Let me try this again without some accidental potty mouth.
The issue does indeed involve basic capitalist concepts. If what you’re offering is not what the customers want then the customers leave, period. By focusing entirely on portion size and whether or not it has driven enough costumers away from a given business for them to change you are the one creating the false choice. American tastes are constantly in flux, right now there’s a rebellion against large portion sizes led by the “obesity epidemic” crowd. This really hasn’t been going on long enough for us to know if it’s got enough of the common people support to cause changes. We know it can though, because that’s just a basic concept of capitalism. And we do know, just as the original post said that restaurants stop selling what people stop buying, regardless of the specifics of the item.
That's not what the original post said. Here it is:
It’s a proven fact that these restaurants will stop offering/selling these items if the customers stop buying them.
As you can see, the reference ("these items") was to larger portions, as that was the point of the thread - customers buying large portion items. SJSAMPLE, in making that assertion, did not broaden the factors to anything other than the subject of the thread article - large portions.
And my question for SJSAMPLE was to offer proof, because s/he claimed it had already been proven. So far, nobody has provided proof that consumers en mass have made such a choice strictly on portion sizes.
If you have evidence that this has happened, please offer it, and if it qualifies as a consumer choice made en mass based strictly on portion size, then I will admit I was wrong to assume it has not been proven, and the discussion can be closed.
It's that simple.
There is no question in my mind that if/when consumers stop buying an item the wise restaurateur stops offering it. Another option is for the wise restaurateur to retain the large portion offering and ADD a smaller portion item. That would not qualify for proof of SJSAMPLE's assertion, because s/he specified that the restaurant would STOP offering the large portion item.