I went to Ihop at 7PM today

[TwixVoy]

I was literally the ONLY person in the place. From the time I went in to 45 minutes later I was the only person. Very telling.

[wanpete]

1. I see the same thing in restaurants and department stores. it's very creepy and telling.

[CoffeeCat]

20. Six months ago...

I started noticing that our Super Target was like a tomb. It was eerie!

I do my shopping after 8:00 p.m. when the kids are asleep and I go to the
same 3-4 stores in one night. It's my routine.

I've noticed that things are not moving off of the Target shelves. Things
sit there for weeks. So many things are on clearance right now, too. It's just
nuts.

Target is now offering lots of promotions to get people in the store. Many
stores are doing this. The Target ad usually has offers of gift cards
when you purchase certain items. Usually, they offer these gift cards
for large purchase, like Dyson vacuum cleaners. Three weeks ago, you
got a $5 coupon for buying Pop Tarts. Last week, it was cereal. It's
amazing. I ended up paying 25 cents for the Pop-Tarts. I used coupons
and I kept going back through the line and paying for more Pop-Tarts
with the $5 gift cards. I got 50 boxes of Pop-Tarts and 50 boxes of
cereal for under $20. I gave a ton to our local food pantry.

The parking lots aren't as crowded either. People really are cutting down on
non-essentials.

[BrklynLiberal]

2. Everyone is at home eating cat food....

:(

[Speck Tater]

15. Cat food is WAAAAY more expensive than human food.

Home made human food anyway. I'm not counting factory food that comes in boxes, jars and cans.

[BadgerKid]

25. With melanin?

:scared:

[JHB]

42. You mean melaMine...

...the "special ingredient" finding its way into assorted PRC foodstuffs.

MelaNin is a skin pigment. Although that's probably in cat food too,

[asdjrocky]

3. In all fairness, most people that go to Ihop-

Eat dinner about 4pm.

[Dukkha]

17. or 2am

a popular spot for early bird seniors and late night club goers after last call.

[dana_b]

44. baloney!

We usually get there about 1-2 a.m. and it's pretty full!

[Bicoastal]

4. OK, now I see what you're saying--sorry.

:evilfrown:

[LiberalHeart]

5. A guy I kinow who works in a porn shop told me business is hurting.

He said usually in a bad economy their business increases. Not so this time.

[pimpbot]

7. Too easy to get free porno on the internets!

[LiberalHeart]

9. I think people go there for more than you can see on a screen (wink-wink).

[sandnsea]

6. Grocery shopping at 5:00

There were checkers at the end of the aisle waiting to check me out. More than one.

:wow:

[napi21]

8. All restaurants are suffereing now. The ones a step above fast food are being hit the

worst. The high class ones are still doing OK because their customers haven't been affected nearly as much as middle class people have.

[Warpy]

10. I haven't noticed any decrease in traffic at the local

Chinese takeaway or the combo Vietnamese restaurant and car inspection station, two of the best places in town, IMO. I have noticed a lot of chain restaurants going dark.

I always wondered how chains managed in this town in the first place. The best food in town is at little hole in the wall places with badly painted signs.

[globalvillage]

14. Nice.

'the combo Vietnamese restaurant and car inspection station'

One of my favorite breakfast places is attached to a bait store. Sounds awful, but I love it.

[Sal Minella]

19. Like Garrison Keillor's "Bob's Bait and Donut Shop" in Lake Wobegon?

[CoffeeCat]

21. Like Gary Larson's....

"Dingo ranch and child-care center" :)

[Journeyman]

24. "Uh, oh. Trouble brewing. . ."

[alfredo]

26. In our town we had a hardware store and bar combo.

In one place you can get a cold beer and a Ryobi disc sander. How's that for one stop shopping?

[Tesha]

43. Yesterday's sushi becomes tomorrow's bait??? (NT)

[hootinholler]

46. We have Rudy's Welding and Cold Beer around here.

I guess welding and beer just go together.

