Affordable, familiar and reassuring are the features that make American chain restaurants a near-ubiquitous presence throughout the country; it is almost as if they are baked into our roadside culture.

Despite well-documented financial struggles, a tough economy and shifting diet trends, these restaurants withstand time.

This series explores why these places have such strong staying power and how they stay afloat at a time of rapid change.

Go back to read our first two pieces on how these restaurants trigger nostalgia and how these places stay afloat in a tough economy.

The magical cheese pull.

It’s a viral social media trend and a powerful marketing tool, where diners post videos of themselves slowly pulling apart gooey strings of cheese from a steaming hot slice of pizza or deep-fried mozzarella sticks.

A good one brings in millions of views and, increasingly, helps lure diners off their phones and into seats.

Sara Rafael, 23, flew from Ireland to New York City in November. She and her mother had a list of must-stop eats, including Olive Garden, The Cheesecake Factory, Raising Cane’s — all of which were discovered on TikTok, Rafael tells NPR.

The platform’s food videos – including those trendy cheese pulls – she says, “always make the food look so appetizing.” So, most of her dining itinerary consisted of mid-tier American chains straight from the recommendations of strangers online.

This is a critical moment for restaurants, says Stephen Zagor, a restaurant industry expert, consultant and adjunct professor at Columbia Business School.

With many American diners spending less and eating at home more, restaurants, especially older chains, risk fading into what he calls “the wallpaper.”

Zagor says that every restaurant needs to “have a viral moment” either in their menu or inside the restaurant in order to survive now.

But, he admits, the tradeoff is “a certain loss of authenticity.”

Chili’s cheese pull moment

Few restaurants, particularly chains, have ridden the viral cheese pull wave as well as Tex-Mex national chain, Chili’s.

Its Triple Dipper – a mix-and-match trio of appetizers and sauces – has become popular online thanks to the thick, stretchy fried mozzarella sticks. The company tells NPR it sold 41 million Triple Dippers in fiscal year 2025.

And that’s been a boon to the company’s bottom line. The Triple Dipper accounted for approximately 10% of sales in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024. A year later, that figure rose to 15% of sales, according to data Chili’s shared with NPR.

Chili’s Chief Marketing Officer George Felix says the sales numbers reflect “a massive gain in a short amount of time” for a company the size of Chili’s. “Essentially 100% of that can be attributed to social media,” he says.

Once it became clear just how popular the menu item was, the company’s culinary team leaned into the fandom and innovated on the fried mozzarella sticks by developing Nashville Hot and Honey-Chipotle flavors, Felix says.

For a 50-year-old chain restaurant that had been suffering from the “wallpaper” effect, Zagor says, this was a huge boost in helping the restaurant stage a stunning comeback.

“I think it speaks to the fact that Chili’s is back in the culture,” Felix says, Chili’s chief marketing officer.

In a crowded market, content, and cheese pulls, are king

Content creators like Karissa Dumbacher, who focuses on food posts as @karissaeats, has made a host of videos about Chili’s, including one listed as a paid partnership that’s received 2 million likes documenting none other than the iconic cheese pull.

She’s found the recipe to success for making a video pop on social media.

“The first three to five seconds of the video has to pull you in visually,” she explains. “People are gonna stick around to see if it’s worth it, and that’s what you want. That’s why so many people go for the cheese pull.”

Dumbacher has posted consistently since first beginning her TikTok journey during a COVID quarantine in Beijing. Almost daily she posts “everything I ate” videos from her home, fast food chains, casual chains and high-end, gourmet restaurants in the U.S. and abroad.

Her recording style has garnered her a legion of more than 4.5 million followers on TikTok alone.

Even though viewers have a chance to virtually travel the world and eat alongside her at luxury restaurants, Dumbacher says she still finds that her videos from classic chain restaurants like the Cheesecake Factory do “really, really well.”

And while Dumbacher has found success eating at casual sit-down establishments, the restaurants themselves benefit as well from the extra air time.

“Most people that are posting these viral videos aren’t getting paid by the restaurants, and it’s creating a bunch of traffic. So it’s huge,” she says. “That’s why there’s so much money going into TikTok, YouTube, Instagram ads these days, as opposed to ads on TV or billboards.”

Michael Lindquist, senior vice president of social for the media company, BarkleyOKRP, says social media “is now what I would consider a key business driver” and “an infinite feedback loop” for businesses.

