Speaker 1: The popularity of the bagel leads places like Dunkin Donuts
Speaker 1: to have bagels available. And you know, for the New
Speaker 1: Yorkers who are listening, I'm not saying this to offend you,
Speaker 1: but you know, they're actually quite successful in bringing bagels
Speaker 1: to a national market.
Speaker 2: Welcome to one Day University Talks with the world's most
Speaker 2: engaging and inspiring professors discussing their most popular courses. This
Speaker 2: podcast is your chance to discover some of our top
Speaker 2: rated lectures on your own schedule. I'm Steven Shregis. About
Speaker 2: one in three Americans eat fast food on a typical day,
Speaker 2: and there are nearly two hundred thousand fast food or
Speaker 2: quick service restaurants in the US. It's big business, not
Speaker 2: only in America but across the globe. Look at a
Speaker 2: company like McDonald's. It made twenty three billion dollars in
Speaker 2: revenue lat year. Professor Marsha Chatlin knows that fast food
Speaker 2: has changed more than just our diet. Her lecture is
Speaker 2: titled Drive through America, a Culinary History of the fast
Speaker 2: food industry and how it shapes our lives. Marcia teaches
Speaker 2: history and African American studies at Georgetown University in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one, she won the Poelitzer Prize in History for
Speaker 2: her book franchise, The Golden Arches in Black America. Marsha
Speaker 2: believes fast food engages so many people because we share
Speaker 2: a connection to it.
Speaker 1: So fast food is such a great topic to write
Speaker 1: about because everyone comes into the conversation with some experience,
Speaker 1: some opinion, some knowledge of the topic. You know, as
Speaker 1: someone who has spent most of her career teaching about
Speaker 1: race and history and you know some really difficult subject
Speaker 1: matter from the past, it's always good to have a
Speaker 1: table set with familiar topics for people to come to,
Speaker 1: and fast food does that. You don't have to explain
Speaker 1: that much about McDonald's or that much about the fast
Speaker 1: food experience for people to be able to join the conversation.
Speaker 2: I think I'm going to add something here that studying
Speaker 2: fast food also involves learning about intellectual property. Yeah, because
Speaker 2: I went to law school many many, many years ago,
Speaker 2: and I learned about what's still considered a landmark ruling,
Speaker 2: the White Castle versus White Tower case. So could you
Speaker 2: explain that a bit to us.
Speaker 1: I think in our contemporary moment, we have a very
Speaker 1: clear sense that you know, no business in their right
Speaker 1: frame of mind wouldever do really agregious copycatting. We know
Speaker 1: that in the fashion industry we have counterfeits, and we
Speaker 1: also know that, you know, sometimes people get into fights
Speaker 1: about intellectual property, but in the early days of fast
Speaker 1: food in the nineteen plays and thirties, there were not
Speaker 1: the kind of claims on intellectual property that we know
Speaker 1: of today. And so in the early days of White Castle,
Speaker 1: which is really considered one of the forerunners of the
Speaker 1: fast food franchise, they were getting beat by a competitor
Speaker 1: called White Tower that was basically stealing all of their ideas.
Speaker 1: They also had sliders. They also had these restaurants that
Speaker 1: looked like castles, but towers in their incense. And the
Speaker 1: case went all the way to the Supreme Court about
Speaker 1: whether or not, you know, White Castle had a claim
Speaker 1: on the architecture of its buildings and its trademarks and
Speaker 1: its slogans. And you know, this was an important moment
Speaker 1: because the fast food industry spends a lot of time
Speaker 1: trying to root out copycats domestically and abroad.
Speaker 2: I remember, did they even have a phrase that was
Speaker 2: almost identical and easy to confuse?
Speaker 1: Yes, So White Castle told people to enjoy their sliders
Speaker 1: by the sack, and white Tower told people to enjoy
Speaker 1: them by the bagful. I mean, they really didn't try
Speaker 1: that hard to distinguish themselves, Marsha.
Speaker 2: The growth of the auto industry and the federal highway
Speaker 2: system is directly connected to the growth of the fast
Speaker 2: food industry. You said that many times that cars played
Speaker 2: a huge role in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: Yes, so the whole idea behind fast food initially was
Speaker 1: to be able to serve food very quickly to people
Speaker 1: in urban centers who may be working on construction sites
Speaker 1: or out on a night of you know, enjoying some
Speaker 1: alcohol and needing something to eat late at night. But
Speaker 1: eventually the concept of fast food was really about the
Speaker 1: ability to use the car as a second dining space.
