What's new

Even the chain, franchise eating places are going down hill.

Went to KFC for the first time in about six months.

Four-piece combo. No Extras, no add-ons.

$16.75

All the pieces looked like they were put through a shrink-ray.
Not my pic, but you get the idea. Kentucky Fried Quail "Chicken" thigh.

https://www.reddit.com/r/shrinkflation/comments/1bd1tw6
1710700216775.png
 
Well as kid I work washing dishes, as bus buy, work at an Orange Julius.

I mostly have dollar worth of work for dollars pay.

Pride was what I had in jobs, plus was happy to have the jobs.

Also we were allowed to eat for free, that was nice perk.

Only job I had where I was allowed to eat for 2/2 price was McDonals, and they took 35 CENTS FROM EACH HOUR PAY FOR FOOD ALLOWENCE.

Never at their food as even at half price it was crap. After getting first check and finding out about bogus deduction I quit.

Took the owner to labor board to recover my 35 cent/ hour deduction.

Judge ruled for me when owner could not produce employee manual that state his BS in writing. Plus judge award fine of 20 bucks to me as slap on hand to franchisee for no employee manual.
 
The size of chicken breasts/thighs has probably gotten smaller due to non-steroid injected chickens and better living conditions for the chickens.

Gone are the days when chickens were pumped full of steroids and their legs were too small to hold up their 4lb chicken breasts.

If you buy thighs or breasts from the butcher or grocer, they not the size of a baby's head.

1710701808720.png


Not my pic, but you get the idea. Kentucky Fried Quail "Chicken" thigh.

https://www.reddit.com/r/shrinkflation/comments/1bd1tw6
View attachment 1814069
Looks to be a normal sized chicken thigh to me. Bases on cooking with chicken thighs with store bought thighs
 
Last edited:
My son lives on his a part of his wife’s family farm, he uses non gmo, hormone free feed for the animals they raise. Additionally, he grows almost all his own vegetables and on the rare occasion his kids eat fast food they always say the fast food tastes weird.
 
Well IMHO you won't be missing much other than lots of bucks from your wallet if you try. I'm sure in your neck of the woods there are bars or pubs that serve great burgers and close to what 5 guys charge, plus the bars and pubs have great televisions. I get the best juicy burgers from these joints.
Some places around used to do that. But when Covid came and they shut down. The cook(s) didn’t come back.

He could cook up everything on the menu right. But after he left. They couldn’t get a decent cook. They were getting a new one every other month it seemed like.

A lot of it was undercooked 😞

I saw the cook toss the fried wings in the sauce pan and while getting sauced one went flying out. 😝

The bar tender had to tell the cook how to make a patty melt?

Half of them couldn’t even make it in to work or at their scheduled time.

This made me realize that if you have a good cook that is reliable. You better take care of them.

Been looking for a decent bar/pub food that isn’t overpriced. But haven’t found it yet.
 
Last edited:
Some places around used to do that. But when Covid came and they shut down. The cook(s) didn’t come back.

He could cook up everything on the menu right. But after he left. They couldn’t get a decent cook. They were getting a new one every other month it seemed like.

A lot of it was undercooked 😞

I saw the cook toss the fried wings in the sauce pan and while getting sauced one went flying out. 😝

The bar tender had to tell the cook how to make a patty melt?

Half of them couldn’t even make it in to work or at their scheduled time.

This made me realize that if you have a good cook that is reliable. You better take care of them.

Been looking for a decent bar/pub food that isn’t overpriced. But haven’t found it yet.
Some places around used to do that. But when Covid came and they shut down. The cook(s) didn’t come back.

When Covid hit, the furniture industry exploded. Sales doubled for several of my customers and they were struggling to keep up and find help. Several shops hired food industry workers and they never went back. They were making more money and not working weekends.

I worked in a tourist area and the restaurants cut hours and discontinued breakfast, they never went back.
 
I’m thinking something like that happed to this guy.

He was the only cook at the bar and was asked to work all the busy days. You could tell that he was frustrated some days when his shift was over.

I kind of wonder if he ever received any of the tip $$. I hope he did.

If not. Being a bar/pub cook doesn’t seem like a very appealing job. Especially if the bartenders and servers are getting all that tip $$.
 
Other than prices going up (which is inevitable), it's not that bad.

I came to realize that things change, always, and it's inevitable. Sometimes for the worse, sometimes they just change.

We don't really eat at fast food chains. But a lot of our favorite restaurants, some of which we've been frequenting since mid-90s when we just started dating, closed in the last few years, or were sold and the food quality went downhill. It all happened in the last 6-7 years or so. Interestingly, all of that happened before or after Covid, but not during the pandemic - all of our favorite places that haven't closed by 2019 survived the plague. And then most of them were sold or closed just as the economy recovered and the labor marked eased up again. Go figure...

Yet, we found new places that are different but equally great. No, they will not bring back the old memories. But we are making new ones. Life goes on.
 
Other than prices going up (which is inevitable), it's not that bad.

I came to realize that things change, always, and it's inevitable. Sometimes for the worse, sometimes they just change.

We don't really eat at fast food chains. But a lot of our favorite restaurants, some of which we've been frequenting since mid-90s when we just started dating, closed in the last few years, or were sold and the food quality went downhill. It all happened in the last 6-7 years or so. Interestingly, all of that happened before or after Covid, but not during the pandemic - all of our favorite places that haven't closed by 2019 survived the plague. And then most of them were sold or closed just as the economy recovered and the labor marked eased up again. Go figure...

