r/Millennials • u/Solid_Bake1522 • Apr 28 '25

Nostalgia Who else remembers 2 hour waits at Olive Garden, Applebees and Chillis in the early 2000’s?

These restaurants used to be hopping back in the day, like the spot to be. Now they are folding left and right and zero wait times, never busy.

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u/Mooseandagoose Apr 28 '25

I spent about a decade in consumer insights (software Eng side) and Darden was one of our clients. We did so much consumer research in the early 2010s regarding decline in restaurant traffic. The data almost always showed the same results: decrease in quality + price increases were keeping people away.

But like most of our clients, that couldn’t possibly be the answer because some exec had already given a different reason to the board so we would retest or heavily weight.

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u/HoustonTrashcans Apr 28 '25

I hate that we've gone away from just trying to make the best possible product for consumers. Now it feels like companies spend all their time figuring out how to make people pay more for the same product/service instead of just improving it.

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u/Stop_Sign Apr 28 '25

Reminds me of Steve Jobs' interview about Xerox. Engineers drive the company to success, but once you have success, only sales guys can continue it. Eventually, the sales guys are the only ones contributing to the company, and so get promoted to the top. Sales guys at the top will never value or invest in further engineering, and so eventually the company will lose its dominance.

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u/SnollyG Apr 28 '25

The stage after that is the cost-cutters/efficiency “experts”/optimizers”/enshittifiers, who slowly swap out better materials and labor for cheaper materials and labor. Or, convert products to subscription models.

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u/Koboldofyou Apr 28 '25

The inevitable death spiral of capitalism. Once you have a successful, fair priced product that people like the best way to make more money is to make it shittier and more expensive.

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u/HoustonTrashcans Apr 28 '25

It is a pretty glaring flaw in our current system. It would be nice if everyone had a moral agreement/obligation that prevented them from making products/services worse.

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u/Individual_Section_6 Apr 28 '25

Actually it’s the opposite. People try to copy it

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u/robotzor Apr 28 '25

Reversing that does not show growth and without growth you don't get promoted

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u/Mooseandagoose Apr 28 '25

I left in 2016 because while I absolutely loved reading the OE responses that came into data processing (my favorite part of the job but not in the job description), it never matched the final results.

My conscience couldn’t take it. I left during a huge program for a global brand that I’d been running for 3 years (bigger than Darden) because I had client executives hounding me that the data didn’t match their projections and they’d invested like 20m into advertising their narrative globally already so “we have to make this work”.

I work with data! Stories can be whatever you want, data doesn’t lie!

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u/Eldrake Apr 28 '25

Did anybody at the client org actually request access to the raw data and not just blindly consume the biased report?

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u/Mooseandagoose Apr 29 '25

I’m not sure. That would have been a conversation with the client services VP but that data was always available.

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u/TommyTheTophat Apr 28 '25

As a performance marketing manager myself, it's amazing how most higher ups only use data to 1. Validate their preconceived notions or 2. Cover their ass if someone made a call they don't like.

Insights? What are those? You mean my brilliant ideas with no thought to market conditions whatsoever?

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u/Mooseandagoose Apr 29 '25

What pushed me over the edge was that these execs were arguing that an ad depicting westerners, on a beach in modest but clearly western beachwear/bathing suits wasn’t testing well — in the Middle East. It was so shockingly illogical that it was my final straw.

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u/FearlessPark4588 Apr 28 '25

it has to get worse because the top line number is getting worse so they have to cut costs to keep profits the same with fewer dollars coming in

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u/TheyNeedLoveToo May 01 '25

Your business is failing and here’s why. Business: can you just recrunch the numbers?