tesg's guide to big chain road food consumption

CHAIN -- Shari's
Owner -- Shari's Management Corp (backed by capital equity firms)
Primary Operating Region -- Pacific Northwest with a few locations as far as Cheyenne, WY
Number of Locations --  About 100 (2005)

The "family restaurant" concept is pretty basic across the board, be it at Village Inn, Perkins, IHOP, JB's, or countless others.  Breakfast, some sandwiches, a single-page token dinner menu that's awful, and pies pies pies.  Push the pies.  Yum.  Pies.  Never tasting even close to as good as they look pies.  Really bad pies.

Shari's gimmick that made it special was their six-sided restaurant design, sunk-in, with great landscaping.  The unique design meant more window booths.  The interior overall had an intimate feel to it nobody else could compare to.

The menu was straightforward but at the same time had some great signature items like Strawberry Lemonade and featured beautiful pictures of scenes around the Pacific Northwest (Shari's was based in Oregon).  Shari's gave you lots of options for sides on most menu items like potato salad or cottage cheese instead of french fries.  Shari's was great and seemingly always busy no matter what time of the day or night it was.  Slogan really said it all..."Real People, Real Places, Real Food".

The first Shari's opened by Ron and Sharon (Shari) Berquist in Hermiston, Oregon in 1978.  The Berquists ran the chain for seven years.  In 1989, the company was purchased by Larry Hatfield and John Elorriage, who sold the company in 1999 to Fairmont Capital, a California investment company.  They sold the chain to another equity group in 2005.

On the increasingly rare occasion Shari's opens a new lcoation, they're building the same crappy four-wall design their competitors are.  The menu went through radical changes after the 1999 sale, including the removal of optional sides in favor of a "you'll get this and LIKE it" approach.  It got so bad that every time I was asked how I liked my food, I started saying I didn't because when I said I did, it came right off the menu.  Guaranteed.

I'm not alone in my complaining...I recently stopped at my usual Shari's to find the parking lot empty, a very unusual circumstance at 6:30am (they're usually packed).  Yet the help took twice as long to do anything as they used to.  They didn't seem to care anymore.  Sad.

If there's a positive, you can still get a Strawberry Lemonade.  It pretty much begins and ends there for me anymore.

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