Lindquist works in the company’s social content studio that works with brands like Red Lobster, Marco’s Pizza and others.

“It really does start and end on social media,” he says. “So you’re starting to see even broadcast and TV campaigns that take more of their cues from social [media] behavior, and comments and the way that we interact with one another.”

But Zagor, the restaurant industry expert, says virality can only get restaurants so far.

“You would like all businesses to be organic, because people love it, and they come back because the food is great,” Zagor says. “Not because you saw this incredible dessert, and [say], ‘Wow, I need to have that.’”

Zagor teaches college students and is struck by their focus on documenting the meal for social media instead of eating. He says he asks his students how many of them take pictures of their food:

“Everyone raises their hand. And then I say, ‘How many of you take more pictures of your food than you do of your family and friends?’ And they all raise their hands.”

For Zagor, that’s concerning. So much of the human experience now, including eating at a restaurant, is focused on capturing the perfect, photographable moment rather than an organic, enjoyable, social experience.

“And something’s just weird about that.”

Ever wondered how long it would take to build an accessory dwelling unit, or ADU, in your backyard?

In the case of Alvaro “Al” and Nenette Alcazar, a retired couple, who downsized from a six-bedroom home in New Orleans to a one-bedroom ADU in Los Angeles, it took just 3½ months.

“We went on vacation to the Philippines in November, right as they were getting started on construction,” Al says of the ADU his son Jay Alcaraz and his partner Andy Campbell added behind their home in Harbor Gateway. “When we returned in March of this year, the house was ready for us.”

The Alcazars were surprised by the rapid completion of their new 570-square-foot modular home by Gardena-based Cover. By the time construction was finished, they hadn’t yet listed their New Orleans home, where they lived for 54 years while raising their two sons.

Jay Alcazar and Andy Campbell’s backyard in Harbor Gateway before they added an ADU.

(Jay Alcazar)

Alexis Rivas, co-founder and CEO of Cover, was also surprised by how quickly the ADU was permitted, taking just 45 days. “The total time from permit submittal to certificate of occupancy was 104 days,” he says, crediting the city’s Standard Plan and the ADU’s integrated panelized system for making it the fastest Clover has ever permitted.

For Al, a longtime religious studies professor at Loyola University New Orleans and community organizer, the construction process was more than just demolition and site prep. Seeing the Cover workers collaborate on their home reminded him of “bayanihan,” a Filipino core value emphasizing community unity and collective action.

“Both of my parents were public school teachers,” says Al, who was exiled from the Philippines in 1972. “When they moved to a village where there were no schools, the parents were so happy their children wouldn’t have to walk to another village to go to school that they built them a home.”

“It’s only one bedroom but we love it,” says Nenette Alcazar. “It’s the right size for two people.”

Like his childhood home in the village of Cag-abaca, Al says his and Nenette’s ADU “felt like a community built it somewhere and carried it into the garden for us to live in.” Only in this instance, the home was not a Nipa hut made of bamboo but a home made of steel panels manufactured in a factory in Gardena and installed on-site.

Jay Alcaraz, 40, and Campbell, 43, had been renting a house in Long Beach for three years when they started looking for a home to buy in 2022. Initially, they had hoped to stay in Long Beach, but when they realized they couldn’t afford it, they broadened their search to include Harbor Gateway. “It was equidistant to my job as a professor of critical studies at USC, and Jay’s job as a senior product manager at Stamps.com near LAX,” Campbell says.

When they eventually purchased a three-bedroom Midcentury home that needed some work, they were delighted to find themselves in a neighborhood filled with multigenerational households within walking distance of Asian supermarkets and restaurants.

The ADU does not overwhelm the backyard. “It looks like a house in a garden,” says Al Alcazar.

“We can walk to everything,” says Jay. “The post office. The deli. The grocery store. We love Asian food, and can eat at a different Asian restaurant every day.”

Adds Campbell: “We got the same thing we had in Long Beach here, plus space for an ADU.”

At a time when multigenerational living is growing among older men and women in the United States, according to the Pew Research Center, it’s not surprising that the couple began considering an ADU for Jay’s parents soon after purchasing their home, knowing that Al and Nenette, who no longer drives, would feel comfortable in the neighborhood.

They started by reviewing ADUs that the city has pre-approved for construction as part of the ADU Standard Plan Program on the city’s Building and Safety Department website. The initiative, organized by former L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office in collaboration with Building and Safety in 2021, was designed to simplify the lengthy permitting process and help create more housing.

