alt Hacker NewsSomehow this has been in the news recently but it’s been happening for a long, long time. There are some foods I just kinda dread and don’t order because they’re the same everywhere. If they’re the same everywhere, it’s because they’re little more than frozen bags and boxes shipped in from Sysco, and I can make the same thing at home.
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When I see a Sysco truck delivering to a restaurant I tend to start avoiding it
I think unfortunately this is a massive conflux of many negative rentseeking factors that creates a blackhole of mediocrity.
A lot of local restaurants in Seattle can't afford space rent, but then when they leave those spaces stay empty. The restaurants that do thrive are part of big multinational chains or have to serve the same slop as everywhere else because it's the cheapest. Combined with increasing consolidation, everything converges towards low quality shit.
Fixing this would require, like a lot of our self-inflicted problems, realizing that big corporations and consolidation is slowly strangling everything.
If you like unique local eats that aren't chains and have regional specialties I recommend Roadfood website and book. It was started by two food critics who loved roadtrips and hated chains so they wanted to find authentic local places: https://roadfood.com/
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18050133-roadfood
Tons of made from scratch, non-Sysco eats on there!
Sysco reminds me of how airplane, hospital and hotel lobby restaurant food tastes.