The Dining Out Phenomenon

Introduction: The Dining Out Phenomenon It is no secret Americans love to eat, more importantly we love to eat out. Our fast paced society and never ending lists of daily demands makes the choice to eat out an easy one. Clearly Americans of all types, families, friends, young, old, everyone eats out.” The restaurant industry is projected to make $660 billion dollars in 2013, and there are almost a million restaurant locations” (National Restaurant Association, 2013). Society has become used to having options, when you go to a store of any kind there are always multiple variations of the same products, multiple stores of the same kind. Restaurants are no exception. Our cities are flooded with options, take-out, buffets, fast-food, and sit down restaurants are scattered through the streets, but what factors play into the decision of where to go? I am going to explore the pros and cons of chain versus local restaurants and show why local is better though my research and own experiences. The fast pace of our daily lives makes it hard to consider the behind the scenes practices of where we get out food, even though these methods impact multiple aspects of our lives in a much bigger way than one would think.
Literature Review: The Pros and Cons
I went and researched the pros and cons of local and chain restaurants. After reading articles and watching videos, I found common factors that consumers accounted for when deciding where to eat. With food comes nutrition, with so many people counting calories and watching their weight deciding where to eat out can be challenging. Chain restaurants have more detailed menus with calorie count sometimes next to each option. Also, there are symbols to distinguish light options, vegetarian options, and even gluten-free options. If not displayed directly on the menu chain restaurants all have a website containing all nutritional information. Local restaurants on the other hand do not, although in general they use local fresh