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"Quick-Serve" or "Fast-Casual?" - How Should We Tag the Threads?


DonRocks

How Should We Tag Restaurants Like Chipotle Grill?  

8 members have voted

  1. 1. How Should We Tag Restaurants Like Chipotle Grill - Ones In-Between Fast Food (McDonald's) and Casual Dining (Applebee's)?

    • Quick-Serve
      2
    • Fast-Casual
      4
    • It Makes No Difference
      1
    • There's A Difference Between The Two Terms (Please Explain With A Post)
      1


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Sometime close to ten years ago, I noticed that there was a cluster of restaurants developing on 14th Street, north of P Street and Logan Circle (actually Thomas Circle), but south of U Street - it pretty-much started with Cork Wine Bar. I began a discussion thread about what, if anything, we should call the 14th Street Corridor, before I realized we weren't agreeing on anything, and unilaterally decided on 14UP - a name which is absolutely descriptive and appropriate (it's 14th Street between U and P Streets, but a name that the rest of the media has been "resilient" to pick up on and use - I'll leave their reasoning up to you. It doesn't matter - I'll be using this term for the rest of my life, even though Eatonville threw me a curve-ball, several years later, by opening on V Street - it's still better than anything that anyone else has come up with. "14th Street Corridor" is so ambiguous as to be meaningless, and has about as much character as "Dupont Circle."

During that time, the rise of "Quick-Serve" or "Fast-Casual" restaurants has been every bit as dramatic as the rise of Food Trucks replacing those nasty hot-dog carts - it seems as if I have about half the threads tagged "Quick-Serve," and about half tagged "Fast-Casual," and I'd like to propose choosing one over the other, and sticking with it. This doesn't need to be a permanent change, but I'd like to try and stay with it for a few years.

Instead of making a unilateral choice, I'm going with a group vote - they both seem to be equally popular, and there may in fact be a technical difference between the two (if there is, someone please chime in pronto). I have no strong feelings about one over the other, so I'm going to let people here decide what they should be termed, and go with the majority vote. Go ahead and vote on any of the four choices - more than one if you'd like.

14UP is here to stay, and it would be appreciated if you could use that term going forward - I was the first person (not here, but anywhere) who spotted the trend, and proposed giving that corridor its own name. It's just as good as SoHo or NoLIta and certainly a lot better than DUMBO. Have at it.

If you vote for #4, please state your reasoning with a post. 

I have a slight preference for "Quick-Serve" because none of the words are in either "Fast Food" or "Casual Dining" - there are six different words for those three different terms, and no chance of getting them confused.

I also understand that some "restaurants" (Subway, for example), fall in-between Fast Food and the Quick-Serve / Fast-Casual model, so this isn't like we're trying to come up with a cure for cancer.

Cheers,
Rocks

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(The poll, by the way, is up at the top of the first post (you need to scroll up) - perhaps people don't care about this, and that's fine with me.)

According to this article, there *is* a difference between the two models. However, it doesn't even mention "Fast Food," and seems to include "Quick-Serve" as part of that descriptor, i.e., it considers McDonald's to be Quick-Serve and Chipotle Mexican Grill to be Fast-Casual. 

If I were basing the decision on this article alone, I would name them Fast-Casual. However, I want to retain the moniker "Fast-Food" for places with drive-thru windows like McDonald's, that often have their food pre-cooked - humanized vending machines, as it were. I refuse to call McDonald's "Quick-Serve" unless I'm convinced otherwise.

"An Overview of Different Restaurant Types" by Monica Parpal on foodservicewarehouse.com

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On 6/28/2016 at 10:49 PM, StarStraf said:

To me Quick Serve - is that you go up to the counter and order and either wait at counter or they bring to table

Fast Casual is wait-staff but very quick

Why do you think this is true? I'm not saying you're wrong; I'm just trying to get at your references here.

(Thanks for chiming in.)

[Gang, I'm all for democracy within limits, but if we only have 5 votes, the "It Makes No Difference" selection is going to be heavily weighted. To be honest, I'm doing this as something of a trial balloon for future website decisions; this particular one is of very little importance.]

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I like the "fast casual' designation.  To me it implies a level of cooking/fare on par with a traditional table service restaurant but faster & with less service involved.  "Quick Serve" calls to mind bad buffets (at least IMHO).

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40 minutes ago, weezy said:

I like the "fast casual' designation.  To me it implies a level of cooking/fare on par with a traditional table service restaurant but faster & with less service involved.  "Quick Serve" calls to mind bad buffets (at least IMHO).