Speaker 1: And so as car ownership becomes more accessible in the
Speaker 1: United States in the nineteen forties and fifties, there is
Speaker 1: a whole car culture that fast food seamlessly integrates itself in.
Speaker 1: So if it's going to a McDonald's drive in and
Speaker 1: eating your dinner in your car, or using the expanded
Speaker 1: highway network to travel across the country and to different states,
Speaker 1: there's a way that fast food is about both the
Speaker 1: efficiency of the product as well as the celebration of
Speaker 1: the sense of freedom that cars in the highway system
Speaker 1: provided more and more people.
Speaker 2: Your lecture also talked about a magic moment in fast
Speaker 2: food history, this one that I knew nothing about at
Speaker 2: the Philadelphia World's Fair when the meat grinder was introduced.
Speaker 2: Tell us about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's so funny. World's fares they still
Speaker 1: exist to an extent, but not at the level of
Speaker 1: popularity of the World's Fares of the nineteenth and early
Speaker 1: twentieth century, where people would converge to see, you know,
Speaker 1: technology unfolding. All of this is to say the meat
Speaker 1: grinder revolutionized the meat industry because instead of relying on
Speaker 1: distinct cuts of meat to be processed and sold as such,
Speaker 1: you could take products from various parts of the cow,
Speaker 1: grind them up together, and here you have ground meat.
Speaker 1: And ground meat made meat eating more accessible to poor customers.
Speaker 1: It reduced waste in the processing of cattle, and the
Speaker 1: meat grinder also opens up the possibility for the burger
Speaker 1: to be formed and served and sold cheaply, and as
Speaker 1: burgers became more popular, it became more socially acceptable for
Speaker 1: people in the middle and upper classes to eat ground meat.
Speaker 2: All right, let's move on a little bit from ground
Speaker 2: meat to Howard Johnson's, and I want to hear about
Speaker 2: that chain's important role in the fast food industry and frankly,
Speaker 2: what happened to them. I remember lots of them around
Speaker 2: when I was younger. So tell us about Howard Johnson's then,
Speaker 2: why they're so important.
Speaker 1: You know, Howard Johnson's the last one closed a few
Speaker 1: years ago, and it is a relic of that car
Speaker 1: era of the United States. So in the nineteen twenties
Speaker 1: and nineteen twenty five, Howard Johnson was found as a
Speaker 1: chain of restaurants that specialized in ice cream. It was
Speaker 1: kind of a faily restaurant that would call today, and
Speaker 1: then they added the hotel concept that still exists today.
Speaker 1: But Howard Johnson is so important for fast food because
Speaker 1: they created the distribution channels that fast food relies on
Speaker 1: now as well as chain restaurants. And it's this idea
Speaker 1: that you set up these different distribution centers in regions
Speaker 1: and that the local restaurants can get the food from
Speaker 1: the regions, so you reduce your shipping costs. You don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about inconsistent suppliers. They also learned that
Speaker 1: if you prepare foods at these distribution centers, than the
Speaker 1: restaurants were places where you could just heat and serve,
Speaker 1: and a lot of team restaurants today still use these
Speaker 1: models when they are trying to expand nationally.
Speaker 2: You've stated that fast food played a heightened role in
Speaker 2: the civil rights struggle, especially just after the nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: eight assassination of Martin Luther King. Why is that so.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I discovered when I was
Speaker 1: writing my book was that there is a civil rights
Speaker 1: story of McDonald's that is really in plain sight in
Speaker 1: American cities when we look at the concentration of McDonald's
Speaker 1: and other fast food restaurants and predominantly African American communities.
Speaker 1: And so what I was really curious about was how
Speaker 1: did McDonald's, this brand that was very much associated with
Speaker 1: the suburbs of the nineteen fifties, how does it end
Speaker 1: up in cities like Chicago and Newark, African American sections
Speaker 1: of Los Angeles in Detroit. And what I discovered was
Speaker 1: after Martin Luther King Junior's assassination, there was a big
Speaker 1: push to bring McDonald's franchises into African American neighborhoods.
Speaker 2: After the break, the rise of the happy Meal, and
Speaker 2: the unlikely combo of politics and fast food, fast food
Speaker 2: and kids. I want to hear about those links.