-Hoot

[Horse with no Name]

51. We have a Chinese food restaurant in a gas station

I love it!

[raccoon]

53. Tourists don't know which ones are good, so they go to the chains. That's be my guess. nt

[Warpy]

58. Good point

but this town works for a living. Tourists go north to Santa Fe and Taos.

All I can imagine is that it's the transplants from the rest of the country looking for something blandly familiar in this sea of green chile.

[grasswire]

11. I was in Macy's yesterday...

...on the floor where children's wear, women's wear, and furnishings are. It was almost empty. I approached the only clerk I could see on the floor and said "Excuse me" and she jumped out of her skin. She jumped like someone does in a horror movie. "Oh! It's so quiet here, you scared me!" she said.

Crazy, crazy, crazy! One clerk on a whole floor of Macy's.

[NightWatcher]

12. IHOP doesnt pick up till the kids get the munchies around midnight

going to Islop while there were alternatives, what were you thinking?

[rainbow4321]

13. Try ordering from Domino's and say you are going to pay with a check

I ordered pizza tonight and said I wanted to pay with a check after they said "cash, check, charge?"
I said check and the guys goes "there is a 30 cents charge for that..oh, and as of a month ago, to write a check, the check number has to be greater than ****1500***".

[CoffeeCat]

16. Did you pay with a coupon?

I have tons of IHOP coupons.

If you want them, I can send them to you.

I imagine restaurants will suffer greatly during this downturn.

I can't imagine gourmet doggie bakeries doing well either.

[lifesbeautifulmagic]

18. in my area, the stores are empty, but the restaurants are doing ok

even a little busy. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that families need two incomes to get by, and even with that, people are working 2 jobs. People are too exhausted to cook, I know I am, and eating out is the only splurge left in family budgets.

[On the Road]

22. There Was Barely a Line at Chiptole

I usually count at least twenty people.

[itsrobert]

23. I was going to post on Sunday, the Fry's Electronics in San Diego was doing booming business

The parking lot was filled. And it was filled not with SUV and Trucks, but filled will small to midsize cars. I was really surprised.

[bedazzled]

27. one of my retail customer's son works at t.g.i. fridays and was sent home on wednesday nite

not enough customers.

i notice very few people in the supermarkets anymore.
it's kind of frightening.

if they wait for me to eat out, they'll wait a long time.
costs $40 for three people to eat out, cheaply. can eat
several days on that if i buy groceries...

[hatrack]

28. Anecdotal as hell, but . . . . about ten days back, I was in a hurry for lunch . . .

I went downstairs from our office to a really popular deli-style place in the basement of our building.

It's been in operation for a couple of years now - it's run by a Korean family and they make really good burgers, sandwiches, salads & such - quick service, excellent fresh food and infinitely better than Taco Ptomaine, as the former Mexican restaurant once located in that space was known at my workplace.

Anyway, for years now, the lines have been long, though the wait's never been terrible - good food, good prices, quick service. This typically meant people 20 and 30 deep at the counter at the peak of the lunch rush.

Ten days ago, I was one of five people in line, and there were about three people sitting in the dining area of the place having lunch. My order was as tasty as ever, but . . . not promising.

[kurt_cagle]

29. Spreading up into Canada too

We have one chinese restaurant that we eat at usually once or twice a month here in Victoria, BC, and I know the owner and his family reasonably well. Last couple of times there its been quiet - one or two couples in a place that can accommodate twelve families easily - and he's started giving me discounts on dinner.

I don't think its quite as critical up in this neck of the woods yet, but the slowdown is affecting things - tourism, which is the lifeblood of Victoria, is done considerably, a lot of the marinas that are usually full over the summer have had 25-30% empty slots, and even the coffeehouses (and there are a lot of coffeehouses in Victoria) are falling silent. I hate to think what Christmas, which is usually a fairly busy season, is going to look like this year.

[ColbertWatcher]

30. Thank you for posting.

I love these kinds of threads because it allows people from across the nation to compare something that might be ignored by the GOP-controlled media.

