one of two factors possibly both at once. Linda buys margaritas every Tuesday and loves the enchiladas she brings a book club or some shit every week so the owner wants to keep her happy which is why the enchiladas stay on the menu despite the fact that they are trying to be a French place now, Julio in the back used to make the enchiladas from scratch but he fucked off back to Costa Rica or maybe he just didn't like the new owner so now they don't have anyone to make the dish, and they are ordering tortillas and sauce just for this dish you sell maybe two per week of, it's more cost effective to just order frozen premade. The owner realizes he can do that for a few items and his food cost goes down a bit plus he doesn't need Julio level experience cooks he can train high school kids to microwave these dishes and keep one or two experienced guys to do the more intricate stuff per shift. Radical until Linda orders her enchiladas and tastes the difference immediately as does any newcomers who give them a try. Sales decline and the new owner decided it isn't worth the investment and sells it off, rinse and repeat until someone who knows how to run a restaurant gets it then it changes concept (or just rebrands with the same menu and a new name) or is bought by the bank in which case the property gets a full reset.

[Anonymous No.12407322]

>>12407104
thanks for the info julio

[Anonymous No.12407477]

>Really good under the radar bangladeshi restaurant
>Popular mostly with Immigrants, hipsters, and adventurous randos who stumbled upon it or heard from one of the other two groups
>known for really good, cheap, authentic weekday lunch buffet
>Some local writer hears about it and goes, and the place gets a big write up in local magazine
>suddenly super busy
>place is swarmed
>owners smell money
>They start cutting the quality on the lunch buffet, and jack up the prices (they almost doubled the a-la-carte prices, I think)
>They start trying to do more mainstream food, like chiken tikka masala to try to keep their new audience
>immigrants/hipsters stop coming
>reviews start to drop
>owners keep trying to court mainstream business
>main chef leaves and starts his own place

it's still around, but now it's just a generic indo-bangladeshi restaurant.
A shadow of what it used to be.

[Anonymous No.12408145]

local rap-themed sandwich place rebranded for some dumbfuck reason and made the sandwiches more expensive and shittier AND took the mac and cheese off the menu. The mac and cheese was all i bought there and now i cant get it, that mac and cheese was fucking divine

[Anonymous No.12408193]

>>12408145
>rap-themed
??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

[Anonymous No.12408204]

Ownership and management, they control recipes a lot more than you’d think

[Anonymous No.12408212]

>>12408193
essentially all the sandwiches were named after rap songs and they played eminem a lot

[Anonymous No.12408248]

There's a really cool bar in my downtown, which still has a great beer selection, but completely gave up on their food. They had excellent BBQ, but my guess is the yuppies just didn't buy it often enough, so now they sell burgers and fries

[Anonymous No.12408255]

>>12408212
eww eminem is gay

[Anonymous No.12408264]

>>12408255
listen man all i went there for was the mac and cheese

[Anonymous No.12408294]

>>12408264
ok man

[Anonymous No.12408419]

>>12408264
is the mac and cheese named after a black man?

[Anonymous No.12408820]

there is a pizza place in FL that has been sold 19 time in just a few years, the original owner made amazing pizza and it was super popular so he sold the shop for a huge profit and the new owners ran it into the ground in a few months and defaulted on the payments so the original owner took back over and brought it back to life... then sold it again and the exact same thing happened and keeps happening over and over

[Anonymous No.12409796]

>>12404052
When I was a kid I'd go to an authentic Italian restaurant after church every Sunday. The Owners grandmother was the head chef, and would have the wife/other kids assist her. As I got older, the grandmother died, and the owner gave the place to his kids. They instantly switched to cheap canned sauces/frozen ingredients instead of using her homemade recipes because they didnt want to put it the time and effort, and wanted to use the name for quick money. I haven't gone back in 10 years now.

[Anonymous No.12409936]

>go to restaurant so great I basically had an orgasm every time I went there
>it changes owners
>menu becomes vegan shit with seeds in everything, only meant to serve as cheap feed for customers

[Anonymous No.12409965]

Usually happens when they try to "broaden their customer base"

[Anonymous No.12410170]

>>12408820
Sounds like the original owners are making a lot of money off of this.

[Anonymous No.12410184]

All the restaurants in my area have gone to shit in the last year like the food tasts old and the drink machines haven't been cleaned in weeks. But the shit Chipotle is now the best one

[Anonymous No.12410362]

>>12410170
they are and its not even a scam, he is handing off a successful and widely popular business that only needs to continue making pizza the same way and it would remain profitable but the new owners always try increase their margins by firing the staff and replacing them with minimum wage morons that dgaf and they cheap out on the ingredients. Not to mention they don't know how to run a business in the first place if they weren't prepared to sustain losses for at least a year.

[Anonymous No.12410513]

>tfw working at a place like this right now as a server turned manager
>tfw lost so much staff in the last couple months that I'm now the most senior staff member in the building and I've only been here 8 months
The main thing that killed it - as is the main thing that kills every restaurant - shit management. Failed adults assume that managing a restaurant must be easy and co-opt that as a "Plan B" for making a living after hitting rock bottom and failing at everything else, but it's not easy, and it's not worth the money if you don't actually love working in restaurants.

If the GM hadn't been the chain owner's drug-addicted, daddy's-money frat brother friend, he'd never have gotten or kept the job as long as he did, but he did just get fired a couple weeks ago for passing out in a locked work bathroom for 3 hours during Sunday brunch after taking a bunch of Xanax.

Now the place is in the balance. If I don't step up and manage this place, no one might do it. I don't wanna lose my job because as a server I was making great money. I don't wanna give up server money to do manager work, either.
>dudebros ruin everything