Big facts

I used to enjoy the one in Dayton Ohio, they had a nice lunch menu and quick service. No idea why, but the location closed shortly after I moved to Vegas in 2013.

This is the one I use. It's pretty close - https://www.food.com/recipe/max-ermas-chicken-tortilla-soup-148807

Ah, that's sad. Went to this place all the time as a kid. I remember when they painted over their awesome Pittsburgh sports mural and when they got rid of their cool multicolored pipes on the ceiling. They definitely became more bland and corporate over the years. Their onion rings were always my favorite (the old thin and crispy ones). Once as a kid I wrote them a nasty letter when they switched from Pepsi to Coke, lol. And RIP to the ice cream sundae bath tub.

Is it normal to have a clip from caddy shack play in my mind when reading this?

But isn't every restaurant looking for people to work?

> but places where families sit down just to go and feed and to be served are already dead and just don't know it yet.

 

This sort of restaurant is an invention of the Boomers' lifetimes and were massively overbuilt in the 1980s and 1990s to paper over a fading real economy.
 
We weren't making steel or widgets anymore, so we got a bunch of Chilis and PF Changs to bump the numbers and make it look like the economy was still expanding.
 
It definitely wasn't going to last forever. The average American eats 3600-3800 calories a day now. If we were to snap our fingers somehow and set everyone at a healthy weight, and ensure they only ate a the USDA allotted number of calories per day, it would completely destroy the economy.

It's too hard to staff places for regular daylight and evening hours let alone overnights. A LOT of servers found new jobs/careers because of the pandemic. Myself included.
Sure, people came back, but losing a big chunk of the workforce you had before really took a toll. And the ones who came back didn't want to do overnights anymore. And I don't blame them. You couldn't drag me back for anything. I get PTO, sick pay and 10 holidays off a year now all paid. 25 years in restaurants and I'm not sad to see any of them go.

Truth. I think the last time I went was to their location in RIDC park? Wow

Restaurants in the lane that we think of as middle class family restaurants were always a bit of a mirage and will be a blip on dining history real soon (and that's setting aside the separate issue of the disappearing middle class). They run incredibly thin margins based on paying their entire staff next to nothing and buying the cheapest bulk agricultural products from Sysco and US Foods that they can source in order to keep their prices low enough to entice people to eat there weekly.

Now with the tightening of the labor market leading to workers commanding a higher wage and better starting positions (has anyone tried to hire a busser recently?) and inflation hitting the largest food producers in particular (notice how fancy eggs are now cheaper than the grossest factory farm eggs sometimes, just for example) places like Max and Erma's and Mad Mex literally cannot operate.

The future is going to be counter service places including food halls and destination restaurants. Now, there's still room for destination restaurants at a lower price point than a steakhouse or Noma, your various cultural restaurants and your fancy brunches and your what have you, but places where families sit down just to go and feed and to be served are already dead and just don't know it yet.

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Mad Max also has many of the same features that the national chains have, low quality, re-heated food that isn’t worth the price.

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Every business has a life cycle, places like Mad Mex or The Sharp Edge were cool in the nineties. It isn't the nineties anymore though. Sharp Edge is already gone and Mad Mex was feeling pretty stale last time I was there.

Monroeville is boomer central

I miss WS&S and I miss Max's Allegheny Tavern, that's about it.

Takeout or they come over for dinner. We cook for nearly every meal.
 
The end goal of capitalism is to take your human experiences and rent them back to you, we're at the point now where people think socialization can only take place on commercial real estate. It's wild.

Yeah, turns out that no one wants to work in a dangerous environment during a pandemic for shit pay and garbage tips. Can't say I blame them.

The movie “Diner” was set in 1959, and nothing like that exists now. The point of the film was that they could all meet up late and greet the dawn together. Perkins, Denny’s, even Eat and Park all had 24 hour places prior to Covid. They’re all gone.

Tepache is straight 🔥

What do you do when your friends or family suggest a night out at a restaurant to catch up? That is really the only reason I go out to eat anymore.

I was today years old when I learned Max & Erma’s was still open.

So what specifically does that future look like?

personally, I see a lot of these places like Max & Erma's, Kings, Chili's and the like and think that I can microwave food at home myself and get the same quality without spending that much money

Well sure, it sucks for them. When did I say otherwise? Am I required to prop up every shitty restaurant so that the people there can keep their jobs?