I dunno about you, but "improving the product" on food trends towards everything tasting the same, whether it's:

- Following the same trends/hype

- Changing the recipe so it suits a wider palate

- Narrowing the menu(s) to specific items most likely to move

It boils the ecosystem down to generic and less interesting by default.

Not everything needs to be some perfected ideal and frankly the world is more interesting when it isn't. I'd much rather live in a world where someone can try to build a restaurant based on their take on food and can subsist on their local community at first, maybe growing from there.

I think you're making strong points that what generates revenue for these places isn't always quality but social media hype / overly broad appeal etc... but objective quality is still a huge factor. Some restaurants may have a 2/5 star score because they're too innovative, but many have that 2/5 because they're simply serving bad food. If a place is serving burned/undercooked/expired food, I'd like them to feel like they need to address those issues.

Where do you live? I've never seen this happen and I'm in NYC... It does not seem to have occurred anywhere else I've traveled in the US

Funny you mention that, I did take a vacation to NYC recently. Had 5 or 6 slices while I was there and every single one was good! Maybe the result of market pressure, maybe not :).

Maybe it's the shit pizza you're used to. The quality has nose-dived the past few years.