Stop Blaming Sysco – The Real Reason Every Restaurant Tastes the Same

There’s a narrative making the rounds on social media that tries to explain why so many restaurants taste the same. The villain, we’re told, is Sysco. According to the internet, one giant food distributor supplies every restaurant in America with the same frozen food, which is why every mozzarella stick, onion ring, chicken tender, and burger tastes identical. It’s certainly a satisfying story, but unfortunately it’s not that simple.

I don’t have any particular interest in defending Sysco. In fact, I have plenty of criticisms of large food distributors in general, from their unwillingness to support local producers to their lack of general customer service, but blaming Sysco for what has happened to the American restaurant industry is like blaming UPS because every package looks the same. Sysco isn’t creating the demand for generic pre-processed junk; it’s responding to the (government-manipulated) market.