American history
Big bite
Apr 24th 2008
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11081926
THIS entertaining and informative book, which traces the burger's
evolution from working man's snack during the Depression to symbol of
American cor****atism, is nothing less than a brief history of America
in the 20th century.
Like many stories, this one starts long, long ago, with a castle. This
castle had five-cent hamburgers instead of princesses, and rather than
being in an enchanted forest, it was in Wichita, Kansas.
An ambitious fry-cook named Walter Anderson opened White Castle in
1921. He did not invent the hamburger (this book wisely steers around
that controversy); he merely standardised its production, cooking
dozens of pre-weighed, pre-shaped burgers at once on a dedicated
griddle, and serving them on specially designed buns. The friendly
grillman in a white paper hat, amicably chatting with the customers as
he formed meat into a patty and slapped it onto the grill next to
cheese sandwiches and omelettes, gave way to the kitchen as assembly
line, and the cook as infinitely replaceable technician.
When a businessman named Ray Kroc bought a "drive-in burger bar" in
San Bernardino, California, run by Richard and Maurice McDonald, he
built on White Castle's practice of culinary standardisation: a
McDonald's hamburger weighs 1.6 ounces (45.4 grams) and spans 3 and
5/8 inches (9.2cm); it is garnished with a quarter of an ounce of
chopped onion, a teaspoon of mustard, a tablespoon of ketchup and a
pickle slice one inch in diameter.
Burgers are cooked 12 at a time, laid double-file on the grills; the
third row, closest to the heat, is flipped first, followed by the
fourth, fifth and sixth rows, then the left two last. All managers
must complete a rigorous training course at Hamburger University,
McDonald's training centre in Illinois.
But Kroc-a businessman of such drive and rage he once fired a man for
wearing a woolly hat on a freezing day and said of rivals, "If they
were drowning I'd put a hose in their mouth"-added a crucial twist to
his business model: franchising. Most restaurants are independently
owned, making McDonald's less a single cor****ate behemoth than a
"confederation of entrepreneurs, small businesspeople operating
according to standards devised by a central organising authority."
The real trick behind McDonald's success had to do with property:
Harry Sonneborn, the company's first chief financial officer, decided
to buy or let sites, then sublet them to franchise managers at a hefty
mark-up, and the rate rose concomitantly with burger sales. Sonneborn
used to tell investors that McDonald's was less a hamburger company
than a property business. The charming Kroc crowed, "Now we will have
a club over [franchise managers], and by God there will be no more
pampering or fiddling with them".
This is why McDonald's is a worldwide icon with a market
capitalisation of $67.2 billion and White Castle remains a modest but
stable burger chain (even if its soft, square little burgers, eaten by
the sack and topped with grilled rather than raw onions, are
immeasurably superior to those of any other fast-food chain).
All of this, of course, is a long way from meat on a bun, but then a
hamburger isn't just a hamburger. José Bové's sup****ters, after all,
didn't smash up a McDonald's because they wanted extra pickles.
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