why must every moderately successful store in the UK be immediately turned into a chain?

Subtext = woman, get back in the kitchen and cook me my dinner entirely sourced from the organic grocers in Hampstead?

Subtext = woman, get back in the kitchen and cook me my dinner entirely sourced from the organic grocers in Hampstead?

-- Matt DC, Monday, November 5, 2007 3:19 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

that's the subtext of this thread, and the daily mail's campaign, yeah!

not of what i was saying.

mmm nigella

Grimly Fiendish - I don't think anyone is blaming people who use or shop at supermarkets or chain stores/restaurants. Is there anybody who doesn't use them (I don't eat at chain restaurants but then I rarely eat out). I don't see anyone looking down on harassed mums taking kids for child-friendly meals here.

I think there is a conflation here between a) supermarkets and the decline of the traditional high street (since recreated inside some supermarkets), and b) chain restaurants and the disappearence of smaller establishments. They may be related but they are not the same thing. The chain restaurant can actually be a revitalizer of the high street (even as it homogenizes), the out of town development can be a death knell for the high street.

Also.. we're not just consumers and customers.. we're providers and suppliers as well

Which specific bistro - I am visiting soon and wish to know some good places to eat.

Glasgow has lots of nice places to eat. And a couple of Pizza Expresses as well :-)

xposts

Which specific bistro - I am visiting soon and wish to know some good places to eat

heh: i was thinking of amalfi, on west nile street, which is awesome (and genuinely is round the corner from a pizza hut). but woah, if you're visiting we need a proper welcoming committee/FAP etc! get thee to "try glasgow more".

Now if we're going to take as read that other countries in the world that aren't Britain contain parents with young children, people that work long hours and workers on low incomes, none of this is adequately explaining why there are so many chain stores and restaurants in the UK in relation to other countries

are there really? i'm not in a position to comment on that, but it sounds ... well, i'd like to see some stats, certainly.

i mean, sure, i have a romantic image of french or italian families sitting en famille in little family-run restaurants, but a) i think the french and italians have a very different relationship with and approach to food, and b) my romantic image might just be a load of old shit.

i would guess that, chain restaurants notwithstanding, we do better diversity-wise than, say, italy or rural france when it comes to food.

cedar: my ire was directed more at newspaper columnists than anyone on this thread in general :)

i've a lot more to say here but i really do need to get on with some work ... will hopefully return later, by which point the discussion will no doubt have shifted by six or seven planes.

speaking of which, FUCKING WETHERSPOONS

david guest was stood outside the regal the other night. CELEB FACT

i think the french and italians have a very different relationship with and approach to food,

This is basically it I think. The chain store mentality is just as strong in France as in the UK for everything except food. Paris still has about 50 farmers' markets because people are actually willing to spend their precious time patronising them (and paying their higher prices).

david guest was stood outside the regal the other night. CELEB FACT

on holloway rd??

and a wee supermarket on every other street

david gest, or a david guest i've not heard of? if the former, lol cheekbones. (tracer, tissp be talking about cambridge)

i actually go to 'spoons' occasionally, normally when the group i'm with winds up there. it's cheap, vast, impersonal, and overcrowded.

and a wee supermarket on every other street

The fact remains that 90 percent of food in the UK is supplied by five supermarket chains (or something like that), whereas in France the supermarkets have nowhere near that stranglehold.

yes

Glasgow has lots of nice places to eat.

mono?

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/foo_sub_res_percap-food-subway-resturants-per-capita

if supermarkets supplied 90% of the food in france, no one would have anything to argue about

carrefour 4tw

i.e. that place does great croissants but the bread is bad, and this place has the best lamb west of pau, whereas this place etc etc etc etc til your head splits open

yeah, sorry tracer i am talking about cambridge. and it was david gest, sorry. i didn't realise he spelt his name all funny style. he was fucking TINY

e leclerc was up and running before supermarkets in the uk btw.

nationmaster is great!

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/foo_tea_con-food-tea-consumption

Is the issue that the French and Italians are, generally speaking, more protectionist and precious about their cultural heritage than the British?

(And with that, clusterfuck fans, it becomes a race issue as well as a class issue, oh joy)

France and Italy are a lot less "integrated" in terms of their immigrant communities, put it that way.

I'm having roast beef for dinner

Plus the English "protecting" their culture of food is a bit like American Samoa protecting their culture of football, let's be honest.
lol xp

Is the issue that the French and Italians are, generally speaking, more protectionist and precious about their cultural heritage than the British?

time for a french farmer to weigh in.

that's why this thread is not about "the good old days" vs today's bad bad world

american samoa are my spiritual bros, it's not every day you let 31 in

Zelda, to a certain extent the crowds at a hypermarket Flunch would proove you a little wrong. However you are mainly right, france and especially italy have a culture of eating out that is very diferent from that in the UK. Walk round Turin on a sunday evening and every pizzeria and trattoria will be bursting with family groups, a fair number of whom will go and sit at the same table week inweek out or atleast on a monthly basis. There is an attitude of a local restaurant being an extensions of the home. It is certainly somewhere where the tenure of restaurant property is more ownership than leasing.

On the UK side, I think that the culture of leverage is pretty strong, i.e. mortgaging your business to extend your business. The banks of other European nations have been less gung ho about this.

Weather's nicer there innit?

Well we have a similar pub culture in the UK that places like Italy generally lack and that hasn't stopped the majority of them becoming owned by massive impersonal PubCos. I suppose you can pinpoint the moment that started to Thatcher forcing the breweries to sell off pubs, though.

firkin' chain pubs, hate the lot of 'em. :D

the smoking ban hasn't helped. sometimes a chain pub gained a musty individuality through the atmosphere created by its clientele. i don't smoke myself, but i'm really pissed-off about the ban.

i don't smoke myself, but i'm really pissed-off about the ban

Oh fuck off you're not, you bandwagon jumper.

I sort of agree with Tracer to some extent. Obviously the preponderance of chains is an economic factor and the US does of course have thousands of them, but in California at least most people I know tend to shop and eat at independent businesses or community-minded local chains. I think in Britain perhaps this kind of behaviour is seen as a little precious and bourgeois but that's sort of how Britain is, sometimes.

Walk round Turin on a sunday evening and every pizzeria and trattoria will be bursting with family groups, a fair number of whom will go and sit at the same table week inweek out or atleast on a monthly basis

and the vast majority of these families will be a snapshot of urban upper middle class, much like the clientele you mainly see sitting outside restaurants in any major european city.

it's the people you don't see eating at these restaurants that may well be shopping/eating in chain supermarkets/restaurants. they're generally the majority.

"if you can eat this peperami we'll know you're not a class traitor"

"ok"

menacing guard waves peperami under nose of detainee

"ugh.. no. NO!"

* bang *

apparently carrefour is the second largest hypermarket chain in the world second only to walmart

Oh fuck off you're not, you bandwagon jumper.

The majority of my friends are smokers, and I side with them and their right to choose. No way am I a bandwagon-jumper. I genuinely prefer bars with a musty old-man smoky vibe.

Of course you do. "Right to choose"? What right to choose?

you mean the right to choose what

darraghmac takes the arg one step further: european people who eat at restaurants are upper middle class!

Choose whether to smoke or not when they're out enjoying themselves!

um, i meant uppity middle class, possibly

they can choose whether to smoke or not outside

xpost

has the thread question been answered yet?

well i'm pretty sure Tracer knows why

Also with regards to "cheap food" and "chain restaurants" being one and the same, I am a graduate student with negative income. I can't even really afford Starbuck's!