Burgerville usa

AFTER VISITING SAN BERNARDINO and seeing the long lines at McDonald’s, Carl Karcher went home to Anaheim and decided to open his own self‑service restaurant. Carl instinctively grasped that the new car culture would forever change America. He saw what was coming, and his timing was perfect. The first Carl’s Jr. restaurant opened in 1956 – the same year that America got its first shopping mall and that Congress passed the Interstate Highway Act. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had pushed hard for such a bill; during World War II, he’d been enormously impressed by Adolf Hitler’s Reichsautobahn, the world’s first superhighway system. The Interstate Highway Act brought autobahns to the United States and became the largest public works project in the nation’s history, building 46,000 miles of road with more than $130 billion of federal money. The new highways spurred car sales, truck sales, and the construction of new suburban homes. Carl’s first self‑service restaurant was a success, and he soon opened others near California’s new freeway off‑ramps. The star atop his drive‑in sign became the mascot of his fast food chain. It was a smiling star in little booties, holding a burger and a shake.

Entrepreneurs from all over the country went to San Bernardino, visited the new McDonald’s, and built imitations of the restaurant in their hometowns. “Our food was exactly the same as McDonald’s,” the founder of a rival chain later admitted. “If I had looked at McDonald’s and saw someone flipping hamburgers while he was hanging by his feet, I would have copied it.” America’s fast food chains were not launched by large corporations relying upon focus groups and market research. They were started by door‑to‑door salesmen, short‑order cooks, orphans, and dropouts, by eternal optimists looking for a piece of the next big thing. The start‑up costs of a fast food restaurant were low, the profit margins promised to be high, and a wide assortment of ambitious people were soon buying grills and putting up signs.

William Rosenberg dropped out of school at the age of fourteen, delivered telegrams for Western Union, drove an ice cream truck, worked as a door‑to‑door salesman, sold sandwiches and coffee to factory workers in Boston, and then opened a small doughnut shop in 1948, later calling it Dunkin’ Donuts. Glen W. Bell, Jr., was a World War II veteran, a resident of San Bernardino who ate at the new McDonald’s and decided to copy it, using the assembly‑line system to make Mexican food and founding a restaurant chain later known as Taco Bell. Keith G. Cramer, the owner of Keith’s Drive‑In Restaurant in Daytona Beach, Florida, heard about the McDonald brothers’ new restaurant, flew to southern California, ate at McDonald’s, returned to Florida, and with his father‑in‑law, Matthew Burns, opened the first Insta‑Burger‑King in 1953. Dave Thomas started working in a restaurant at the age of twelve, left his adoptive father, took a room at the YMCA, dropped out of school at fifteen, served as a bus‑boy and a cook, and eventually opened his own place in Columbus, Ohio, calling it Wendy’s Old‑Fashioned Hamburgers restaurant. Thomas S. Monaghan spent much of his childhood in a Catholic orphanage and a series of foster homes, worked as a soda jerk, barely graduated from high school, joined the Marines, and bought a pizzeria in Ypsilanti, Michigan, with his brother, securing the deal through a down payment of $75. Eight months later Monaghan’s brother decided to quit and accepted a used Volkswagen Beetle for his share of a business later known as Domino’s.

The story of Harland Sanders is perhaps the most remarkable. Sanders left school at the age of twelve, worked as a farm hand, a mule tender, and a railway fireman. At various times he worked as a lawyer without having a law degree, delivered babies as a part‑time obstetrician without having a medical degree, sold insurance door to door, sold Michelin tires, and operated a gas station in Corbin, Kentucky. He served home‑cooked food at a small dining‑room table in the back, later opened a popular restaurant and motel, sold them to pay off debts, and at the age of sixty‑five became a traveling salesman once again, offering restaurant owners the “secret recipe” for his fried chicken. The first Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant opened in 1952, near Salt Lake City, Utah. Lacking money to promote the new chain, Sanders dressed up like a Kentucky colonel, sporting a white suit and a black string tie. By the early 1960s, Kentucky Fried Chicken was the largest restaurant chain in the United States, and Colonel Sanders was a household name. In his autobiography, Life As I Have Known It Has Been “Finger‑lickin’ Good ,” Sanders described his ups and downs, his decision at the age of seventy‑four to be rebaptized and born again, his lifelong struggle to stop cursing. Despite his best efforts and a devout faith in Christ, Harland Sanders admitted that it was still awfully hard “not to call a no‑good, lazy, incompetent, dishonest s.o.b. by anything else but his rightful name.”

For every fast food idea that swept the nation, there were countless others that flourished briefly – or never had a prayer. There were chains with homey names, like Sandy’s, Carrol’s, Henry’s, Winky’s, and Mr. Fifteen’s. There were chains with futuristic names, like the Satellite Hamburger System and Kelly’s Jet System. Most of all, there were chains named after their main dish: Burger Chefs, Burger Queens, Burgerville USAs, Yumy Burgers, Twitty Burgers, Whata‑burgers, Dundee Burgers, Biff‑Burgers, O.K. Big Burgers, and Burger Boy Food‑O‑Ramas.

Many of the new restaurants advertised an array of technological wonders. Carhops were rendered obsolete by various remote‑control ordering systems, like the Fone‑A‑Chef, the Teletray, and the Electro‑Hop. The Motormat was an elaborate rail system that transported food and beverages from the kitchen to parked cars. At the Biff‑Burger chain, Biff‑Burgers were “roto‑broiled” beneath glowing quartz tubes that worked just like a space heater. Insta‑Burger‑King restaurants featured a pair of “Miracle Insta Machines,” one to make milk shakes, the other to cook burgers. “Both machines have been thoroughly perfected ,” the company assured prospective franchisees, “are of foolproof design – can be easily operated even by a moron.” The Insta‑Burger Stove was an elaborate contraption. Twelve hamburger patties entered it in individual wire baskets, circled two electric heating elements, got cooked on both sides, and then slid down a chute into a pan of sauce, while hamburger buns toasted in a nearby slot. This Miracle Insta Machine proved overly complex, frequently malfunctioned, and was eventually abandoned by the Burger King chain.

The fast food wars in southern California – the birthplace of Jack in the Box, as well as McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and Carl’s Jr. – were especially fierce. One by one, most of the old drive‑ins closed, unable to compete against the less expensive, self‑service burger joints. But Carl kept at it, opening new restaurants up and down the state, following the new freeways. Four of these freeways – the Riverside, the Santa Ana, the Costa Mesa, and the Orange – soon passed through Anaheim. Although Carl’s Jr. was a great success, a few of Carl’s other ideas should have remained on the drawing board. Carl’s Whistle Stops featured employees dressed as railway workers, “Hobo Burgers,” and toy electric trains that took orders to the kitchen. Three were built in 1966 and then converted to Carl’s Jr. restaurants a few years later. A coffee shop chain with a Scottish theme also never found its niche. The waitresses at “Scot’s” wore plaid skirts, and the dishes had unfortunate names, such as “The Clansman.”

The leading fast food chains spread nationwide; between 1960 and 1973, the number of McDonald’s restaurants grew from roughly 250 to 3,000. The Arab oil embargo of 1973 gave the fast food industry a bad scare, as long lines at gas stations led many to believe that America’s car culture was endangered. Amid gasoline shortages, the value of McDonald’s stock fell. When the crisis passed, fast food stock prices recovered, and McDonald’s intensified its efforts to open urban, as well as suburban, restaurants. Wall Street invested heavily in the fast food chains, and corporate managers replaced many of the early pioneers. What had begun as a series of small, regional businesses became a fast food industry, a major component of the American economy.