Yet, we found new places that are different but equally great. No, they will not bring back the old memories. But we are making new ones. Life goes on.
It could be a generational thing.

Mom & Pop retire, the kids don't want to take on the task of long hours and running a restaurant. I From what I know, they are hard work and you can't do it in front of a PC or work from home.

I'm stereotyping the current working generation as the ones I work with are lazy, need everything spoon fed to them and their second computer screen usually has Reddit open for the 8 hour shift.
 
I have seen this everywhere, even Amish furniture manufacturers. This generation doesn’t want anything to do with the familie’s business. I saw multiple shops close and the sons went into construction. I don’t know what the answer is, I guess time will tell.
 
It could be a generational thing.

Mom & Pop retire, the kids don't want to take on the task of long hours and running a restaurant. I From what I know, they are hard work and you can't do it in front of a PC or work from home.

I'm stereotyping the current working generation as the ones I work with are lazy, need everything spoon fed to them and their second computer screen usually has Reddit open for the 8 hour shift.
As the son of a mom and pop shop , I gotta say I could not care less for reddit, but busting my *** 6 days a week, being called in the middle of the night because someone broke into your shop yet again, being so exhausted on your 1 day off that you just sleep and do nothing, I never found that appealing. My dad was proud to see me making more on my first paycheck than he was and while they built a bit of equity in the business , he passed away a year after they sold it and never actually got to enjoy it either.
 
Other than prices going up (which is inevitable), it's not that bad.

I came to realize that things change, always, and it's inevitable. Sometimes for the worse, sometimes they just change.

We don't really eat at fast food chains. But a lot of our favorite restaurants, some of which we've been frequenting since mid-90s when we just started dating, closed in the last few years, or were sold and the food quality went downhill. It all happened in the last 6-7 years or so. Interestingly, all of that happened before or after Covid, but not during the pandemic - all of our favorite places that haven't closed by 2019 survived the plague. And then most of them were sold or closed just as the economy recovered and the labor marked eased up again. Go figure...

Yet, we found new places that are different but equally great. No, they will not bring back the old memories. But we are making new ones. Life goes on.
I’ve found a few new places. With the help of Yelp.

A couple of other places that I used to go to that I no longer frequent was another pub. They had some of the best sandwiches and tacos in town. It was even on diner’s drive in’s and dives. About a year after that. The owner sold the place and retired to Costa Rica.

She timed it just right as Covid came about 8 months after that. The quality of the food went down a notch. I was told that was because they couldn’t source the some brands of high quality ingredients. The prices also went up.

About a year later they cut back more on the ingredients and prices went up again. I just couldn’t justify going there anymore.

The other bar wasn’t a very big place. But they made a decent pizza and had a deep fryer. You could get a half chicken and jo jo’s for $6.75. Everything was really reasonable. But the owner was in his mid 70s and was rumored that he was getting ready to retire. I think Covid finalized that as it never re-opened.



I’ve heard that when the parents decide to retire and pass the business onto the kids they aren’t that interested. Most of them have worked there for a period of their lives and if they can sell the restaurant and property for enough $$. They would rather do that and retire early themselves. That was one rumor I heard about a nice restaurant on the waterfront anyway.

Like you. I enjoyed the food and had some good memories. But on the look out for the next new food adventure.
 
My youngest received his Microsoft certification and was in the tech world. However,he loved to cook and was thinking about going to culinary school. We encouraged him to work his tech job and get a part time job in a kitchen to have real world experience. He was fortunate enough to get in to a high end restaurant and the owner took an interest in him and really showed him what it was like to own a restaurant.

The owner went to CIA and had connections that would have allowed my son to enroll. After a few months the owner sat our son down and explained the hours, stress level and told him to compare the two. He encouraged my son to stay in the tech world and my son took his advice.

My son works normal hours for the most part and has a life outside of a restaurant.
 
So, way, way back I was working with a guy who used to be a pro chef making over $100k - that was a whole lot of money in the late 90s. He quit that job because he had no life and spent every weekend, almost every holiday, and pretty much every evening in the kitchen.

We were both engineers working on demanding manufacturing projects, 50 hrs a week was a required minimum. I put in at least 55 hrs every week (five tens and 7-12 on Saturdays). Some weeks we worked both weekends and 12 hrs on the weekdays because of the deadlines. The pay was also nowhere near six figures even with overtime (although pretty good for those times). He loved it and kept saying “that’s a walk in the park compared to the kitchen”. It’s a tough field.
 
The size of chicken breasts/thighs has probably gotten smaller due to non-steroid injected chickens and better living conditions for the chickens.

Gone are the days when chickens were pumped full of steroids and their legs were too small to hold up their 4lb chicken breasts.

If you buy thighs or breasts from the butcher or grocer, they not the size of a baby's head.

View attachment 1814082


Looks to be a normal sized chicken thigh to me. Bases on cooking with chicken thighs with store bought thighs
Could be normal. But my understanding is that a standard 4 oz chicken thigh should cover the entire palm. Of course, some will be larger than average, some smaller.

As for the hormones, you may be right. But according to KFC (In Canada at least), the chickens they use are actually larger than ever, and cut into smaller pieces.

1710783676280.png
 
Top Bottom