Sit Down Restaurants vs. Fast Casual Restuarants

When it comes to restaurants, my favorite kind is the fast casual style.  These are the ones that are a step up from fast food, but not the kind where someone has to wait on you.  I realized how much I don't like the formal type of restaurants on the recent trip I went on.

While driving for a while, we needed a place to eat lunch near the highway.  We pulled off at a town and found a restaurant called Big Boy.  It is a burger chain with many locations, but this was the first one we have seen in the area, so we decided to go there.  I thought it would be like a fast food place kind of like Steak and Shake or Five Guys.  I would say it is most similar to Steak and Shake, but it wasn't as good.

Right when we walked in, I noticed you have to wait to be seated. That is a bad sign.  It means 1, you have to have a waiter, and 2, you have to leave a tip.  These are the 2 reasons why I don't like these kinds of restaurants.  I would rather order food at a counter, pay for it, get it right there and sit where I want.  Instead, I have to have someone assign me a seat, look over a menu, wait for the waiter, tell them what I want, wait for it, eat, wait for the check, and leave a tip.

So basically you are being inconvenienced, waiting more and paying more for supposedly and higher quality experience.  It doesn't really make sense to me.  At fine dining restaurants, this makes sense obviously, but for restaurants like Big Boy, it's a joke. Are they trying to make it upscale?  No one wants to pay the higher cost when they are going out for fast food burgers.  Pick one or the other either fine dining or fast casual, no in between.