But the places we're talking about, (e.g., Chipotle), all have pre-cooked food; it's just not pre-assembled. All they do is spoon up pre-cooked <whatever> out of a steam table, and assemble it, quite literally on an assembly line. At McDonald's, if you ask for french fries with no salt (and then add your own), you're pretty much guaranteed to get a freshly cooked order of fries - ain't happening at Chipotle. Very few of these places cook to-order; it's pick-and-choose, they assemble, you pay, and don't forget to stack your trays on the way out.

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I don't think fast casual has much of a real definition. I mean, if you wiki it, it puts Denny's and Chipotle and Bruegger's in the same category of fast casual... 

The way I thought of it was typical ticket higher than fast food ($9-15, rather than $4-8), typically modifiable/customizable, no or minimal table service, and better quality of food/ingredients. But that last part is very non-objective, and I'm not sure how you quantify that. 

I think in the actual restaurant industry quick serve restaurants (QSRs) overlap with fast food, pretty much, but also includes stuff like TCBY, Auntie Annie's, etc.

I think they are different. 

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21 minutes ago, Simul Parikh said:

I think in the actual restaurant industry quick serve restaurants (QSRs) overlap with fast food, pretty much, but also includes stuff like TCBY, Auntie Annie's, etc.

I think they are different. 

No, there's definitely a distinction - there are entire magazines (trade journals) devoted to the quick-serve industry.

Everybody thinks Chipotle "broke the mold" and was a trail-blazer, but what's the difference between that and a Hot Shoppes Cafeteria back in the 1970s? I see none, other than that Hot Shoppes was more like a college-cafeteria set-up - you walk down the line, point to what you want, and the employees plated it for you - not unlike Mitsitam Cafe.

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I honestly see no difference between Chipotle and McDonalds as businesses. Other than McDonalds may be faster (and a larger footprint) and Chipotle might be higher quality food.  From a city planning standpoint I don't see why the city would allow an Chipotle but not a TacoBell. 

Looking back at why DC made it difficult for fast food to open I have to assume they didn't want a proification of cookie cutter resturnats killing all the local businesses?  I don't think back in the day they were worried that healthy restaurants were driven out by fast food - but I could be wrong.  If I'm right on the history how are &Pizza/RiceBar/Skewer/roti, etc... locations any different than any other fast food establishments each one has the capability of driving out a local business?  They are high traffic, generate tons of take out, survive by taking a significant portion of the lunch business for the area, etc....

Everyone of these business are trying to expand (or would like to) and will offer a consistent set of food across the country.  Chipotle already all over. Just because it has more "real" or "healthier" food doesn't make it much different than as Subway/Jimmy Johns, Burger King etc...

In the end we frequent these types of places because we want good tasting food at a low price, and for various reasons we are choosing them over the legacy fast food.

(I eat at a lot of these restaurants and much less often at legacy fast food.)

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2 hours ago, iolaire said:

I honestly see no difference between Chipotle and McDonalds as businesses. Other than McDonalds may be faster (and a larger footprint) and Chipotle might be higher quality food.  From a city planning standpoint I don't see why the city would allow an Chipotle but not a TacoBell. 

The biggest difference I see between fast food (e.g., McDonalds) and fast-casual (e.g., Chipotle) is that with fast food, the final product is often finished before the customer walks in the door; with fast-casual, some assembly is required, i.e., it's pre-cooked, but assembled to-order.

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38 minutes ago, DonRocks said:

The biggest difference I see between fast food (e.g., McDonalds) and fast-casual (e.g., Chipotle) is that with fast food, the final product is often finished before the customer walks in the door; with fast-casual, some assembly is required, i.e., it's pre-cooked, but assembled to-order.

So does that make Fig & Olive a fast-casual dining spot during the time the chain's New York-based commissary supplied the DC Fig & Olive restaurants?

Going back to fast food, does that make Wendy's a fast-casual?  Random internet quote: "Overall, Wendy's hamburgers appear to be the freshest due to their made-to-order process" @ https://brainmass.com/business/business-management/mcdonalds-vs-burger-king-vs-wendy-s-processes-406411

Also based on that definition Taco Bell becomes fast-casual? For as long as I've known you could watch them assemble your meal in the work area.

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48 minutes ago, iolaire said:

So does that make Fig & Olive a fast-casual dining spot during the time the chain's New York-based commissary supplied the DC Fig & Olive restaurants?

Fig & Olive is a, well, let's just say that I've never been, and I'll never go.

I'm quite certain there's an industry-accepted definition of the two concepts - I've never bothered looking it up.

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