I remember when this trend started years ago. All of a sudden every restaurant (particularly in the fast casual category) started adding farm names and artisanal this or hand-crafted that. It was all still the same old frozen bulk goods and the quality didn't change at all. The only thing that changed was they marked up the price.
Then during the recession another worrying trend started--appetizer prices started climbing dramatically to the point where they weren't really that much cheaper than a main course. I recall reading something around how this was in response to people trying to cut back significantly on restaurant spending by just ordering appetizers instead of an entree.
These days it seems like the fastest growing item in terms of cost is drinks. Toss some powdered drink mix or syrup into a glass with mostly ice and water, call it something exotic like "Refreshing organic passion fruit spritzer" and charge $4 for it.
The idea that "hand-made" is somehow better never made sense to me. I can understand it for a sculpture or painting where the feelings of the artist are supposed to show through, but for chopping food, picking fruit, sewing clothes, or assembling furniture? Either machines can't yet compete with humans so "hand-made" just means "normal" or the human is going to do more inconsistent and unhygienic job than a machine.
I've had hand- and freshly-cut fries at a lot of places that to my taste don't stack up to McDonald's. (To be clear, I mostly despise McDonald's but find their fries to be better than those at many both chain and non-chain places with far better burgers.
Then during the recession another worrying trend started--appetizer prices started climbing dramatically to the point where they weren't really that much cheaper than a main course. I recall reading something around how this was in response to people trying to cut back significantly on restaurant spending by just ordering appetizers instead of an entree.
These days it seems like the fastest growing item in terms of cost is drinks. Toss some powdered drink mix or syrup into a glass with mostly ice and water, call it something exotic like "Refreshing organic passion fruit spritzer" and charge $4 for it.