So much this!

What the fuck is people's fascination with chain or franchise businesses, especially places that serve food.

Starbucks is worth $120 BILLION. That's $120 BILLION that gets sucked out of the local economies that these stores are at and gets sent to their HQ in Seattle to pay corporate executive salaries. If you go to a local mom and pop store, that $10 purchase, for the most part, stays local. If you go to Starbucks, they still have rent and equipment to buy and a store manager and a person making your food just like the mom and pop shop. But on top of that, they also have a massive corporate HQ and all the people that work there to pay for. So they HAVE TO either raise prices, lower local wages, or cut corners on the quality of the food to pay for the extra expense of the corporate salaries.

I find it infuriating how people don't understand that rather basic concept and continue to frequent these establishments.

I am not saying that all local food places are good. Far from it, but the good ones spend the money that would have gone to pay corporate salaries instead on buying better ingredients or possibly paying their wrokers better. Having money sent off to the next level up the corporate ladder is like the feudal system all over again where a serf gave some of his earnings/food he grew to his master and then that master gave some to a king and so on and so forth. The serf is the only one in that chain that actually did any real work.