Speaker 1: A love story exactly.
Speaker 2: And certainly the happy meal, but not just the happy Meal.
Speaker 2: Also a little about a company that I didn't know
Speaker 2: anything about and you've lectured on, called Burger Chef.
Speaker 1: Yes, so there was a time in the US that
Speaker 1: Burger Chef was more popular than McDonald's if you could imagine.
Speaker 1: Burger Chef also created what was called the fun meal
Speaker 1: for them, but you know what becomes like the happy meal,
Speaker 1: where you have a self contained meal in an attractive
Speaker 1: packaging for kids with a toy or some type of promotion.
Speaker 1: Burger Chef was huge. I mean they had a cross
Speaker 1: promotion with even Star Wars. But what the McDonald's brothers
Speaker 1: understood when they were redefining the McDonald's dining experience, and
Speaker 1: what Ray Kroc would later bring with McDonald's and other brands,
Speaker 1: was that fast food could be a product that wasn't
Speaker 1: very expensive, and you could market it to children so
Speaker 1: that they would pester their parents until they could be
Speaker 1: able to go to McDonald's or any fast food restaurant.
Speaker 1: And so much of the fast food industry's growth that
Speaker 1: happens in the nineteen fifties and sixties is really catering
Speaker 1: to nuclear families, baby boom families. That the experience of
Speaker 1: children is really center to how the family is going
Speaker 1: to entertain itself. So McDonald's and others understood that when
Speaker 1: you create characters and you have crossed promotion with popular toys,
Speaker 1: you get really consistent customers in children.
Speaker 2: So now we've heard about kids, let's move on to celebrities.
Speaker 2: What is their role in their history when it comes
Speaker 2: to fast food.
Speaker 1: You know, when I was writing my book Franchise, I
Speaker 1: spent so much time in the archive looking at old commercials,
Speaker 1: looking at old print ads, and the use of celebrities
Speaker 1: to sell fast food is really popular in the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies. Between nineteen sixty and nineteen ninety, you
Speaker 1: have the golden age of celebrity endorsements, and you know
Speaker 1: they're coming from a number of sectors. You've got athletes
Speaker 1: who are actually leasing their names to fast food restaurants,
Speaker 1: including Joe Namath and Ernie Ford, growing up in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. It was the era of people like Michael
Speaker 1: Jordan who are front and center selling McDonald's. You have
Speaker 1: people like Patti LaBelle and Gladys Knight and just a
Speaker 1: number of really big stars who are promoting fast food.
Speaker 1: And part of the appeal of those commercials is, look
Speaker 1: at this famous person. They're just like us. They also
Speaker 1: enjoy a big mac occasionally.
Speaker 2: In your lecture, you explain that even though hamburgers, fried chicken,
Speaker 2: and tacos are the big three, there's also an increasing
Speaker 2: amount of fast food influenced by foreign delicacies that are
Speaker 2: not in that group.
Speaker 1: As the American palette changes and there's an availability of
Speaker 1: foods from around the world, you see these products finding
Speaker 1: their ways into fast food. Sun dried tomatoes, Chipotle sauces
Speaker 1: being available into fast food. All of these are the
Speaker 1: opening up of what we would once call international or
Speaker 1: ethnic foods that become cheap, and the supply chain becomes
Speaker 1: large enough to actually supply fast food restaurants, and we
Speaker 1: see these tastes coming into these products. One of the
Speaker 1: kind of most fun parts of researching McDonald's is to
Speaker 1: learn about how they market their products and countries where
Speaker 1: people don't really eat beef, for where pork is prohibited food,
Speaker 1: and they do these incredible workarounds, whether it's a Samosa
Speaker 1: burger in India or you know, the enhancements of the
Speaker 1: McDonald's menu in China. You see all of these different
Speaker 1: ways to make sure that the food is both recognizable globally.
Speaker 1: The brand is, but the foods are a little bit
Speaker 1: more regionally catered. I'm kind of of a generation where
Speaker 1: when I was a young kid, bagel was considered an
Speaker 1: ethnic food. I need wonderbread to not make bagels. You
Speaker 1: had to go to a proper Jewish Jelli for a bagel.
