As for us, we’re happy we live in a place where restaurants don’t make up their menu via focus group.
According to the Philadelphia Business Journal, it’s all about demographics… and parking… and the fact that city dwellers with money to eat out aren’t really the chain restaurant types:
“These are casual-dining restaurants, so if you tack on $25 or $30 to park, that’s a big factor. They want free parking,” said Ron Gorodesky, president of Restaurant Advisory Services, a Paoli consulting firm. While Center City does have some chain restaurants, particularly steak houses, most of the big casual dining chains have swarmed to the suburbs. To the point, the nation’s two largest owners of casual dining restaurants – Darden Restaurants Inc. of Orlando and OSI Restaurant Partners LLC of Tampa, Fla. – have a combined 48 restaurants in the eight-county Philadelphia market, but only three are in Center City. Among the most popular destinations for casual dining chains: Exton, King of Prussia, Springfield (Delaware County), Cherry Hill and Deptford, N.J. It’s no coincidence that all of those locations have a strong retail component nearby. […] Cheesecake Factory is known for drawing hordes of people, and often has a line of more than an hour to get a table. As a result, Gorodesky said, the restaurant chain can command status as an anchor tenant, and with that receive improvement dollars toward renovations. Plus, they need households. “Center City has a strong residential population,” Gorodesky said. “It’s mostly young and old, but not the middle, which is the market for casual dining.”
As for us, we’re happy we live in a place where restaurants don’t make up their menu via focus group.
According to the Philadelphia Business Journal, it’s all about demographics… and parking… and the fact that city dwellers with money to eat out aren’t really the chain restaurant types:
