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Restaurant Reality in the 21st Century By Maren L. Hickton
I live in a neighborhood that is 35 years old and have lived here for 12
years. A lot of transient families
move in where the breadwinner who works for a major corporation gets
transferred to Pittsburgh for a new position with a company and then they buy
a house in our neighborhood. They choose this neighborhood, I'm sure, partly
because of the nice wooded lots and the established landscaping that takes
years to cultivate.
So they move in and immediately call the local tree removal company and
within a month their yard is leveled and I mean, leveled. Then they call a
landscaper and turn over all the grass and plant sod or, more amusing,
pay tons of money for tons of top soil and spray their yard with a
combination of seed and fertilizer which looks like spray paint to plant a
new lawn. Then they remove original stone walls and replace them with treated
landscape timber or formed concrete block and rip out the established
vegetation and plant seedlings. After about six months, they replace the
siding and the shutters. Window replacement to a newer style usually follows,
where the windows might be five or six years old when they moved in since the
last person moved.
By the time these folks are finished, they end up with an entirely new house
and new yard that does not seem remotely connected to why they would buy the
house in the first place. And then their company moves them out and the
process starts all over again with the power saws and the trucks and the
contractors as my husband and I watch bemused.
This is an example of the public we are dealing with: new, improved, better,
different, throw it away.
As restaurateurs in the last part of the 20th century, where the public has
been flooded with choices, we, too, have gotten caught up in the hysteria:
new, improved, better, different, throw it away.
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