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Sysco Is Not "Ruining Restaurants"

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Re: Sysco Is Not "Ruining Restaurants"

#31

Post by burnt-resistor »

camel_Snake wrote: post #17

I didn't really follow the premise of the original video. Can you find identical food at various locations throughout the country? Yes. Are you required to eat this same food? No! You could likely order the things that local restaurant/pub does make in house, rather than go for the variety of items on the menu that are simply there to appease customers' fancies. Or you could go to a proper restaurant that makes the m…

That's unrealistic. The problem is most restaurants in America exist in rural areas in commercial food deserts and are almost entirely dependent upon mega broadline suppliers that have merged into de facto oligopolies. Furthermore, by offering a wealth of finished items, in addition to ingredients and supplies, it's seductive to restaurants use these boring, lazy, pre-made offerings rather than cooking from scratch like respectable restaurants that do the work and pay the cost of sourcing quality ingredients, taking the time to do the preparation, and cooking good food.

Re: Sysco Is Not "Ruining Restaurants"

#32

Post by esseph »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #14
dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #8

I can't say I agree fully with the original video either but this is just blatantly trying to reframe the same facts presented in said video, but placing the blame on consumers rather than businesses, which is a really dirty tactic. > Sysco serves poor quality products. They also serve great quality products. Remember, if restaurants are buying poor quality products, it’s because it’s all you, the consumer, will pay…

> I mean, c'mon.. was this written by a real person or Adam Smith come back from the grave? It does smell a little AI-assisted.

From now until the death of humanity, someone is going to make this statement every day, about every post, until I just can't take it anyone and pass away from exhaustion.

Re: Sysco Is Not "Ruining Restaurants"

#33

Post by mrgoldenbrown »

kotaKat wrote: post #16

Okay, so if Sysco is ruining restaurants, then go eat at a restaurant being served by US Foods and experience the same slop?

Is anyone actually suggesting that? When someone criticizes Amazon they aren't implicitly supporting Walmart. They can both be bad.

Re: Sysco Is Not "Ruining Restaurants"

#35

Post by dj_mc_merlin »

liface wrote: post #19
TimorousBestie wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, c'mon.. was this written by a real person or Adam Smith come back from the grave? It does smell a little AI-assisted.

I abhor AI, and did not use a single bit of it.

BTW, despite disagreeing with you on this topic, I read other parts of your blog and, as somebody else who experiences manic episodes, I actually more or less 100% agree with your "Core Beliefs" section. I've seen this before in other people I've met like me, but it does make me wonder about the nature of manic states and nature/nurture. Do these beliefs trigger individuals to enter manic states, or is predisposition to manic states something that makes individuals adopt this set of beliefs? The subtitle of your blog is "wired differently", but the weird part is many people are wired differently but in vastly similar ways.

Re: Sysco Is Not "Ruining Restaurants"

#36

Post by techblueberry »

I don’t love this argument and I think it comes down to - and maybe this is an elitist anti-populist argument or whatever but, like consequentially - one could say about Walmart that Walmart didn’t destroy small-town American main streets, consumer preferences did. And of course, this is loosely speaking true, but this is tangentially similar to “Fentanyl didn’t ruin small-town America, consumer preferences did.”

Like - consequentially, one can see that before Walmart there were more locally owned stores in small towns. And I think we can argue about whether or not people were happier then. I would guess most people, particularly younger people are just happy to have a place where they can buy more stuff cheaper.

But all those negative externalities still happened. We can still be mad about that; and I think to a certain extent, like fundamentally is our goal to optimize dopamine hacking at the cheapest possible price point? Is there ever an argument to be made that maybe we design a system that doesn’t entirely feed into this pattern? Antitrust law is almost entirely a set of laws that exist to stop the system just doing its thang. Anti-drug and anti-smoking laws as well. Should we stop praying to the altar of consumer preferences in more cases? especially in the growing metaverse/character ai/brain-computer interface era.

Re: Sysco Is Not "Ruining Restaurants"

#37

Post by liface »

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #35
liface wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I abhor AI, and did not use a single bit of it.

BTW, despite disagreeing with you on this topic, I read other parts of your blog and, as somebody else who experiences manic episodes, I actually more or less 100% agree with your "Core Beliefs" section. I've seen this before in other people I've met like me, but it does make me wonder about the nature of manic states and nature/nurture. Do these beliefs trigger individuals to enter manic states, or is predisposition…

I think the two are uncorrelated. I don't think that most people prone to mania would agree with our beliefs. I think it has more to do with us posting on HackerNews thus being interested in similar topics.

Re: Sysco Is Not "Ruining Restaurants"

#38

Post by mcphage »

techblueberry wrote: post #36

I don’t love this argument and I think it comes down to - and maybe this is an elitist anti-populist argument or whatever but, like consequentially - one could say about Walmart that Walmart didn’t destroy small-town American main streets, consumer preferences did. And of course, this is loosely speaking true, but this is tangentially similar to “Fentanyl didn’t ruin small-town America, consumer preferences did.” Lik…

> one could say about Walmart that Walmart didn’t destroy small-town American main streets, consumer preferences did

Except that’s not even true—Walmart doesn’t merely sell products, it does plenty of anticompetitive tactics itself, like opening a store in a town, waiting until smaller retailers nearby go out of business, then close that Walmart and open a new one in the next town over. People in the first town have no choice but to drive to the next town for products, since the local businesses are gone. Rinse and repeat.

Re: Sysco Is Not "Ruining Restaurants"

#39

Post by dj_mc_merlin »

liface wrote: post #37
dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTW, despite disagreeing with you on this topic, I read other parts of your blog and, as somebody else who experiences manic episodes, I actually more or less 100% agree with your "Core Beliefs" section. I've seen this before in other people I've met like me, but it does make me wonder about the nature of manic states and nature/nurture. Do these beliefs trigger individuals to enter manic states, or is predisposition…

I think the two are uncorrelated. I don't think that most people prone to mania would agree with our beliefs. I think it has more to do with us posting on HackerNews thus being interested in similar topics.

Very well could be.

Re: Sysco Is Not "Ruining Restaurants"

#40

Post by gruez »

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #30
gruez wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For example, rather than fix systemic issues that cause them to dump mass amounts of greenhouse gases or toxic waste, they instead reframe the issue so that the consumer is at fault: "you don't recycle enough". This is a strawman. Even before "recycling is a lie" entered into the zeitgeist a few years ago, approximately nobody thought people failing to recycle led to greenhouse gas or toxic waste, or that recycling…

> If consumers actually want unique local flavors an non-frozen foods, and are willing to pay a premium for it, sysco would have never gotten a foothold. This is rooted in the assumption that capitalism provides what people want, rather than the worst that they will still accept. Endlessly cutting costs and then blaming the tastes of the consumer is why people put out anti-corporation pieces like the original video.…

>This is rooted in the assumption that capitalism provides what people want, rather than the worst that they will still accept.

Can you really say people "want" more expensive/unique/non-frozen food when they choose the cheap one every time? It's like with flights. People complain about how shitty flying is, but most people are also sorting by price and buying the cheapest.

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