This reporting project started with a conversation between my colleague Alana Wise and me. I had initially pitched an amorphous idea exploring how Chili’s was so obviously pulling on aging millennials’ nostalgia through its ads like this one, but dropped it because of … *gestures wildly* the state of the nation and news.
Alana and I kept coming back to the story idea, though. But we didn’t want to just put something out that served as free advertising. Instead, we asked a bigger question: How are these restaurants able to survive in a struggling economy with rising tariffs and changing diet trends? And still offer unlimited pasta?
We put the questions out to readers and heard back from more than 150. Many shared personal stories — affordable family dinners, college happy hours, first dates at Denny’s. The responses made clear there was something deeper to explore.
The first piece in the series looks at the emotional pull these restaurants have for many people. The sameness that critics sometimes deride turns out to be a huge appeal. You can order the same chicken alfredo or chicken crispers as you did at home in Connecticut as a kid, and order it again years later as an adult in Arizona.
Our reporting — based on interviews with restaurant managers, CEOs, marketing experts, a psychologist, a content creator and a culture writer — found these chain restaurants survive through a careful mix of nostalgia, industrial efficiency and, increasingly, social media virality.
Covering chain restaurants may be easy to dismiss as “fluff.” But in reporting this project out, we found that these restaurants reveal something real about American culture, how we eat, spend money and love to seek out familiarity and sameness — sodium levels be damned. |
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