Sure, gas prices and unemployment rates are good gauges for a basic economic health, but nothing says how a town is doing more than how the local diner or coffee shop is doing.

[nadine_mn]

31. "If it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college"

Sorry...everytime I hear IHOP I think of Lewis Black sitting in IHOP with his stack of pancakes....lol

[Iggo]

32. I thought our local IHOP had closed.

I ride my bike past there every other evening on the way to Starbucks on Whittier Blvd (a major SoCal drag) and I swear I thought they'd closed down. But no...they're just empty all the time. People assure me that the place is jumping on Sunday mornings, but still...how do they survive with an empty restaurant every night?

[Hekate]

33. The lady that does my hair was talking today about the domino effect on small businesses...

... such as restaurants. And though she didn't say it, on beauty salons as well. She also mentioned how furious everyone is over the bailout, after untold numbers of homes were foreclosed and the families booted out.

We always keep our voices low when discussing politics because of not wanting to offend paying customers (she's a part-owner, but business is business), so she looked around before asking me what I thought of the debate. ;-)

Hekate

[DeschutesRiver]

34. Every person I talk to lately has a bad story going

Took some metal into a powder coating shop (we cut it/weld it, and powder coating is the process that puts the black finish on the piece). Usually 24-48 turnaround; this time it was 6 days because the machine is too expensive to use unless they have enough orders pending, and there weren't enough, so they had to wait until they'd accumulated more. They said there is almost no business anymore.

Went by what used to be a small golf course, but I commented to dh "hey, why is the grass all brown", and then noticed that the building has been torn down as well - it is all gone.

Dh had spoken earlier this year to a local who was intent on building their dream log house after years of living in a doublewide. A few weeks later, the loan they'd been promised was jerked. Just told us last week that sadly, they'd put 10k down, that the company had stalled them all year about giving it back, and guess what? The company just declared bankruptcy.

A guy we used for some excavation work had 18 employees last year; by August he was down to the last two, and said that he was going to shut down his business in September, unless business picked up. For the last 3 years, he had been working non-stop.

Local restaurant closed with only 24 hours notice - who can pay rent when there was no notice for the employees so they could find another job? OTOH, the restaurant owner had been whipsawed with the crazy rising food prices, and everyone staying home on top of that, so he ran as long as he could and when the financing said nope, he shut her down. A nearby older resort area announced a "reorganization" and fired 17 people. That is 17 families who are waking up tomorrow morning with no way to pay the bills. Our closest city just laid off 3, and is not filling 4 open positions; next closest just laid off 11, not filling 5 open positions, and is considering a sales tax locally because they are in such deep financial doo-doo.

Saddest one tonight as I shopped in a local grocery store. Man still dressed in messy construction work clothes comes literally running into the store, whirling around, we all noticed. He told the story as he was paying - came home to see his daughter acting very sad. Asked what was wrong? She said it was her schoolmate Joe's birthday, but that his dad lost his job, had no money and told Joe they couldn't afford to do anything for his birthday (I am not thinking good thoughts about the parents, but in this town, depressed parents aren't always the best thinkers). So this guy came to the rescue, loaded up every neighborhood kid into his backyard, including Joe, and literally ran to the store to buy the kids a cake, candles, etc. He was freaking cause he wasn't sure he could get back in time before the kids tore things apart:)

How grim is it? You can times each of those stories by 20 easily, and that is what I am hearing DAILY. It has been overwhelmingly sad. People are chucking their dogs to the humane society, as it is coming down to either feeding the dogs or the kids; horses are being abandoned. Buildings that had businesses in them LAST MONTH are empty. Yeah, there are still places that are active to somewhat active, but the list of hardships is growing at a g'normous rate.

And if any business right now needed me to put a deposit down on what I was ordering, I won't do it because I have no way of knowing if they will be in business long enough to deliver the goods to me. That is how fast some are shutting down here.

