Ate at Starbucks, WTF!

[erictheobscure]

Thought this might fit into this particular discussion. Behold this work of abjection:

http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-pizza-hut-cheeseburger-20120424,0,5324643.story

 

[mordecai]

This conversation has gone meta. We went from pontificating on the chicken and egg questions of aesthetic taste and food development in culture to gutter admissions of our favorite chain restaurant side orders.

Eric, that Middle Eastern pizza will fit in disturbingly well with all the other images that come up when one Googles Middle East atrocities

 

[CraigJB]



Thought this might fit into this particular discussion. Behold this work of abjection:
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-pizza-hut-cheeseburger-20120424,0,5324643.story

The hell is with that article referring to pizzas as "pies"?

 

[JohnGalt]

as though anyone in LA knows anything about pizza

 

[whiteslashasian]



as though anyone in LA knows anything about pizza

In NY and surrounding areas Pizza Pies are often referred to as simply "Pies".

 

[JohnGalt]

I'm aware - my comment on LA is still valid

 

[whiteslashasian]



I'm aware - my comment on LA is still valid

Oh, word.

 

[b1os]



Thought this might fit into this particular discussion. Behold this work of abjection:
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-pizza-hut-cheeseburger-20120424,0,5324643.story

Jesus. I guess I'd puke if someone forced me to eat this.

 

[eg1]

Am I the only one struggling to square :foo:'s defense of mass-merch-food with his preference for hand-crafted clothing?

 

[erictheobscure]

Since this thread seems to be a free-floating discussion anyways, some quotes from Atul Gawande's recent New Yorker article about how health care might learn from big chain restaurant operations:

I’d come from the hospital that day. In medicine, too, we are trying to deliver a range of services to millions of people at a reasonable cost and with a consistent level of quality. Unlike the Cheesecake Factory, we haven’t figured out how. Our costs are soaring, the service is typically mediocre, and the quality is unreliable. Every clinician has his or her own way of doing things, and the rates of failure and complication (not to mention the costs) for a given service routinely vary by a factor of two or three, even within the same hospital.
It’s easy to mock places like the Cheesecake Factory—restaurants that have brought chain production to complicated sit-down meals. But the “casual dining sector,” as it is known, plays a central role in the ecosystem of eating, providing three-course, fork-and-knife restaurant meals that most people across the country couldn’t previously find or afford. The ideas start out in élite, upscale restaurants in major cities. You could think of them as research restaurants, akin to research hospitals. Some of their enthusiasms—miso salmon, Chianti-braised short ribs, flourless chocolate espresso cake—spread to other high-end restaurants. Then the casual-dining chains reëngineer them for affordable delivery to millions. Does health care need something like this?

We can bristle at the idea of chains and mass production, with their homogeneity, predictability, and constant genuflection to the value-for-money god. Then you spend a bad night in a “quaint” “one of a kind” bed-and-breakfast that turns out to have a manic, halitoxic innkeeper who can’t keep the hot water running, and it’s right back to the Hyatt.
Medicine, though, had held out against the trend. Physicians were always predominantly self-employed, working alone or in small private-practice groups. American hospitals tended to be community-based. But that’s changing. Hospitals and clinics have been forming into large conglomerates. And physicians—facing escalating demands to lower costs, adopt expensive information technology, and account for performance—have been flocking to join them. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only a quarter of doctors are self-employed—an extraordinary turnabout from a decade ago, when a majority were independent. They’ve decided to become employees, and health systems have become chains.

The article starts with him admitting that he enjoyed the food at Cheesecake Factory and then doing a

Especially after having read the rest of the article, I'd be happy if hospitals ran more like Cheesecake Factories.

 

[Rambo]

HEM...

http://www.styleforum.net/t/310727/can-hospital-chains-improve-the-medical-industry/0_40

 

[MikeDT]

What can you eat at Starbucks? Just sandwiches and cake, isen't it?

 

[CBrown85]

They put in a Krispy Kreme in town (first in Canada? don't know, who cares) and the doughnuts are better than Tim Horton's. In fact, I'm pretty sure they make them with some big doughnut machine right in front of you- not sure what American KK's look like.

I'm not sure how the KK stays open here, though, as nobody seems to be in there. Ever.

Tim Hortons, however, has terrible everything (especially their paint-thinner coffee). I think Foo made the comment that ''oh em gee, nobody would evar go in there if the food or coffee was bad'' which is pretty ridiculous. Seriously? You think the people who go in to those places really give a **** what that stuff tastes like? Do you think those people know what a coffee from the upscale Italian cafe downtown tastes like? **** no. Most don't know the difference between good coffee and bad, and why would they?

Fuuma can claim that people are brainwashed by corporations and you guys can claim that people make their own decisions independently like magic, but it's BOTH. Most people are ******* stupid. It's that simple. Most people are ******* idiots. They don't know what they want. If you offered the suburbs human ******* waste shaped like a muffin in the morning and set up 100,000 locations near their, they'd eat it.

 

[TheFoo]

I didn't say any particular food must be good if people are buying it. I said: (1) there is no reason to believe people aren't weighing their choices and ultimately making their own decisions about what to buy, and (2) the availability and quality of food have broadly improved in correlation with economic growth.

 

[CBrown85]



My assumption is that, without evidence of coercion, consumers do what they want. So, yes, to me the explanation is as simple as you put it: "people want these strudels so starbucks produces these strudels." The analysis is not complicated. Either you believe people want the crappy Starbucks strudels they buy, or you don't. If they do want them, the analysis is over; Starbucks is giving them what they want. Simple. If they don't want the f*cked up strudels, and are buying them anyway, some other factor must be influencing the situation. That is a more complicated explanation and involves more moving parts, which you can't even identify or prove. So, yes, I am making assumptions--but I am also making the fewest possible.
Have you considered that maybe you are attempting to problematize what isn't a problem to begin with? That would be pretty classic of leftist academic institutionalization.

Stand corrected. Sorry, you're a valuable poster and I make a point to read what you say carefully but they're often dense.