FOOD INDUSTRY
MAY 8, 2021
the crispy american fast food history
Fast food industry is a big business today and it’s not just about burgers and fries.
The fast food craze in America was actually started by the White Castle hamburger chain. J. Walter Anderson opened the first White Castle outlet in 1916 in Wichita, Kansas. It offered cheap hamburgers, fries and cola.
Their concept was to produce food at high volumes and at high speed with low cost. And this is the foundation for the modern fast food chain today. A new mentality in America and the base of fast food industry.
But fast food just became common in the United States after the second World War when Americans lifestyle changed – free time and more money to spend.
In 1948, brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald started the real big step of the fast food industry in America. They opened the first McDonald’s restaurant in 1948 in San Bernardino, California.
The restaurant was in a small building, no tables, people ate their food in their cars in order to cut the operational cost of the business. The hamburgers and fries were on the top list of food orders.
In 1968 McDonald’s introduced their famous Big Mac hamburger and became popular in short time. McDonald’s estimate that they sell about 550 million Big Macs each year in the US. That means one Big Mac every 17 seconds is sold.
Not too long after McDonald’s opening, the term “Fast Food” was already listed in the dictionary in 1951. The boom of fast food chains industry happened in the 1950’s in America as more fast food chains opened across the country.
Burger King (1954), Wendy’s (1969), as well as Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Subway, all opened their first fast food restaurants and started the fast food competition.
Today there are many popular fast food chains spreading all over the world. The American culture represented in many popular chains such as Dairy Queen, Domino Pizza, Pizza Hut, A&W, Arby’s. These chains shows that fast food is not always hamburgers. Any kind of food is available to stand in the fast food world.
According to creditdonkey website, there are approximately 152.000 fast food restaurants across the United States with more than 3.7 million employees in the industry. Around the world there are about 826.000 fast food outlets and almost 13 million workers. In the US alone, the revenue from fast food is more than $208 billion a year.
Annual revenue for the global market tops $550 billion and the industry doesn’t look to slow down anytime soon. Just like the basis of the crispy American fast food history, to speed up the food to consumers.
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