I initially liked the term, but the more I read the more I kind of tuned out of it. I feel like defining the category by reading into the culture of the demand side is a bit lacking.
What the term and initial examples conjured for me, was the category of generally boring bland things that have been dressed up in marketing as being exceptional or interesting, and are then held out by their patrons as similar.
For food, Chipotle is in the dead center of that group - great when you're driving through Oklahoma in a box truck, adequate when you're hungover and hangry somewhere you don't know the decent haunts, but ultimately every meal there stems from a failure to do the legwork of finding something good.
Amazon should also not escape mention for being in this category. For a long time I had trouble understanding why everybody would talk about Amazon's prices being so good, but eventually I realized that the idea of shopping around online hadn't really occurred to them - they are comparing to Targmart!
I think a lot of what fuels these ventures is something like the sixth tier hipsters, lording their "find" over the seventh tier ones (A 0th tier hipster is the actual trend creator, most don't get followed. The standard "first tier" hipsters are actually the first followers. The second tier ones follow the first tier ones once the trend has caught in a little. And so on). The "premium mediocre" is ultimately safe, as anything challenging has been optimized out, but is dressed up to look new like any fashion, and is thus adopted by the portion of the masses seeking superficial change.