Business
New eating habits can spread from the young to the old rather than the other way round. In one city, imported fast food became a real cultural force only when young customers gradually pulled their elders away from traditional meals. The young were the gateway through which the change reached whole families.
When one business arrives with visibly higher standards for something customers care about, its competitors are pushed to match it. In one city, the chain's spotless, safe restrooms led other restaurants to clean up their own. The effect spread far beyond the newcomer's own premises.
The physical layout of a place can wear down old etiquette rules. In one country with a long-standing taboo against eating while standing, outlets that offered no chairs may have helped break that taboo. Customers adjust their behavior to fit the room they are given.
A company can get credit for changing social habits whether or not it actually caused the change. In one city, people believed the chain had brought in orderly queuing, even if it had not actively done so. That belief alone shapes how the company is seen and what it stands for.
Hostility toward a foreign power does not extend equally to everything that comes from it. It is hard to find even a fierce critic of that country who objects to efficiency, friendly service, or clean restrooms. Practical comforts can cross borders even when the country they come from is resented.
Cultures have no unchanging core; societies keep changing and reinventing themselves. They hold on to their identity by repeatedly acting out and reinforcing their customs, while also folding in new ones. The way a society takes up a foreign import shows this process of change as it happens.
A foreign chain can be absorbed so thoroughly that a generation of local customers stops thinking of it as foreign at all. Once that happens, the restaurant is used in local ways and no longer works as an outpost of its home country. The line between imported and native blurs, rather than one simply replacing the other.
An imported food may first be filed under an existing local category, such as a snack, that caps how people use it. Selling it more widely means persuading people that it belongs in a bigger category, such as a proper meal. In one city, burgers and fries counted only as snacks until the chain worked to recast them as a full meal.
Customers often take on different behavior when they enter a setting that signals different rules. In one city known for noisy, dirty restaurants, people inside the foreign chain spoke quietly and became more careful about spitting and litter. A place can teach manners to its customers without stating any rules.