The motels still exist but the Howard Johnson’s restaurants are no more.
Cracker Barrel is the successor restaurant chain to Howard Johnson’s for the middle class. It too will someday decline into oblivion and be replaced by another restaurant chain.
Under capitalism the cycle of creative destruction is essential for a healthy economy. Innovators create new concepts (a better mousetrap). The company grows rapidly and continues to innovate. The founder sells, out, retires, or dies. Professional management takes over, builds a bureaucracy, and innovation wanes. Risk aversion sets in and the quality of product suffers due to aggressive cost cutting implemented to increase profits as sales flatten and drop. Customers look for alternatives and another entrepreneur visionary comes along to take market share from the dying dinosaur.
Competition ensures the firms that cannot adapt, and no longer serve a purpose die and are replaced. Contrast with government which continues to grow its bureaucracy when services and efficiency decline. It’s customer suffer because it is a monopoly and it has the power to steal resources from its customers through taxation.
Very well put!
This is exactly what happened to Applebees. In their early days, that was the place to go for casual dining. You got excellent value for top notch food. In the middle of the restaurant was a well lit neighborhood friendly bar where even women traveling on business could feel comfortable sitting at because they were surrounded by local families having dinner which really cut the "creep" factor down.
As the chain grew, the corporate consultants swooped in to save a nickel of cost here and a nickel of cost there to squeeze out as much margin as possible. Menu items were pre-cooked and frozen in industrial kitchens to be microwaved at the restaurants. I found this out the hard way when the broccoli I ordered with my bourbon street steak came still partially frozen. Also, the plates and silverware came to us with crud still on them. Disgusting. We ended up never going back.
Cracker Barrel, where crackers aren’t treated like 2nd class citizens.