{"id":45327,"date":"2018-10-16T03:00:51","date_gmt":"2018-10-16T07:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=45327"},"modified":"2024-07-15T18:23:43","modified_gmt":"2024-07-15T22:23:43","slug":"fast-food-outlets-cluster-in-poorer-areas-because-theyre-low-margin-businesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/10\/16\/fast-food-outlets-cluster-in-poorer-areas-because-theyre-low-margin-businesses\/","title":{"rendered":"Fast food outlets cluster in poorer areas – because they’re low-margin businesses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tim Worstall<\/a> debunks the “fast food restaurants are preying on the poor” myth:<\/p>\n

Contrary to the musings of Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times<\/em> there is a cause and effect going on over the placings of fast food restaurants or outlets in British towns. The provision of burnt chicken and maybemeatburgers to the hoi polloi<\/em> is a hugely competitive business. This means that it is also low margin. So, where do you put the places that are in a low margin line of business?<\/p>\n

[…] this is about clustering of those nosh joints. Why are they in the poor areas? Well, for the same reason the poor are in the poor areas. They\u2019re cheap. This being rather the defining point about poor people, they look for cheap places to live. The two are therefore synonymous, poor and cheap. And what is it we\u2019ve just said about nosh? That it\u2019s a low margin business. Therefore purveyors of the deep fried and battered saveloy \u2013 that joy of the ages \u2013 are going to be clustered in the poor part of town where they can afford the rents.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s our cause and effect. Some poor people are poor because they\u2019re, or have been, ill. They\u2019re in the cheap part of town because they\u2019re poor. Fried gut shops are in poor areas because they don\u2019t make much money therefore they\u2019re in the poor part of town. Absolutely any analysis of the phenomenon which doesn\u2019t account for this is wrong. And no analysis done by anyone does take account of it \u2013 therefore all current analyses of the point are indeed wrong.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are also other factors to consider, including the fact that poor people are less likely to have the ability or facilities to prepare their own meals (or the habit of cooking for themselves), so the easy availability of high-calorie fast food or snacks is rather important to them. When you’re hungry and don’t have a fridge or freezer full of food at home, a burger or fried chicken has a much stronger appeal than it does to more wealthy folks with well-stocked pantries. If you’ve been raised on high-fat\/high-salt foods, the “healthier” alternatives may not appeal, as they also are less flavourful than their fast food options.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tim Worstall debunks the “fast food restaurants are preying on the poor” myth: Contrary to the musings of Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times there is a cause and effect going on over the placings of fast food restaurants or outlets in British towns. The provision of burnt chicken and maybemeatburgers to the hoi polloi […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,74,66],"tags":[1555,426,150,91],"class_list":["post-45327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-food","category-health-science","tag-fastfood","tag-housing","tag-obesity","tag-poverty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bN5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45327"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45328,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45327\/revisions\/45328"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}