On the Economics of Chinese Food

I meant to comment before on Carpe Diem's post pointing out that by some measures, Chinese food is more popular in the United States than big-market franchise food (link). It's an interesting factoid and I take it mostly at face value. CD draws the moral that "Globalization is good," though what that has to do with the price of chai in China I have no idea (but then, the lesson CD draws from everything is that globalization is good).

But what I'd like to know is more about the internal structure of the Chinese restaurant biz. Note tht the menus, the decor and the outside signs bear an impressive similarity from one end of the country to the other. When you stop and think of it, this is hardly surprising. It isn't plausible that some Chinese family in, say,Wichita, will just say "hey. gang! Let's start a restaurant!"--and then go and invent the whole process from scratch. Sooner rather than later, they will stumble onto somebody who will want to "help" them with the benefit of his/her experience or knowledge. Might be a "restaurant consultant." My guess is that it is likely to be the equipment supplier, whose main job is to get the highest price he can squeeze for that high-BTU stove they will need,* and who finds himself morphing into a restaurant consultant whether he intended such a result or not.

And then--what? I suppose there is no megacorp to which mom & pop must be royalties (unless you count the monthly payment on that stove). But what about the mob? Tony Soprano understands that the best way to squeeze the profits out of a restaurant is to control the towel concession--an excellent index of marginal revenue. Isn't it fair to assume that somebody in the beef & broccoli circuit has figured out the same strategy.

None of this is meant to contract CD's point--as I suggested above, I'm not sure exactly what the hell his point is, anyway. It does suggest that life closeup is usually more complicated than it seems to be from a distance.

*Afterthought: One of CD's sources offers an enlightening mini-history of the Chinese restaurant in the US. But it includes an odd bit of cultural blindness:

...home cooks may use the Chinese wok pan for simple stir-fry dishes. Authentic Chinese cuisine usually calls for a level of heat unknown in Western cooking. The quick flash fry, on a high-BTU restaurant stove, seals in flavors in a way almost impossible to match in a non-professional kitchen.

Whoa, big guy, you never heard of a pizza oven? I think I make a pretty good pizza if I do say so, but I don't dare crank my kitchen oven above about 515 degrees. Unless I'm willing to spring for something like this, I'm not likely to get any better. Of course, not having a the fancy oven, I always have an excuse for not achieving perfection.