Takeaways

[moutonfou]

I'm from a small town where the only shops that thrive are takeaways. Nobody works in the town so nobody is there during the day to use any other kind of shop. Even the banks have all slowly closed. For a town of our size and neglect, it's remarkable that the high street doesn't have any boarded up shops, and that's mostly down to the takeaways.

The local paper regularly posts rants about the number of takeaways, including recently a statistic that 75% of people think there are too many.

AIBU to think that the only reason a small town could sustain so many takeaways is if most of those 75% of people are using them? And that there's something a bit insidious about repeatedly knocking one kind of small business, especially when those small businesses are majority owned by an ethnic minority?

Shouldn't we be celebrating successful local businesses, whatever they happen to be?

Daily Mail?

Rightly or wrongly, I've always judged an area on the number of takeaways there are. If there are lots, I usually assume it's a run down area with high unemployment.

toolonglurking exactly, we are a run down area with high unemployment. But the takeaways aren't the cause of that, they're a symptom. And if they're keeping a bit of money circulating locally around an area that desperately needs it, isn't that a good thing?

YANBU.

Our local small set of shops (generally a wealthy area) is struggling, apart from a small branch of a national supermarket chain and a newsagent/post office. The Council don't seem keen to have more takeaways there, but they seem to do much better than the shops.

Of course local people are using them. There is likely to be a lot of people locally with limited cooking facilities and utilities on expensive pre pay meters so the easiest way to eat is to get chicken/chips or whatever from the local takeaway.

Considering you don't need any fuel and sometimes you can get something for £2/3 it doesn't necessarily need to be an expensive way to eat.

Of course, sticking lentils and veg in a slow cooker would be cheaper, healthier and possible, but most people would choose the chicken and chips, or rice and curry sauce, or whatever.