I grew up going to On The Border and Olive Garden, and thought they were good.

Chili’s and Golden Corral.

Subway in the 90s was kinda awesome. It was fast and wasn’t a burger place and it had the old brown and yellow subway wallpaper everywhere.

Then they kept expanding locations and the meat and cheese slicers disappeared.

Then they ran $5 footlong.

Then they kept running $5 footlong.

And kept running it. And the quality kept dropping and dropping so they could keep the price peg.

Now, it’s disgusting and costs way too much.

You couldn’t pay me to eat subway, now.

Panera Bread and Burger King. I feel like both have become pretty horrible.

Growing up our absolute main spot was The Old Spaghetti Factory, and sometimes we would hit Applebee’s or Chili’s.

Now I’m lactose intolerant so can’t eat a lot of the stuff at OSF, plus it all upsets my stomach now, their quality has gone downhill.

Applebee’s and Chili’s were probably never that good but tasted a lot better in my kid brain than they do now.

Chain restaurants have been garbage since COVID. (TBF they weren’t exactly stellar before.)

You can tell that many servers and cooks moved onto other careers during the pandemic. It seems like servers now are way too inexperienced with little help.

Five guys used to be amazing, but really felt like it fell off a cliff in my area. I’m also just eating out less. It’s so damn expensive and the food quality in general seems to be way down compared to the mid 00s to mid 10s. Maybe my tastes have changed, but I swear to God if we had a time machine, the food in like, 2011 would taste way better at many restaurants.

Tim Hortons. Growing up in Canada they were an icon, good donuts made in store, good coffee, decent food at cheap prices. I would go there all the time.

Now they have tiny donuts, terrible coffee and they’re way overpriced for everything. Penny pinchers ruined that place.

I used to like KFC. But the level of dgaf skyrocketed at some point and had multiple times where I got raw chicken. They clearly stopped battering on site and we’re just refrying frozen/thawed stuff shipped in.

I grew up liking Pizza Hut and little Caesar’s, most chain pizza I dislike now. Papa John’s is hit or miss, but didn’t have it growing up as it wasn’t a thing and when it became a thing, cost too much

Many chains I avoid. Olive Garden for example, but it still gets busy where I live which is weird.

I do still like carabbas though.

Applebee’s used to be our go to late night spot, half off apps and solid drink specials, they have since only made half off apps a limited time thing once or twice and the overall food quality seems to have dropped a lot.