I love chain stores. I really do, I'm not being campy or ironic here. And it's not just that I've come to appreciate the familiarity, convenience and quality control that certain chain businesses provide. It's that in the last decade or so there's been a revolution of sleek, innovative and somewhat progressively run chains that I view as causing nothing less than a major retail and minor cultural revolution.
In this elite, upper echelon, which also doubles as my “Runners-Up” list, you'll find: Ikea, Trader Joe's, Starbucks (along with its slightly hipper doppelgangers Peet's, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, It's A Grind, etc.) Home Depot, Staples, Target, Whole Foods and Souplantation. Oh, and throughout the Western states, a football stadium-sized electronics superstore called Fry's.
The best of these chains have brought products to people who previously felt they had little or no access and at prices that most could afford. Ikea has enabled college students, underpaid artists and regular working class folk to outfit their modest living spaces like sophisticated European aesthetes and socialites, while Home Depot has empowered millions of the rank and file to build additions onto their houses and install hot tubs in the backyard. Trader Joe's has somehow managed to dig up good, fairly healthy, borderline exotic or gourmet items and then miraculously sell them at nearly discount prices. And Starbucks brought a sanitized, decently replicated version of coffee house culture not only to street corners everywhere, but to some out-of-the-way neighborhoods where a few years ago a cappuccino would have been considered as exotic as a Faberge Egg or a Maserati.
With their spiffed-up, earthy décor; retail displays of recommended music and books; and receptacle full of lightly used New York Times and other newspapers ripe for perusing, I believe Starbucks has noticeably increased the percentage of Americans who read edifying material, listen to semi-hip music and schmooze aimlessly for hours with friends and even strangers while exchanging philosophical banter. There's an atmosphere unique to a coffee establishment, where thoughtful quiet time and diligent intellectual improvement can be pursued in a way that wouldn't seem as natural in a donut shop or a cheeseburger emporium. The citizenry in San Francisco, Cambridge Mass. or Paris, France have long taken the existence of these places for granted. The people of rural North Carolina or Bakersfield, CA have not.
It is, I admit, kind of a weird choice, but for my Best Chain Store title I am crowning Pinkberry, the red hot frozen yogurt upstart that's sweeping the nation from its West Coast beachhead with a fiercely addictive frozen desert product that's tart to the point of nearly sour and whose prices relatively rival those of the pricey Starbucks, whom comedians routinely take to task for their “eight dollar double frappuccinos.”
But Pinkberry offers not just a clean, refreshing, creamy product devoid of the sugar overdose found in, say, Cold Stone Creamery or Ben & Jerry's, but it also offers the thrill of waiting in line at least twenty minutes and participating in a notable cultural zeitgeist specific to the smart, urban, creative crowd of cities like Los Angeles.
A Pinkberry at the end of the night, while maybe not quite as satisfying as good sex, nonetheless offers a similarly sensuous and visceral feeling of physiological release, and all for only a few bucks. It also takes place in what resembles a spotless, bright pastel-colored, Hello Kitty-meets-Barbarella space capsule.
While not transforming lives as comprehensively as the previously mentioned chains, Pinkberry gets my vote at the current moment for inverting the flavor of an essentially silly, frivolous dessert product and for marketing it in a fresh and audacious way, making their stores as much a place to sit down with friends, people watch, or even flirt with strangers as any hip Hollywood nightclub.
Pinkberry will undoubtedly cool off of its current superstar status and be replaced by the next savvy fast food fad, be it varietal cole slaws, steamed vegetables with dipping sauce or unusually flavored puddings. But as a whole raft of tart-yogurt chains now blatantly ripping them off attests to, Pinkberry's recipe for a frozen desert catering to subtler, more grown-up taste buds is going to be around for a very long time.
Worst: We-Sell-It-On-EBay Stores
There are definitely several chain stores that deserve to get knocked, and for some wildly different reasons. The Good Guys is an electronics store but won't carry computer stuff. Denny's has a ridiculously limited menu -- sometimes I don't want a Monte Christo sandwich, a T-bone steak or a huge omelet. Carl's Jr. makes a pretty good hamburger but they seem to have dropped their in-store salad bars because too few idiotic Americans were taking advantage of that excellent and relatively healthy deal. I say they should have left the salad bars in, even if technically a money-loser, to reward customers like me who have consumed a lot of their usual, greasy fare, but could use a healthy break out there in fast food land.
Yoshinoya Beef Bowl is a weird place, as it manages to make Asian rice bowl meals seem as greasy, gristly and unhealthy as a double chili burger with side of cheese fries. Wienerschnitzel is also a curious joint and every time I pass a location of the infamous hot dog and sausage restaurant, it looks so lonely and neglected I almost feel bad for Germans.
Speaking of authoritarian regimes, Domino's Pizza is a double shot of badness. First, they are selling essentially generic bread product topped with essentially generic sauce and generic cheese product. In this nation that enjoys a healthily dispersed Italian population not to mention non-Italians who've learned how to make an honest, homemade-style pizza, why order this mediocre, soulless cardboard that promises to arrive in thirty minutes or less? Are you in that much of a rush?
But even worse, Domino's owner is in fact a hardcore, extreme conservative Catholic who uses a lot of his company's cash to fund anti-abortion causes and is also building an ultra-traditionalist Catholic “village” in Florida where all citizens will live under a code similar to that of Spain in 1493. The guy can do what he wants with his money, but if you don't agree with his politics, you shouldn't eat his food. It's also bland, awful food, which makes the decision a lot easier. Now if, say, Iran's President Ahamdinejad owned El Pollo Loco, that might be a tough choice.
Radio Shack is a strange store. They sell a lot of little wires, transistors and other micro-components for devices which seem antiquated and obscure. Also, since my childhood, their weird house brands for major electronics items were sub par or at times outright junk.
But I have to go with one chain that is my absolute worst and for that I choose those We-Sell-It-On-EBay stores, which have become ubiquitous in strip malls and medium-rent retail shopping areas. They offer to sell your items on Ebay -- handling the packaging, shipping and auction itself -- in exchange for a very healthy thirty or forty percent of the take.
It's not just that they take such a huge cut of the money for the relatively simple and quick service they provide. It's that they foster extreme helplessness and laziness in Americans who could and should be conducting their own EBay auctions, putting the stuff in boxes and shipping it themselves, and thereby keep one hundred percent of the proceeds.
I know people who've used these stores. OK, I've used it myself! Well, almost. I was seriously considering using them to sell an item I had- - an unopened real estate license home course -- until I walked up to the counter and learned of their exorbitant fee. And that made me feel like a slothful, unmotivated jerk. So I went home, put it up on EBay auction myself and felt extremely proud for seeing this selling and shipping process through to the end. Basically I hate these stores for almost enabling me in my own stupid, inexcusable laziness.
On the other hand, I have seriously thought of how cool it might be to own one of these stores, as it is one of the best entrepreneurial businesses out there where just about anyone with a head on his or her shoulders could quite possibly become a millionaire. So, while it's a potentially great business opportunity for an enterprising self-starter type, as far as being a customer patronizing the chain, the We-Sell-It-On-EBay stores unfortunately fosters the kind of lethargic dependence that keeps people like me from becoming hot-shot, wheeler dealer, modern day Horatio Algers.
