Food Court Wars

Imagine entering a radio show contest, where the winner gets their own radio show, in 1999. Sure, people still listened to the radio then, but television and the internet made radio not a viable career to earn a living in. No one was starting new radio shows in 1999.

Now imagine that concept, but with food. Food court wars, where the winner gets a "free" mall lease for 1 year, came into existence when malls as a concept were already dying. This game show would've been a great idea, in 1985. Not 2013/2014.

Doing some research, I could not find a single winner who's business was still open, all are listed as "permanently closed" via Google or Yelp. That's really sad, considering most opened new only a few years ago. To be honest, most seemed to have closed within that first year they were opened. And I could not find a single runner up who ever actually opened anything.

Ultimately I think it was just a "too late" show idea, but more importantly, it was also giving a brand new business to people who clearly had no idea what they were doing, and just hoping they...figured it out, somehow? My guess is there was zero after-episode support for these restaurants by the show or Tyler.

To Tyler himself, there was favoritism at play, he clearly wanted one of the two places to win, and those businesses always ended up the winners. The episodes of the show were also very formulaic, with each set of contestants utterly vaguely similar lines to previous ones; this show doesn't hold up to the streaming world, when you watch them back to back and realize how similar they are to each other.