But that's all not an excuse to hide behind a fleet of faux-boutique identities. When you do that it's borderline scam. Or not borderline at all, once you accept that most of the money we spend on getting food cooked for is not about the calories and not even about the taste.
> But that's all not an excuse to hide behind a fleet of faux-boutique identities.
Absolutely agreed. And of all places I won't use once they've demonstrated untrustworthyness, food providers are top of the list.
Not only is what you do (and don't) eat rather important, but also it's something that I can actually do myself.
If I don't trust CPU manufacturers not to backdoor my computer, I have limited options. If I don't trust a restaurant, I can pan fry my own tofu.
Also classic diner food is generally pretty inappropriate for using more than a few times a month because it's not very good for you.
It's more like the backend of a large, decent company canteen[1] stuck to a milk-round front end.
[1] And I don't really mean the ones that are just buying catering trays of food from a wholesaler and heating it. I worked in a factory in China for some time and their food was great. Simple, home style food, cooked right there, from scratch, every day. Lunch for everyone and an option of breakfast and dinner (mostly for residential workers). It's the only food that's not homemade that I could imagine eating daily.
I hardly ever eat out because the cost and hassle compared to the food is far, far from being a reasonable trade to me. On a daily basis, I don't want "fancy" plates of food creations, just simple but fresh and relatively healthy food like I would (or, rather, do) make for myself.
However, having a kitchen churning out fresh food, a bit like a canteen but with a delivery step (doesn't have to be direct, a "round" would work too as long as the food stays approximately fresh and arrives within a reasonable slot).
There's no need for this to happen in a restaurant with tables and tills. The most efficient system is probably a big central kitchen and a bunch of electric delivery vehicles. The economies of scale that such an operation could bring over me buying a few portions at a time, slicing single cucumbers and heating my little oven or pans to cook a few items day in day out seem like they could plausibly be favourable to outweigh the downsides (cost of delivery, lack of control over the food ingredients, quality, portion size etc).
Of course such a system, if it became dominant over others would probably very quickly fall victim to MBA syndrome as corners are cut and it ends up being school/prison slop (with a much much more expensive premium option that is basically what we already have).
And I imagine people don't like the idea of a "remote canteen" vs the romantic idea of a chef lovingly assembling a dish and carefully handing it to a courier.
So my options are to do it myself or pay multiples.