I’m vegan and a fan of all salad bars.  Fresh Choice is Silicon Valley’s version.  You pay $9.49 for all-you-can-eat salad, soup, pizza, potatoes, pasta, and ice cream.  It’s difficult to find a seat if you go at certain hours of the day.  Last night I was there and I thought a little too much about the way this restaurant works. 

It was one eight year old kid with a whooping cough about five people behind me at the bar.  He had one of those coughs that sound like they came from some deep cave in the chest where a virus has grown a luxurious home.  Of course, he stood level with the food so with each itch in his throat I watched a pile of veggies get covered with the convulsing elements of that deep, luxurious cave.  

Is it too germaphobic to also unlike the fact that each customer in the restaurant handles every one of the tongs used to place the lettuce, tomatoes, olives, etc., on your plate?  It’s also clear that silverware and dishes are never adequately cleaned.  It doesn’t seem that I mind all these health risks because I, like so many, keep coming back to Fresh Choice.  And it’s not just Fresh Choice, is it?  The Soup Plantation, Sweet Tomatoes have become staples of America’s suburban restaurant landscape.  It is a much healthier step up from McDonald’s, certainly.  But why did this model of the self-serve and the endless portion suddenly become such a keen way to go out to eat in the past five years?  What is interesting is that Fresh Choice has eliminated that middleman position known as the waitress.  Like Trader Joe’s has eliminated the major middleman distributors such as Del Monte, Dole, and Green Giant.  Like IKEA’s allen wrench system has eliminated furniture assemblers. 

In these new compelling, even aesthetically and economically ‘progressive,’ franchises are we witnessing the first baby steps of a socialized marketplace?  Or, rather, simply the elimination of that other great 20th century middleman called the middle class?