Speaker 1: But then the popularity of the bagel leads places like
Speaker 1: Dunkin Donuts to have bagels available. And you know, for
Speaker 1: the New Yorkers who are listening, I'm not saying this
Speaker 1: to offend you, but you know, they're actually quite successful
Speaker 1: in bringing bagels to a national market.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not sure I agree with you about
Speaker 2: the advisability of ordering a bagel at Dunkin Donuts, but
Speaker 2: I'm gonna letico I'm just gonna let it go and
Speaker 2: move on. Okay, I want to talk about the supply
Speaker 2: chain a lot of people don't realize what a huge
Speaker 2: impact the fast food industry has on the supply chain.
Speaker 2: I certainly didn't until I heard about it from you
Speaker 2: can you give us some background and some statistics, somethings
Speaker 2: like potatoes and eggs.
Speaker 1: What you need in order to provision the major fast
Speaker 1: food brands is kind of astonishing. Not just enough potatoes,
Speaker 1: but enough potatoes that are cut and processed in order
Speaker 1: to serve all of the burger and chicken chains, the
Speaker 1: number of fresh tomatoes, the number of eggs, and so.
Speaker 1: At the various moments where fast food restaurants are expanding
Speaker 1: their offerings, whether it's the introduction of the fileo fish,
Speaker 1: whether it's the introduction of breakfast and then the transition
Speaker 1: to all day breakfast, you have to ensure that they're
Speaker 1: is a supply chain behind it so that customers can
Speaker 1: consistently receive the same product from coast to coast. In
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, for instance, you know, there was an estimate
Speaker 1: that McDonald's uses about three point four billion filling with
Speaker 1: the b pounds of US grown potatoes each year. And
Speaker 1: so just that one company is able to demand this
Speaker 1: many pounds of potatoes, this is like unbelievable when we
Speaker 1: think about the fact that on average nine million pounds
Speaker 1: of potatoes have to be available in America daily in
Speaker 1: order for fast food to continue to do its work,
Speaker 1: and so the pressures that it puts on the American
Speaker 1: agriculture system, the meat processing system is kind of just shocking.
Speaker 1: And as fast food continues to grow, these demands will
Speaker 1: also continue to grow.
Speaker 2: Marcia. A phrase of yours is politics and fast food
Speaker 2: go hand in hand. And when people give you a
Speaker 2: puzzled look, you say, hey, just think about Bill Clinton.
Speaker 2: Tell us what you're thinking.
Speaker 1: Well, Bill Clinton's presidency, I think had a lot to
Speaker 1: do with inspiring me to write this book, because he
Speaker 1: was very much of that new generation in the White
Speaker 1: House during his election of the nineteen nineties, you know,
Speaker 1: as a boomer president, and as someone who was often
Speaker 1: photographed jogging to McDonald sometimes with Al Gore, sometimes with
Speaker 1: secret service, and someone who was very much a product
Speaker 1: of the culture of the rise of fast food. And
Speaker 1: I think that outside of kind of what order he
Speaker 1: liked to have at McDonald's and the presidents that eat
Speaker 1: there or don't eat there, the political life of fast
Speaker 1: food is so important for us to think about because
Speaker 1: with an industry so large, they are dependent on the
Speaker 1: regulations or the lack of regulations that the federal government
Speaker 1: puts in front of them or facilitates for them. When
Speaker 1: I was writing Franchise, I discovered the number of African
Speaker 1: American franchise owners were able to tap into federal resources
Speaker 1: for minority owned businesses in order to become part of
Speaker 1: the McDonald's network. Issues like the minimum wage, issues like
Speaker 1: worker safety and standards. It's the health and safety of
Speaker 1: the workers and what they get paid or what they
Speaker 1: don't get paid, and what are the rights that workers
Speaker 1: have and that context, and what are the responsibilities of
Speaker 1: corporations and the franchises that sit under them are so
Speaker 1: I think that if you want to learn about American politics,
Speaker 1: you just got to learn about fast food.
Speaker 2: Here's a phrase you don't use. Healthy eating and fast
Speaker 2: food go hand in hand. I want I never heard
Speaker 2: you say, but in your lecture you do describe the
Speaker 2: d Lights chain as an example of why you don't
Speaker 2: say that.
Speaker 1: I mean the attempts to try to create healthy alternatives
Speaker 1: or healthy items and a fast food venue. They're hard people.
