I think it’s mostly just that they’re cheap to operate. They don’t require fancy ingredients. Their menu is limited. They need a few people to run the fryers, take orders, and clean the tables, and that’s about it. They haven’t changed the decor in decades. The buildings were paid off ages ago. And the property taxes are dirt cheap because the only thing sitting on the land is a Long John Silvers. If they don’t cost much to operate, and enough people come in to keep the lights on, why not let them run their natural course? Sure, a LJS seems dead compared to the newest flashy restaurant in town, but that new restaurant has a ruinously expensive lease and a loan for hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment it needs to pay off. And the menu is 3x as complicated with much more expensive ingredients. The newer restaurant is hopping because if it’s not hopping, it quickly closes down. It’s only these dinosaurs that can keep operating even with low customer throughput.
I think it’s mostly just that they’re cheap to operate. They don’t require fancy ingredients. Their menu is limited. They need a few people to run the fryers, take orders, and clean the tables, and that’s about it. They haven’t changed the decor in decades. The buildings were paid off ages ago. And the property taxes are dirt cheap because the only thing sitting on the land is a Long John Silvers. If they don’t cost much to operate, and enough people come in to keep the lights on, why not let them run their natural course? Sure, a LJS seems dead compared to the newest flashy restaurant in town, but that new restaurant has a ruinously expensive lease and a loan for hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment it needs to pay off. And the menu is 3x as complicated with much more expensive ingredients. The newer restaurant is hopping because if it’s not hopping, it quickly closes down. It’s only these dinosaurs that can keep operating even with low customer throughput.