If you'd rather spend Christmas Day in your den than in a hot kitchen, restaurant chains have solutions for you. Many are offering takeout feasts for as many as a dozen people. They typically include turkey or beef, potatoes, bread and sides. Some feasts also include desserts, frequently pumpkin or apple pies. Most feasts are heat-and-serve, meaning they take two or three hours to reheat but not the kind of effort required for making a traditional Christmas meal from scratch.
The 2010s were rife with new pizza concepts, like Blaze and MOD, and each were anointed the future of the industry at some point. In fact, fast casual pizza was so considered the next big thing in that even big name celebs were getting involved in the restaurants, with basketball stars LeBron James and Dwayne Wade owning portions of Blaze and 800° Woodfired Kitchen respectively.
If you've seen the hit FX series "The Bear," you'll know that running a restaurant is tough. It seems like every episode there's a new obstacle for Carmy Berzatto and his team to hurdle, whether it's preparing for cutthroat reviewers, affording enough stock, offering timely attentive service, or simply getting customers through the door. It's a TV series, sure, but many have praised its accurate representation of the industry.
In an era of our favorite restaurant chains failing due to rising economic pressures and changing consumer tastes, it helps to remember that the rise, fall, and consolidation of restaurants is nothing new. Take, for instance, VIP's, the Oregon-based restaurant chain that sold more than half its locations to Denny's in the 1980s. VIP's was a comforting homestyle restaurant with major diner vibes and locations across Oregon and other western states, including Washington, Nevada, Idaho, and California.
The brand has gone through a handful of changes over the years, including being bought out for 10.2 million and filing for bankruptcy. When Max & Erma's first started, the focus was on fun. Telephones were set onto tables for customers to make phone calls across the restaurant while waiting for burgers to arrive. Patties made with 10 ounces of fresh beef quickly won over hearts and stomachs, and the chain ballooned.
