This is a huge secret across so many different markets; it's insane. The one we may be most familiar with is computers, of course - even a bargain-basement computer today is an absolute beast compared to 10+ years ago. Entire classes of "cheap foods" have disappeared because we are so rich we can make everything "good" - meaning the bargain-basement stuff is now often higher-quality than midrange stuff of 20/50/100 years ago.
Hot dogs are a decent example, they're all now "meat" and many are "pure beef" when they used to be the disastrous remains of who knows what. And even they are being destroyed by just how cheap hamburger is - the original fast food was hot dogs and that's almost entirely gone now.
> the original fast food was hot dogs and that's almost entirely gone now.
Curious about this history. According to Wikipedia, fast food was common during antiquity, while the hotdog wasn't invented until the 1400s. White Castle seems to be recognized as the origin of modern day fast food and it opened as a hamburger joint.
White Castle essentially formalized a prior trend of burger vendors at sporting events, state fairs, etc. These were really simple cheap meaty snacks with little more than the patty and maybe some onions cooked on a griddle and slapped on whatever roll they could get from a local baker. In that sense the WC slider is still fairly true to the original thing.
But, I think it's a bit rich to call it the origin of fast food. Modern fast food in terms of what we think of as technology and business model is a bit broader than that. And just "food you get fast" is obviously far older. The original "fast food" in that sense was getting bread from a baker.
Why would there be a point? If there was a point it would be presented to the real world where it would provide value, not a meaningless text box on a website made to provide entertainment. What is to be gained from looking for something that doesn't exist?
Isn't present day Carl's Jr. just Hardee's by another name? Hardee's began as a burger joint as well.
According to research from the University of Guelph, hotdogs are comparatively uncommon in fast food because hotdogs are harder to cook consistently and have a shorter window of enjoyability which makes them less suited to fast food than hamburgers.
Yeah, I was thinking of the ubiquity of "street food hot dogs" which are now basically gone (Costco still has hot dogs, however, and baseball stadiums are required to have hot dogs).
Carl's Jr was 'transferred' to CKE (Carl Karcher Enterprises) which then acquired Hardees, and Hardees became Carl's Jr in everything but name (as far as I can tell). What was interesting is the absolute numbers: The "merger" created a chain of 3,828 restaurants – 3,152 Hardee's outlets in 40 states and 10 foreign countries and 676 Carl's Jr. outlets primarily in California.
Interestingly, I always assumed that “fast food” meant the type of food; so a hamburger, even if not made from mass produced ingredients, would always be a “fast food”.
It’s a weird thing - people in the USA know what you mean by fast food and somehow McDonald’s under a heat lamp counts (rarer now but still found) but burgers at the gas station under a heat lamp don’t count.
> In antiquity it was more what we might call street food
In context, though, the original commenter considered things like street hotdog vendors to be fast food. That is not unlike the kind of delivery you would find in antiquity, even if the actual food product differed.
> What really defines fast food is mass production and uniformity.
Technically, what really defines a term is how it is used in a certain context and how it works towards reaching a shared understanding, which was achieved with the original use of fast food found in this thread. You are right that the definition that emerged here does not align with definitions found in other contexts, but those other contexts are irrelevant to this particular context.
> It’s a weird thing - people in the USA know what you mean by fast food and somehow McDonald’s under a heat lamp counts (rarer now but still found) but burgers at the gas station under a heat lamp don’t count.
Hot dogs are a decent example, they're all now "meat" and many are "pure beef" when they used to be the disastrous remains of who knows what. And even they are being destroyed by just how cheap hamburger is - the original fast food was hot dogs and that's almost entirely gone now.