Speaker 1: I don't go to fast food restaurants to eat salads,
Speaker 1: and anytime the major fast food brands try to have
Speaker 1: a lighter menu offering or these chains that try to
Speaker 1: say we are a light brand like Delights, they don't
Speaker 1: do well because that's not why people are going to
Speaker 1: have fast food. And I think that there's been incredible
Speaker 1: pressure on the fast food industry to take accountability for
Speaker 1: the health and wellness of its food. But I think
Speaker 1: it's about larger questions about the diversity of food opportunities
Speaker 1: that we may have or may not have based on
Speaker 1: our social position in society. But no one goes to
Speaker 1: a fast food restaurant so they can have a side
Speaker 1: dish of carrots. And I strongly stand by that statement.
Speaker 2: I'm going to assume you would say that struggling with
Speaker 2: healthy food is one of the biggest concerns one of
Speaker 2: the biggest problems in the fast food industry. Are there
Speaker 2: any other major problems they just keep facing and aren't
Speaker 2: quite sure how to well.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think one of the fundamental issues about
Speaker 1: fast food is this idea of work. How much workers
Speaker 1: are making, how much they're not making. What can be
Speaker 1: done in terms of representing the voice of workers, is
Speaker 1: it through a union, Is it through local pressure through
Speaker 1: ordinances about the minimum wage? Is it a combination of both.
Speaker 1: How do we make sure that fast food work is
Speaker 1: work that properly compensates people and treats them with dignity.
Speaker 1: I think that the marketing of fast food is always
Speaker 1: an issue because we know that there have been disparities
Speaker 1: in terms of race and the children who are marketed
Speaker 1: to more or less than others. So you know, fast
Speaker 1: food is always going to be a place that I think,
Speaker 1: even as it's accepted and embraced and quite successful, will
Speaker 1: always be a place where there are a lot of contentions.
Speaker 1: And I think it's about these larger questions of the
Speaker 1: role of a corporation in a civil society and in
Speaker 1: a democracy.
Speaker 2: You sometimes on your lecture with the assertion, whatever you
Speaker 2: eat or don't eat, like all of us, you are
Speaker 2: living in a fast food nation. Can you tell us
Speaker 2: why you often close with that.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter if you're eating the food or not,
Speaker 1: if you like it or not, if you want your
Speaker 1: kids to eat it or not, if you know you're
Speaker 1: ordering the bagel at Dunkin Donuts or not. We are
Speaker 1: living in a context in which the availability of fast
Speaker 1: food fundamentally changes our relationship to eating, how fast we eat,
Speaker 1: the consequences of those foods, on the larger public health,
Speaker 1: on the quality of jobs, on what's available when you're
Speaker 1: on the road versus what's not available. We are very
Speaker 1: much kind of in a fast food nation. To borrow
Speaker 1: the title of Eric Schlosser's excellent book, because there's no
Speaker 1: escaping the consequences of it, right, So, the price of potatoes,
Speaker 1: the price of eggs, the price of tomatoes, all of
Speaker 1: these things are impacted by the large buyers. You know,
Speaker 1: whether or not we think the fifteen year old should
Speaker 1: make twenty dollars an hour, or if we think it
Speaker 1: should be seven dollars an hour, these questions are so
Speaker 1: much shaped by our assumption on fast food as a
Speaker 1: first job for young people. So, you know, we are
Speaker 1: living in it, and I think that the best way
Speaker 1: to deal with it is to learn as much as
Speaker 1: possible and really engage in the various questions and controversies
Speaker 1: and opportunities that it provides us to really reflect on.
Speaker 2: Marsha, thank you, I appreciate it, and I really hope
Speaker 2: I see you again lecturing soon, because you are just
Speaker 2: fascinating to listen to thank you, Thank you so much,
Speaker 2: thanks for joining us here at One Day University. Sign
Speaker 2: up at our website one dayu dot com to become
Speaker 2: a member and access over seven hundred full length video
Speaker 2: lectures from the world's finest professors. You can also download
Speaker 2: our app. There you can learn more about today's episode
Speaker 2: and watch Georgetown professor Marsha Chaplin's lecture on the history
Speaker 2: of fast food in America, as well as her talks
Speaker 2: on civil rights, the Great Migration, and more. Join us
Speaker 2: next time when we rank the most powerful people in
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 3: If you can reshape political debate, if you can get
Speaker 3: governments to act, if you can have the soft power
Speaker 3: to influence one point eight billion young people, you ought
Speaker 3: to be on our list, and so Bretta is online.
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