Ive seen the SYSCO trucks parked outside single or family-owned restaurants as well. Unless you’re at a restaurant that grows its own vegetables in a garden out back and catches the fish it serves and raises and slaughters the cattle, lamb, and chickens served, you’re getting some form of factory-produced food. In areas of this vast country, you cant avoid chain restaurants.
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Without companies like SYSCO and US Foods, the restaurant industry would not be able to survive.
The provide all sorts of stuff (from comestibles to kitchenware) to chains, mom-and-pops, to food trucks to high end restaurants like French Laundry and even hyper local restaurants like Chef’s Table @ Brooklyn Fare.
SYSCO and its brethren are like the oxygen that sustains the restaurant ecosystem. Without them, restaurants would die of asphyxiation.
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One of my first jobs was at a steak and seafood restaurant where diners one and all raved about our HOMEMADE Clam Chowder. One of my duties was to “make” said clam chowder.
This task consists of cranking open 51oz cans with the bench top can opener, adding quarts of half/half and copious amounts of butter. Chowder came off the back of a Sysco truck.
Later, worked for a food service distributor that dropped clam chowder at various Boudin’s locations for their famous San Francisco Clam Chowder Bread Bowls. Yes, cans.
Swan’s Oyster Depot clam chowder. Yep, out of a can.
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I was watching this, and thought of this thread.
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In the gourmand proclivity department: we heard that the formidable food icon Julia Child savored Costco hot dogs and In-N-Out. Similarly, Mom (best cook on the plant) was a Filet o’ Fish fan.
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Sounds cool. I love the whole “Trading Places” plot and always thought with all the re-do’s of movies that that was one that was particularly ripe. I’ll check it out!
Yes, I’m aware of that. Hence the rest of my comment:
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I guess I should clarify. Sysco and USFoods carry all the things that are needed to run a reataurant.
Napkins, sanibuckets and sanitizer, towels, aprons, flatware…all the things.
I get it.
But I will absolutely throw shade when every last thing on the menu is basically pulled out of a Sysco box, heated up, and thrown on a plate.
Roomie and I now even have a standard chant…calamari, fries, wings, fish sandwich, smashburger.
Because every restaurant in my town has that exact same menu. And everything on that list comes out of the same Sysco boxes all delivered on the same day.
It’s as dire and depressing as it sounds.
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It is riches to rags, but also about working for and owning a restaurant / franchise.
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And I agree with you, 100%.
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“Because every restaurant in my town has that exact same menu. And everything on that list comes out of the same Sysco boxes all delivered on the same day.”
@Sunshine842 I’m curious, and have probably asked this before, but how do you know that? I can’t say i have ordered any of those things, so maybe that’s why i don’t know.
We are famous for chains, but when I order in my town its mostly from taquerias or Thai, sometimes Chinese.
I was with a “youth” last week, and did try to go to Fudruckers last week, for the first time in 10 plus years, and it was gone!
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Just reading this thread is exhausting. I don’t mind mc Donald’s or the million others .
A couple of them I might not return to.
Time and place .
I have a more so with the local restaurants.
NEXT !!
Hey it’s not them it’s me .
Cheers 
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Its not a big town…so when I say every place has the same menu its because every place has the exact same menu.
And because when those duplicate menus result in food that looks exactly like whats on the menu everywhere else in town…AND it tastes the same…
It looks like a duck and sounds like a duck.
Then theres the small detail that Ive lived here a long time. I know the present and/or past staff at all of them (FOH and BOH) and they’ve confirmed my suspicions.
And its a small town, so Ive seen the same truck make deliveries at literally every place in town.
Need more?
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My goodness.
What small town do you have the pleasure of living in, may I ask?
No. Thanks. I guess I just wish I understood the dynamics of the restaurants and food industry in my area as well, and wondered if I was missing important clues.
I thought where I was was small, but I have certainly not been to most of the restaurants, and none of the “chains” in maybe 20 years.
Okay, wait; I went to one in a mall in the next town a few weeks ago, went looking for a Fudrucker’s last week, (to no avail), and I DO do fast food on occasion, and take out weekly.
I don’t have a problem with it, and where I am is close enough to some amazing options, so there’s that.
But I still don’t know why we are famous for chains.
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Yeah, not posting that on the interwebs, thanks.
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You mean Fairfield is famous for chains?
I think you can find the same restaurants where the demographics are similar all over the country.
They don’t choose sites randomly.
Here’s a story about El Pollo Loco scouting far north California and far south Oregon -
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Love El Pollo Loco, wish there was one in my area.
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I’ll send the scout team up your way 
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Thanks, knew I could count on you!
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