[nadinbrzezinski]

35. Local chinese place, open for close to 20 years

closed in 24 hours.

Replaced by a bad chain

Sad, I knew the owners fairly well, and cannot help but to think of the kid... saw him grow

[KillCapitalism]

36. White Castle is still doin OK.

Their burgers are about 59 cents. It satisfies the need for cheap eats.

[Quantess]

37. You're so bourgeois, eating in a restaurant! Just kidding.

I had stove-popped popcorn for dinner tonight. And I ate it for breakfast a few days ago. It doesn't get any cheaper than that.

[obiwan]

38. Do you have a death wish? That's the only reason I would eat at IHOP.

Our local one always smells like old tennis shoes.

[marions ghost]

39. Lowe's

was looking empty last week and there were actually people on the floor to help you. I only bought a closet rod but I got immediate help about how to hang it and they cut it to exactly the right size. I remember thinking, "this doesn't feel right...." not many places I would be treated as a preferred customer...

Last week on Monday, crash day, my closet rod broke and pulled down all the clothes and the wire shelf above it as well. All the junk cascaded out of the closet, pushing the bifold doors off the track. Everything was in a big ball like that commercial where the dirty laundry becomes a giant snowball.

A fitting metaphor (I knew there was too much junk on that shelf...like junk mortgages, inflated real estate...it was precarious

Businesses going under, people getting laid off, foreclosures, retirement accounts dwindling....

:scared: :banghead: :shrug:

Nobody I talk to seems to know where it's going.

[Philosoraptor]

40. Are you perhaps Herman Munster?

[earth mom]

41. My husband went into the local large sized hardware store today

and the guy in the hardware dept spent 1.5 hours helping my husband fix a part of our shower faucet so we wouldn't have to buy a new one. It was great that the guy could help my hubby fix it, but when does any sales person have an hour and a half to repair something when he could have sold my hubby a new one for 5 to 10 times the cost of the parts? :wow:

[dana_b]

45. I know what you mean

we went to the mall this weekend (my daughter likes the tea shop) and it was so empty - I couldn't believe it. a weekend!! this Christmas will be telling too.

[MilesColtrane]

47. Rooty, Tooty, Fresh, and Empty

[LibertyLover]

48. This past Sunday I took my daughter to Toys-R-Us

to get her a new game for her Leapfrog as a reward because she had been so very well behaved the day before at 2 adult functions I had to take to. I got a parking space right by the door and there were only a few shoppers in the store. Trying to find sales help was impossible. They had rearranged the place since the last time I was there and I couldn't find the Leapfrog section. I finally had to go to the Customer Relations desk to find someone to ask for the new location. And when we went to check out, I had no wait at all - just walked right up to the one cashier on duty.

[cali]

49. it's funny. here in my poor, small, rural VT town

there are 4 restaurants. One is the local diner, one the local pizza place, one the chinese place and one upscale restaurant which is dedicated to using lots of local foods. And all are doing quite well. All I can think is that the economic mess really hasn't made much difference here.

[Horse with no Name]

50. Where was this?

I get so tired of standing in the lines here and good service at IHOP is something I could really dig!

[Obamarama]

52. Probably more due to the fact that the food at IHOP is the equivalent to human Alpo.

[RebelOne]

54. Not true. They make excellent omelettes.

But, of course, that is the only thing I order at IHOP.

[Obamarama]

55. I ate at IHOP a couple times for breakfast meetings....

The food and service at this particular IHOP was incredibly bad. I don't have really high expectations when dining at restaurants in that category, but this place was really beyond compare, and not in a good way. I think that colored me negative on IHOP in general, but yes, I suspect they are not all cut out of the same cloth.

[Greyhound]

56. Not one bit of real food in the whole restaurant. I haven't eaten there in 10+ years. n/t

[progressivemom]

57. I went to the mall the other day at lunchtime...

and usually there are tons of people there, even if it's just people hitting the foodcourt for their break. This day it was nearly empty, and a few times I was the only person in the store. Not good.