Branded for life
It's not surprising that the economic prosperity of your town, village, hamlet or postcode can be linked the sort of shops you have on your high street and the number of boarded up windows among them. What might be more of a surprise is that it is a sign of economic prosperity when you have a KFC in your post code rather than the sort of fried chicken shop that aspires to be a KFC. Rule of thumb - when you see a Dallas Fried Chicken place open, it's time to worry and when you see something called Tennessee Fried Chicken set up shop, it's time to Google 'estate agents' and when you see your first 'Alabama Fried Stuff' it's time to Google 'petrol bombs' and reclaim your neighbourhood.
Why this snobbery though? Presumably they fry chicken in places in America other than Kentucky, and probably do it quite well. Any Southern state will probably be no stranger to fried fowl. What might be more worrying is an incongruity such as 'Vermont fried chicken', although that's more intriguing than anything else, standing as it does next to 'Paris rolled sushi'. (Yet who could resist nipping into a place called 'Alaska Fried Blubber', and asking for seal and chips?).
Where does this brand snobbery come from? There is a genuine gap in the market between the global brands that dominate food and drink - peddling mass produced stuff that's made in a giant factory that, if the conveyor belt were to be set up in a slightly different way, could probably just as easily knock out tractor tyres - and the artisan brewed beverage or humanely reared (and presumably Swiss clinic slaughtered) beefburger. This is the gap plugged by local or national, but not international, brands, that try and look like their global step-parent.
If that's the case we're in trouble because it means that coke is an aspirational drink. (it's always coke that the local competition seeks to emulate, never pepsi. I think this is because coke is the more readily recognised international brand and comes in those jolly red and white cans and iconic bottles whereas pepsi...isn't that the one Michael Jackson drank? Best example of a local cola I ever tried was 'Corsica cola' which actually tasted way better than coke).
Today, the competing beverages such as Panda Pop or whatever have been more or less replaced by supermarket own brand value versions of cola, lemonade and so on. If you want to find local competition you have to try independent local shops and even then you're more likely to come across the global brand, but the foreign version that's been brewed up abroad. And it does taste different. Which is odd because the supposed strength of a global brand is that you can drink a coke in Thailand and it'll taste the same as it does in Manchester. Of course that's rot, the recipe for fizzy pop is syrup, gas and water but when the water comes via a bucket from a river where children are washing goats upstream, then the third world version is doing to have a special tang. And that's something we should be thankful for.
But it's odd that rather than celebrate diversity, the preferred business model appears to be to emulate uniformity. Possibly this is because you're more likely to go into a place that looks sort of familiar because, having been there once, you're unlikely to return. Luckily, the other aspect of the business model for these places is to stay open after the pubs are shut and sell chips to very drunk people.
Maybe this snobbery can be traced back to the emergence of chain burger places on the high street. Prior to the arrival of macdees the national chain was Wimpy. Crockery, cutlery, waitresses. It could never last. About seven seconds after the burger chains started to establish themselves the emulators arrived; 'starburger' being just one. Starburger was where you went to eat if, horror of horrors, if your town was not considered worthy to have a chain burger place. You could sit in starburger and pretend you were in a chain burger bar, you could even litter if you wanted to give it that authentic feel.
What's kind of sweet is that these places seek to emulate but not duplicate their inspirations. It's not like pirate goods at a dodgy car booter, presumably because it's harder to pack up a restaurant when trading standards come knocking than it it to bundle your fake trainers in a suitcase and leg it, and possibly because anyone considering doing this has learned their lesson from the sub plot of 'Coming to America'. What would be good to see is this approach applied to 'fake' goods. Who of us could resist a tee shirt branded 'Nikf'?
Of course, the snobbery could just arise from these places being patronised by the sort of people that cause the reflex unkind thought: 'chav' or the considered unkind thought: 'morlocks'.
Why this snobbery though? Presumably they fry chicken in places in America other than Kentucky, and probably do it quite well. Any Southern state will probably be no stranger to fried fowl. What might be more worrying is an incongruity such as 'Vermont fried chicken', although that's more intriguing than anything else, standing as it does next to 'Paris rolled sushi'. (Yet who could resist nipping into a place called 'Alaska Fried Blubber', and asking for seal and chips?).
Where does this brand snobbery come from? There is a genuine gap in the market between the global brands that dominate food and drink - peddling mass produced stuff that's made in a giant factory that, if the conveyor belt were to be set up in a slightly different way, could probably just as easily knock out tractor tyres - and the artisan brewed beverage or humanely reared (and presumably Swiss clinic slaughtered) beefburger. This is the gap plugged by local or national, but not international, brands, that try and look like their global step-parent.
If that's the case we're in trouble because it means that coke is an aspirational drink. (it's always coke that the local competition seeks to emulate, never pepsi. I think this is because coke is the more readily recognised international brand and comes in those jolly red and white cans and iconic bottles whereas pepsi...isn't that the one Michael Jackson drank? Best example of a local cola I ever tried was 'Corsica cola' which actually tasted way better than coke).
Today, the competing beverages such as Panda Pop or whatever have been more or less replaced by supermarket own brand value versions of cola, lemonade and so on. If you want to find local competition you have to try independent local shops and even then you're more likely to come across the global brand, but the foreign version that's been brewed up abroad. And it does taste different. Which is odd because the supposed strength of a global brand is that you can drink a coke in Thailand and it'll taste the same as it does in Manchester. Of course that's rot, the recipe for fizzy pop is syrup, gas and water but when the water comes via a bucket from a river where children are washing goats upstream, then the third world version is doing to have a special tang. And that's something we should be thankful for.
But it's odd that rather than celebrate diversity, the preferred business model appears to be to emulate uniformity. Possibly this is because you're more likely to go into a place that looks sort of familiar because, having been there once, you're unlikely to return. Luckily, the other aspect of the business model for these places is to stay open after the pubs are shut and sell chips to very drunk people.
Maybe this snobbery can be traced back to the emergence of chain burger places on the high street. Prior to the arrival of macdees the national chain was Wimpy. Crockery, cutlery, waitresses. It could never last. About seven seconds after the burger chains started to establish themselves the emulators arrived; 'starburger' being just one. Starburger was where you went to eat if, horror of horrors, if your town was not considered worthy to have a chain burger place. You could sit in starburger and pretend you were in a chain burger bar, you could even litter if you wanted to give it that authentic feel.
What's kind of sweet is that these places seek to emulate but not duplicate their inspirations. It's not like pirate goods at a dodgy car booter, presumably because it's harder to pack up a restaurant when trading standards come knocking than it it to bundle your fake trainers in a suitcase and leg it, and possibly because anyone considering doing this has learned their lesson from the sub plot of 'Coming to America'. What would be good to see is this approach applied to 'fake' goods. Who of us could resist a tee shirt branded 'Nikf'?
Of course, the snobbery could just arise from these places being patronised by the sort of people that cause the reflex unkind thought: 'chav' or the considered unkind thought: 'morlocks'.
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