> It's probably no accident there's videos like [1] about how every restaurant tastes the same when supplied by Sysco (national distributor versus buying fresh/local, which means higher prices...)

Sysco is a secondary problem. Restaurants are so relentlessly focused on avoiding wastage that even if they prep their food, they coalesce around the exact, same cheap ingredients in a relatively small number of dishes.

For example, every single restaurant in Austin, TX used to have chicken-fried steak on the menu--to the extent that I used to joke about restaurants that you absolutely wouldn't expect to have it (the Chinese place that I knew served it eons ago made an excellent one).

Now, presumably because beef is expensive, chicken-fried steak is a relative rarity in Austin. And, even if you can find it, it's likely to be sub-par.

Sandwich shops are slightly different but prices are driving the quality decline here, too. The problem is that their primary meat ingredients mostly suck because they are getting the lowest tiers.

It's secondary but I maintain it's related because from what I know from talking to local restaurants, as delivery grows, margins shrink, and it's a different animal catering to floods of online orders. One option is to go cheaper to grow that revenue especially if you're not full with dine-in guests.

It's primarily a trap when a restaurant doesn't command value relative to others in that segment, and their dishes are basically commodities (sure, food in general doesn't have great margins, but compare steakhouse vs fast food).

Chopped lettuce or sliced tomatoes from Sysco/distributor is one thing for sandwiches but maybe not salads, and then there's giving in and having entire dishes replaced from their catalog: pancake mix, gravy, premade frozen entrees, desserts. Enter the death spiral as floundering restaurants raises prices and cut quality, discourage customers, raise prices and cut more, losing more customers, etc.

FWIW regarding chicken-fried steak, I live in an area of people with "chicken nugget" palates and lots of diners. Most of the chicken-fried steak now is pre-breaded with canned gravy that is probably Sysco or Chef Store - I know I see the gallon cans walking through the aisles when I go. Yet, there's two local joints that still hand-bread and differentiate with home-made gravies, one spicy, one with herbs. Dinner-plate size dishes to boot which we split. They've resisted delivery and focus on dining in, but...mains start at $22 or so.

It's representative of the split between cheap vs quality. The chicken-fried delivery anecdotes might be a proxy for the class divide, too, hmm.

> I know multiple people ho not well-off but effectively no longer cook and only eat premade delivered food.

I see this too. It's so stupid because there are really cheap frozen meals you can get at the grocery store.

Better yet, beans and rice are nutritional, can be cooked in a variety of ways, and are exceptionally affordable.