[wpietri]

I think a cross-country comparison clouds the issue. Think of it this way: if in an American city people started to frequently get sick from poor restaurant hygiene, would you expect them to eat out more, less, or the same? Would you expect them to be more or less willing to try restaurants new to them? My strong bet is on less for both, because people are pretty risk-averse when it comes to vomiting.

The US is in a very long restaurant boom: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/06/its-the...

And I don't think it's an accident that goes along with a large decline in food-borne illness rates: https://www.cdc.gov/foodnet/pdfs/FoodNet-Annual-Report-2015-...

[indubitable]

This is an interesting conversation to have as I used to feel very similarly, until getting to experience a nation where there are really no rules or regulations on food at all. It's actually what started reshaping my general view towards regulations in general. Think about the implication of your statement/belief. You're implying that the primary reason restaurants aren't making people sick, en masse, is because of rules and regulations.

The restaurant industry is one place where self regulation works surprisingly well. Think about your own experience, as it's true for just about everybody. When you choose to go out you most often go to one of a handful of the same restaurants. What happens if you get sick at a place? You're probably not going back there. And you're also probably going to tell your friends. If you're particularly upset you might even post some less than friendly reviews of the restaurant. That restaurant, with one mistake, converts a high value customer into a one man image destruction machine. And now let's imagine it wasn't a one off, but this restaurant actually makes a significant number of people sick - even if on just one a single day. They're pretty much dead.

All the rules and regulations make it much harder for people to start new restaurants. In most states you're looking at several permits and associated educational courses just to be able to even call yourself a restaurant. And then don't forget to fact in the fees for the permits, the fees for the classes, and plenty of more fees on top of that. Basically you end up having to pay the government a whole lot of money just to be able to sell the food you've probably already been making your friends and family for years if not decades.

And this leads to utterly ridiculous scenes like this [1]. How dare a man try to sell some hotdogs without asking the government for permission. Time to take all the money out of his wallet, fine him, and probably schedule a court date too. By contrast, you can be completely certain that 100% of McDonald's franchises have every single government fee and permit covered inside out. But that does little to stop people ending up with their food being mishandled, and in some cases intentionally. The big thing you'll see in industries with heavy regulation is a trends towards centralization. Here [2] are some actual data on this 'golden age of restaurants', though the ridiculous number of chains itself is more indicative of the issue than a recent slump.

[1] - https://streamable.com/3dvge

[2] - https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/press-releases/20...

[wpietri]

I too have lived in the third world. But I also have cooked in a commercial setting for immune-compromised people, where I found health department guidelines enormously valuable.

> You're implying that the primary reason restaurants aren't making people sick, en masse, is because of rules and regulations.

No. The primary reason restaurants aren't making people sick is good hygiene all along the food supply chain. But good hygiene isn't easy. It gets harder the more industrial your operation gets. And short-term financial incentives cut against it, especially when you're working at scale.

I will happily eat from one of the probably-unlicensed hot dog carts in my neighborhood because a) I can inspect their kitchen, b) I see them around and so can know who's got a track record, c) I can see who's moving a lot of product, and d) they just can't carry a lot of inventory.

But I won't be nearly as casual with restaurants, because there is so much more opportunity for poor hygiene to impact food. Happily, I live in San Francisco, a city with vigorous restaurant inspection, one where the scores are posted physically in every restaurant. Here, I'll try new restaurants at the drop of a hat, because I'm not worried about shitting my guts out, something that happened to me repeatedly in my third-world eating adventures. My folks, who lived in Mexico for many years years, had a complicated set of heuristics around where to go and what dishes were most likely to be safe. Nobody in SF does that.

Your theory is that this is terrible for restaurateurs trying to do new things, but San Francisco is one of the best food cities in the world, with new, bold things opening frequently and often doing quite well. Unregulated sanitation strongly advantages chains, because people know they're getting a safe product. Strongly regulated sanitation enables entrepreneurs, because it removes safety from consideration when looking at a new restaurant.

People opening restaurants here complain about many barriers, but I've never heard one grumble about health code regulation. It's mostly what good cooks do anyhow, so they're happy to be held to a high standard, especially if it disadvantages competitors who would otherwise be cutting corners.

[indubitable]

You're putting your head in the sand here. Independent restaurants in the US are dying. This is not based on anecdotal evidence, but national data. And your entire hypothesis that chains thrive on a lack of regulations is similarly completely unsupported by data. Look at the ratios of chains:independent restaurants in countries with extensive rules and regulations on food and then compare that to countries without. If your hypothesis was correct, we'd see domination of chains in countries with minimal rules and regulations, instead it's the unambiguously exact opposite.

