r/AskReddit • • 9h ago

What restaurant chain fell off the hardest?

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u/mannthunder 9h ago

Private equity, gutting the future for temporary portfolio growth

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u/LeaveMyMonkeyAlone 8h ago

I worked many service positions at TGIF in the mid 70s. There were only a handful of individual owners who told all of the employees that they would never go public or corporate. At that time there were maybe 10 or so national stores. It wasn't a real restaurant (the kind it changed to be)....it was a meat market. Alcohol sales dwarfed the food sales.

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u/Mtndrums 22m ago

That was the original point, because bars tended to be swordfests at the time.

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u/RonnieFromTheBlock 8h ago

No, private equity is buying up these already failing relics and keeping them alive longer than they should be.

Consumer habits have simply changed.

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u/My_Invalid_Username 8h ago

That's junk. Plenty of places decline in quality without the consumer having any say in it

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u/LeaveMyMonkeyAlone 7h ago

The big change at TGIF came when they decided to change their image from a meat market 25 cent Tequila shots for the next 10 minutes at midnight on Thursdays to a sit down and eat with the family and friends restaurant with Pinot Noir. They knew that the devil make care live for today crowd would eventually settle into the mainstream tradition. They were correct and had a pretty good run for a long time. Bartending was a blast.

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u/BureMakutte 7h ago

If that was the case, pe's would go under or not be the profitable powerhouse they are today.

If you look into what pe's are actually doing, they gut and chop failing businesses while cutting costs and suck money from the business until it ultimately implodes and by then all the assets are in the pe's name or some other underhanded tactic.

We are in crooked capitalism these days.

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u/RonnieFromTheBlock 7h ago

I don’t think your comment is disagreeing with what I said.

The businesses are already failing in a lot of cases.

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u/BureMakutte 2h ago

The businesses are already failing in a lot of cases.

Yes, but instead of the private equity companies actually WANTING to save it, they strip it for parts before it crumbles. There's a MORAL aspect about it that is completely void now and it's not necessarily businesses that can't be saved. Red Lobster is a perfect example.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/private-equity-rolled-red-lobster-rcna153397