That's why I said healthy lunches e.g. stuff that is cheap because it's from raw ingredients like cooking rice in a rice cooker, rather than from mass-production at scale.

This could easily be evidence of my point. The price point that made Yoshinoya viable and made it grow didn't work when it had to enter the US market. We outlawed what makes it viable. It became a $9 tier, not $4 tier.

I did that to show that America can have these types of buildings. Anyone can google to see the building in Japan, the building after all, originated in Japan. If it's inaccurate, I'd love to improve it. What part is inaccurate?

Thanks for the flag, the $4 places I went to didn't have this, so I wasn't aware. Those probably help decrease prices too.

Thanks for the questions. I used a picture of Manhattan intentionally to show that it is possible in some parts of America. There's already tons of pictures of that type of building in Japan, where it originated. The zoning laws are at the local and city level, as are the parking spaces. Japan does have car dependent suburbs and rural areas, I'm not saying they don't. It's likely that Japan's $4 meals are concentrated in not-rural areas. I really doubt that Americans take pride in not having cheap lunch options if they want them.