Notes on the New Book "Drive - Thru Dreams"

If you love fast food, or if you are frequenting drive-thrus during these trying times for a meal or coronavirus test, you will find Adam Chandler’s book, Drive-Thru Dreams: A Journey Through the Heart of America’s Fast-Food Kingdom, enjoyable and educational.

Drive-Thru Dreams explains how scrappy entrepreneurs created fast-food chains, and how these chains interact with people and society. This lively, witty, well-organized and thoroughly researched survey is the first book by Chandler, a journalist and Houston, Texas native who now lives in Brooklyn. 

Author David Chandler is a Houston, Texas native who lives in Brooklyn

Speaking of wit, Chandler offers a bon mot on almost every page. In describing Harlan Sanders’ efforts to franchise Kentucky Fried Chicken after Interstate 75 put his location in Corbin, Kentucky out of business, Chandler writes that Sanders set out in his White Cadillac with his spice recipe and a cooler full of chicken, “a broken hero on a last-chance poultry drive.”

Chandler opens the book by describing the origin of the White Castle hamburger chain in Wichita, Kansas - - generally considered the first national fast-food chain in the United States. In 1916, after much experimentation, Walt Anderson learned how to make well-cooked hamburgers quickly. He used small, square burger patties, to speed cooking and to allow more burgers to fit on a grill. He discovered that a bun, rather than bread, allowed diners to eat a burger neatly and without silverware.

When Anderson opened his three-stool stand in Wichita, the hamburger was suspect food. But according to Chandler, Anderson started “the rise and redemption of the hamburger, which forever changed the country and the world.”

Anderson emphasized cleanliness, making, Chandler writes, “a public display of grinding fresh meat and then grilling it in a clean cooking space.”

When Billy Ingram became Anderson’s partner in 1921, he helped Anderson reinforce White Castle’s brand by conveying “both stateliness and cleanliness.” The duo standardized restaurant design and decor, employee uniforms, menus, cooking directions and ingredients.

These steps ensured a customer would have a hygienic, predictable dining experience, whether eating in Wichita or New York City.

Chandler devotes subsequent chapters to: Harlan Sanders and Kentucky Fried Chicken; J.F. McCullough and Dairy Queen; and Ray Kroc and McDonald’s. Later chapters are thematic. and describe significant regional fast food companies, such as the now shuttered Burger Chef in the Midwest and In-N-Out in the Southwest.

The chapter, “Drive-Thru America,” describes how drive-thru became so embedded in fast food restaurant business models.

At first, Chandlet observes, drive-thrus ranged from “the practical (pharmacies) to the brilliant and perhaps ill-conceived (liquor stores) to the downright spiritual (chapels).” He relates New York Times reporter Isabel Wilkerson’s story about a Chicago-area funeral home with a camera-operated drive-thru!

Unlike the relatively clear historical record that White Castle’s was the first fast-food chain, the origin of the drive-thru in fast food is not as straightforward. Of all the places that Chandler lists as claiming the first drive-thru, I most believe that it was a Kirby’s Pig Stand in Los Angeles.

But, like Frankenstein’s monster, a working drive-thru concept came from bits and pieces, from different fast food chains. In-N-Out claims to have introduced a two-way speaker, so diners in the car could place their orders. A San Diego Jack in the Box added a menu board to the two-way speaker.

Chandler asserts Dave Thomas at Wendy’s was the first to take drive-through big time. As drive-in restaurants lost business, he reasoned, a speedy drive-thru would attract customers who used to drive in.

McDonald’s was late to this game, lagging behind Wendy’s, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken. But by the late 1980’s, the chain had 7,000 restaurants with drive-thrus; in 1988, over 50 percent of its sales came from the drive-thru. Since the 1990’s, drive-thru sales account for 60 to 70 percent of business at all the chains.

Drive-thru meals are embraced by time crunched Americans and they shaped the design and popularity of minivans and sport utility vehicles. The fast food footprint has an incredible size. In For example, Chandler states McDonald's has sold 300 million Filet ‘O Fish sandwiches. One of my friend Bill’s best Facebook posts was an article that said Coke tasted the best in McDonald’s because the company sells so much of this beverage!

In “The Culinary Consciousness,” Chandler examines the health effects of fast food and compares them to new “fast casual” restaurants. He concludes fast casual restaurants offer healthier options. Yet some are less transparent in providing nutritional information and others have menu items as sodium and calorie-laden as fast food.

He describes how fast-food chains have improved meals with healthier ingredients and describes efforts to offer healthier menu items. Nearly all the healthier menu items he lists failed. This book was printed before the New Yorker published Tad Friend’s September 23, 2019 article on new products such as the Impossible Slider (White Castle) and the Impossible Whopper (Burger King). These meat alternatives may be more appetizing and may have more staying power.

This chapter includes Chandler’s conversation with Michael Pollan. In the conversation, Pollan, whose thoughts on fast-food and healthy eating are deeply considered and nuanced, concludes by observing that fast food is “fine as a special-occasion food . . . when it becomes a default is when we get into trouble. And that’s what happened in the last couple of decades. One-third of American kids are [literally] having fast food today.”

Growing up in Bloomington, Indiana, my father, sister and I loved to go to a Burger Chef and my mother did not. She would mutter remarks, such as, “I just saw a truck pull up and unload its brake grease for the meal.”

It took me 15 years to bond with McDonald's. Burger Chef left the onions off a burger with no fuss. McDonald's at the time would only do this by special order. The "special orderer" had to wait, while the rest of a hungry crowd got their orders right away.

But with age, the fast food’s appeal and pleasing taste hits an alimentary reality afterwards. Even smaller portions or healthier choices seem to sit, like a rock, in the stomach for a long time. I eat it as Pollan’s “special-occasion food” but it’s uncomfortable to eat more often than that.

Drive-Thru Dreams suggests that fast food restaurants are not just restaurants but social hubs, “local” pubs without the alcohol - - although Chandler says that hundreds of fast-food franchises in Europe and East Asia sell beer.

When work took me to Hancock, New York, I saw people gather for a social breakfast at the McDonald’s there. Retirees gather at a Burger King on Oahu to play guitars and ukuleles in a kanikapila - - a traditional Hawaiian jam session. Seniors in Fort Kent, Maine meet at the McDonald’s there to play Charlemagne, a French-Acadian fusion of bridge and cribbage. When things got nutty at work, my friend Rob and I would discuss fast food and share the occasional BOGO (buy one get one free) meals.

In a recent e-mail conversation, Chandler explained why he wrote this book. “I grew up in Houston, Texas,” he began, “where car culture reigns supreme and fast food is a central part of how people eat, gather and live.” “The a-ha moment that inspired this book,” he continued, “was the realization that I was living in Brooklyn, where fewer people drive cars and have this natural, inherent affection for fast food.” “This impression, that fast food had a common appeal regardless of location,” he concluded, “was an unexpected and interesting way to think about America and the similar and different perspectives we have inon a lot of things, not just food.”

With his strong writing, wit and careful research, I can’t wait to see what subject Chandler tackles next!

Drive-Thru Dreams is available as a real book in bookstores and libraries. It’s also available as an e-book, in Kindle and other formats.