Arguably the biggest issue with the regulations is that they're overreaching and extensive to the point that if somebody wants to find a violation, they probably can. And many have very little positive effect. In California the 'CalCode' [1] for food regulations alone is 188 pages of random rules, which regularly change. And that is not an all inclusive document. It regularly references not only itself but also other sources. If you actually put all the rules in their verbose and clear form together, it would likely exceed a thousand pages. And you get these dense rules like:

"FOOD prepackaged in a FOOD FACILITY shall bear a label that complies with the labeling requirements prescribed by the Sherman Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Law (Part 5 (commencing with Section 109875)), 21 C.F.R. 101-Food Labeling, 9 C.F.R. 317-Labeling, Marking Devices, and Containers, and 9 C.F.R. 381-Subpart N Labeling and Containers, and as specified under Sections 114039 and 114039.1. [...Skipping several more lines of rules, this for this single rule...] Except as exempted in the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act Section 403(Q)(3)-(5) (21 U.S.C. Sec. 343(q)(3)-(5), incl.), nutrition labeling as specified in 21 C.F.R. 101-Food Labeling and 9 C.F.R. 317 Subpart B Nutrition Labeling."

And that's just one segment of the regulations. If by some miracle you manage to obey every single rule down to the dime in the Calcode, there's then hundreds of other pages of rules and regulations you need to obey. And as mentioned many of these things are completely arbitrary. How deep a sink do you think you need to wash the utensils in a food cart? Would 9 inches do? Obviously that'd be way more than enough, yet that'd be a violation of CalCode giving them sufficient cause to find and/or shut down your business. Some politician somewhere at some time decided all sinks must be at least 10 inches deep. Why? No good reason. Instead of creating common sense regulation, rules and regulations inevitably converge on these obtuse rules. Instead it could be that all utensils and instruments used in food preparation need to be able to be fully cleaned on site. But that'd be too logical.

This is all an enormous burden on individuals starting businesses and serves little purpose other than ensuring we're left with chains and perhaps your 'bold' restaurants, which I assume boils down to a euphemism for overpriced outlets primarily targeting yuppies. It's much easier to afford the full size legal team necessary to navigate all this mess when you have a 4 figure markup on your product!

[1] - http://www.emd.saccounty.net/EH/Documents/Calcode2017.pdf

[wpietri]

Sorry, I missed this in some other discussion.

Fundamentally, I think you're just making a lot of this up to suit your ideological views.

For example: "Would 9 inches do? Obviously that'd be way more than enough, yet that'd be a violation of CalCode giving them sufficient cause to find and/or shut down your business. Some politician somewhere at some time decided all sinks must be at least 10 inches deep. Why? No good reason"

Do you have any data demonstrating this sink issue? I'm betting no. Having cooked commercially, though, I can tell you a deep sink is absolutely necessary to clean well. Is the numeric measurement possibly a little arbitrary? Sure. Most are, but that's better than just "have a pretty deep sink", because you want to install that sink once. You don't want to rip it out later when an inspector says, "Not deep enough, try again."

The people I've met who work on regulatory issues are smart, sincere, and often really want to make things work for users. That's especially true for business regulation, as business owners have the political clout to complain.

I note also that you're energetically conflating restaurants, prepackaged food facilities, and food trucks. Those are all pretty different businesses.

Another example: "This is all an enormous burden on individuals starting businesses"

I doubt it. I know people who have started restaurants, catering companies, and a premade food company. None of them ever have mention this as a particularly big burden. They complain about all sorts of other things. Staff, customers, competitors, and definitely prices from suppliers and landlords. Never one grumble about safety regulations.

As an aside, the reason that many regulations don't seem "common sense" is generally that some asshole found a way to do something bothersome, so they had to add another regulation. For example, in LA people started to effectively run dodgy used-car lots out of public parking on major streets, inconveniencing both people who wanted to park and merchants who wanted customers to park. Last I heard they were looking at a variety of regulatory solutions, none of which would seem "common sense" unless you know the problem. It's the same deal with building codes; many regulations don't make sense until an expert tells you what's up.

And the same applies with software, really. Look at all the things people have to do to make secure software. Many of the rules make no sense unless you have an attacker in mind.

So given that your basic take seems to be, "I, an internet random, think some regulations I know nothing about are dumb," I guess my answer is, "Ok, buddy. Thanks for sharing."