High-income Americans rarely mix with poorer people. Restaurants like Applebee's and Olive Garden are the exception

People in here are missing the point. Yeah, Applebees, Olive Garden, IHOP, etc. aren't "classy", they're cheap chain sit-down restaurants. They appeal to a wide audience, cause they are clean, the food is fine, they serve a variety of drinks, and you can go there semi-regularly as long as you have some disposable income.

Sure, you're not going to see multi-millionaires who grew up rich going there, those people go to the "fancy" chains, like Ruth's Chris Steak House. But you'd probably see a 6 figure tech job family sitting in a both next to a plumber family sitting next to a doctor family. Which is something you don't really see at most other places.

Lmfao Applebee's isn't classy at all, it's like a step above Denny's. Nobody with money is like 'you know what I want tonight? some shitty microwaved food in a 90s setting where the service is meh and the cost is 3x what it's actually worth'. People who think it's high-class, are not actually high-income. Maybe to the social media influences, not people with real jobs.

Or has the joint turned itself around massively in the last decade?

I wonder if this article is just an ad for those restaurants. "Eat here to mix with the elites!"

Call it an anecdote but I have never seen a single person at Applebee's who looked like they earned more than $30,000/yr

so both wealthy and poor people have equally bad palates, gotcha

All these places are just fancy fast food. Half of the menu I'd frozen to fat fryer. But hey if your having fun, that's what counts.

Some people just have no idea what good food is and it’s puzzling to me, but it must not be related to income. I eat out at local restaurants mostly and they are not more expensive than those chains, and the food is way better.

Olive Garden hits different. Sure I can go to some classy authentic Italian restaurant and I do, but sometimes you get a craving that only Olive Garden salad, breadsticks, and shitty pasta can satisfy.

We had to shut down the applebees because no one could afford to eat there in my town

I'm curious if the content was switched after comments were made? Like it's just some research that uses mobile data to show likely interactions, but most comments are rebutting things that were never said and doesn't seem to be in the PDF, ie, "these places aren't classy."

Fascinating that the article runs down a whole host of communal gathering spots and completely, utterly, fails to mention houses of worship.

"Other businesses, like pharmacies, grocery stores, and gyms, or public institutions, like parks, schools, and libraries, are not as diverse"

Where do the different faiths rank compared to restaurants? Are they all the same or do Pentacostals rank lower than, say Catholics?

Maybe the authors of the study went out of their way to ignore the religious angle.

When you're here, you're a lesser form of family. Don't look at me.

This makes me think of a thing I saw on YouTube. These guys review Olive garden commercials https://youtu.be/MASjtPaOdgg?si=6_4XrYNRpfifr5UO

Has the quality gone down at Applebee's and Olive Garden? I haven't been to either recently but I recall them being consistently ok, certainly better than "shitty microwaved food", as one commenter put it. I'm sensing some big "I think it's super cool to look down on things" energy in this thread.