Well yeah....all those liberal arts degrees had to be good for something.
I think it was the consumer. We’d known for a long time our food was crap (remember the old instant coffee commercials that basically admitted instant coffee sucks but our brand doesn’t suck as bad) and then in the late 80s and early 90s we started aiming for stuff that was good. It started slow with the rise of tea that wasn’t the usual Lipton swill and then microbrews. Now thanks to Chipotle, Sauce, Rubios, Five Guys and others we even now make fastfood that’s edible. It’s kind of amazing.