You may find it hard to believe, but the only reason these chains were ever viable businesses is that middle-class people would go there, by choice. Yes, they got worse.

Sticking with the example of Friday's, it used to be a reasonable place to go out with people. Not an amazing culinary experience, but comfort food of a sort. Now there is nothing comforting about it. The last Friday's I was unwittingly led to was more like Urban Decay: The Restaurant.