The 570-square-foot house has a single bedroom and bathroom.

Jay and Al Alcazar have coffee in the kitchen of the ADU.

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They reached out to several potential architects and secured a line of credit for $300,000. They decided to go with Cover after touring its facility and one of its completed ADUs. “We liked that they were local and their facility was five minutes away from us,” Campbell says.

The couple originally envisioned removing their backyard pergola and lawn and adding an L-shaped ADU. But after consulting with Rivas, they decided on a rectangular unit with large-format glass sliders and warm wood cladding to preserve the yard.

The configuration was the right choice, as the green space between the two homes, which includes a deck and drought-tolerant landscaping, serves as a social hub for both couples, who enjoy grilling, sharing meals at the outdoor dining table and gardening. Just a few weeks ago, the family celebrated Al’s 77th birthday in the garden along with their extended family.

Nenette, a self-described “green thumb,” is delighted by the California garden’s bounty, including oranges, lemons, guava trees and camellias. “I can see the palm trees moving back and forth and the hummingbirds in the morning,” she says.

“They’re a lot of fun,” Jay Alcazar says of his parents. “They are great dinner companions.”

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Although some young couples might hesitate to live close to their parents and in-laws, Jay and Campbell see their ADU as a convenient way to stay close and support Jay’s parents as they age in place.

Besides, Jay says, they’re a lot of fun. “They are great dinner companions,” he says.

Campbell, who enjoys having coffee on the outdoor patio with Al, agrees. “When I met them for the first time 12 years ago, they had a group over for dinner and hosted a karaoke party until 3 a.m.,” he said. “I was like, ‘Is this a regular thing?’”

A teak bed from the Philippines and family mementos help to make the new ADU feel like home.

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Unlike the Alcazars’ spacious 1966 home in New Orleans, their new ADU’s interiors are modern and simple, with white oak floors and cabinets and Bosch appliances, including a stackable washer and dryer. Despite downsizing a lifetime of belongings, Al and Nenette were able to keep a few things that help make the ADU feel like home. In the living room, mother of pearl lamps and wood-carved side tables serve as a reminder of their old house. In their bedroom, a hand-carved teak bed from the Philippines, still showing signs of water damage from Hurricane Katrina, was built by artisans in Nenette’s family.

“Madonna and Jack Nicholson both ordered this bed,” Nenette says proudly.

The couple chose a thermally processed wood cladding for its warmth. “It will develop a silver hue over time,” says Alexis Rivas of Cover. “It’s zero maintenance.”

But one thing didn’t work out in their move West. When they realized their sofa would take up too much room in the 8-foot portable storage pod they rented in New Orleans, they decided to purchase an IKEA sleeper sofa in L.A. It’s now in the mix along with their personal artifacts and family photos that further add memories to the interiors, including a reproduction of the Last Supper, a common tradition in many Filipino homes symbolizing the importance of coming together to share meals. With limited storage, the families share the two-car garage, where Al stores his tools.

“It’s only one bedroom, but we love it,” says Nenette, 79, of the ADU, which cost $380,000. “It’s just the right size for two people.”

The ADU feels private, both couples say, thanks to the 9-foot-long custom curtains they ordered online from Two Pages Curtains. “When the curtains are open, we know they are awake, and when their curtains are down, we know to leave them alone,” Jay says, laughing at their ritual.

In terms of aging in place, the ADU can accommodate a wheelchair or walker if necessary, and Rivas says a custom wheelchair ramp can be added later if necessary.

Now, if only Jay could mount the flat-screen television on the wall, Al says, teasing his son. It’s hard to escape dad jokes when he’s living in your backyard — and that’s the point.

“It’s really nice having them here,” Andy says.

Jay Alcazar and Andy Campbell enjoy having Al and Nenette Alcazar close. “They feel like neighbors,” Jay says.

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After losing his family and home in the Philippines when Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in the country, Al, who once studied to be a priest, says he’s deeply moved to be the recipient of the bayanihan spirit once again.

“I was tortured in the Philippines, and it didn’t break me,” he says. “So having a home built by a friendly community really points to a shorter but more spiritual meaning of bayanihan, which is, ‘when a group of friends,’ as my grandma Marta used to say, ‘turns your station of the cross into a garden with a rose.’ Now, we have Eden here in my son’s backyard.”