What Makes A Burger Place Fast Food?

[Toliver]

"Cooked to order" isn't a disqualifier for fast food since In'N'Out Burger does just that and they're definitely Fast Food...albeit a Fast Food restaurant with a bench by the ordering counter where you can sit while waiting for your burger to be cooked.

I still think the entire Pizza Hut=Fast Food equation is a red herring/"The Emperor has no clothes" argument. They can dub themselves Fast Food and the industry can lump them in the category of Fast Food but, as a consumer, most pizza joints whether they're a chain or not do not serve fast food. It's not made quickly, it's not served quickly unless it's been pre-made and you're getting a slice to go.

It certainly qualifies if you are using nutrition as your yardstick. It's just as bad for you, nutritionally speaking, as what you can get at other Fast Food joints. But the argument "because they say it is" doesn't hold up for me.

edited to tidy up

Edited April 23, 2009 by Toliver (log)

[Fat Guy]

The traditional "Red Roof Pizza Hut" is definitely not, in my opinion, a fast food restaurant.  There is a large menu selection, food is prepared to order, you sit at a table and are waited on by a server, the meal can easily take 40 minutes, and you pay at the end of the meal with a tip for the server. 

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That's sometimes how it works. You'll find that if you go into most red-roof pizza huts for lunch it's a self-service buffet designed for people who want to be in and out quickly. Although you can get a pizza made to order at lunchtime in my experience (probably a dozen visits over the years) most people get the buffet. At dinnertime a red-roof Pizza Hut follows a table-service model for eat-in customers, though of course not for takeout and delivery customers.

Certainly Pizza Hut, by providing table service to a subset of its customers, is an outlier in the fast-food world. As I mentioned before, on the QSR 50 it's the only chain, I think, that provides table service. But it's still, I think, a fast-food outlier rather than not-a-fast-food restaurant chain.

The way I understand it, Pizza Hut (and all throughout all my posts, when I speak of Pizza Hut I mean the red-roof stores as opposed to the Express and other outlets that are more clearly fast food, or the Bistro locations that are more clearly not) is the original fast-food pizza chain concept. It brought pizza into the fast-food category, at the slow end of the category on account of the inherent time it takes to make and serve whole pizzas but with many of the other trappings of fast-food chains: the standardization, etc. Later chains like Domino's are more fast-foodish because they've eliminated eat-in, and therefore table service, altogether.

That's why QSR thinks Pizza Hut is an example of a fast food restaurant, and I imagine that's how the average fast-food consumer sees it. Pizza Hut doesn't, at least this is my understanding, really compete with sit-down restaurants like Olive Garden and TGI Friday's. It competes with McDonald's and the other fast-food places.

Again, both the industry and common-usage examples seem pretty decisive here, I think. From Wikipedia on "Fast Food":

Arguably the first fast food restaurants originated in the United States with White Castle in 1916[3]. Today, American-founded fast food chains such as McDonald's and Pizza Hut are multinational corporations with outlets across the globe.

So we can argue until we're blue in the face about whether Pizza Hut meets various abstract criteria for fast foodness, but the issue seems already to have been decided by the relevant decisionmakers: the industry and the general public.

[Toliver]

So, is a fast food burger fast food because it's fast? Or because of the style of burger it is?  And if it's because of the style of burger it is, what exactly is that style?

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Getting back to the original topic...so what determines whether something (a hamburger) is fast food or isn't?

So far we have (listed in order of posting in the discussion):

1. How it's ordered (order food at a counter, stand and wait for it, then leave with it)

2. How it's made: High volume pre-prepared food, quickly assembled when ordered and quickly given to the customer

3. Limited menu items

4. Cheap food but good value

5. No waitstaff/table service

6. Possibly having drive-through service

7. Fast Food is made for quick consumption by the restaurant

8. Fast Food is quickly consumed by the customer. In a Fast Food restaurant, the customer doesn't linger. The food is consumed quickly and then they leave.

9. No eating utensils needed/Fast Food can be eaten out-of-hand

- "A burger difficult to pick up and eat is not likely to be a FF burger"

10. Fast Food isn't determined by the food itself but by the restaurant selling it - the restaurant determines whether the food can be labeled as Fast Food through the food production/assembly, how it is sold and how it is consumed

11. Fast Food is always served ready to carry (in a bag for "to go" orders - on a tray for dining in)

12. Fast Food is portable without general loss of quality

13. Generally speaking, Fast Food comes from a chain restaurant

14. Fast Food is paid for up front when ordering

15. Fast Food is generally not cooked to order

There will be exceptions, of course.

Does anything not really belong? Is something still missing?

[Fat Guy]

1. How it's ordered (order food at a counter, stand and wait for it, then leave with it)

A place like Fuddruckers uses pagers. You go sit down, and when your food is ready they page you to come get it.

2. How it's made: High volume pre-prepared food, quickly assembled when ordered and quickly given to the customer

This however doesn't distinguish fast food from non-fast-food restaurants like Denny's. It also doesn't account for fast-food deli chains like Subway and Quizno's, or for pizza.

3. Limited menu items

If anything the trend in QSR has been towards larger menus.

4. Cheap food but good value

Value is a pretty subjective notion, though. Some people wouldn't agree that McDonald's is a good value. Yet it is fast food, almost defining the category.

5. No waitstaff/table service

Pizza Hut has both.

6. Possibly having drive-through service

This does tend to be a fast-food thing, though of course in urban areas like Manhattan the fast-food places rarely have drive-thrus.

7. Fast Food is made for quick consumption by the restaurant

Maybe but no quicker than the average diner breakfast.

8. Fast Food is quickly consumed by the customer. In a Fast Food restaurant, the customer doesn't linger. The food is consumed quickly and then they leave.

That's how I feel at Daniel.

9. No eating utensils needed/Fast Food can be eaten out-of-hand

- "A burger difficult to pick up and eat is not likely to be a FF burger"

Lots of fast-food places now serve salads.

10. Fast Food isn't determined by the food itself but by the restaurant selling it - the restaurant determines whether the food can be labeled as Fast Food through the food production/assembly, how it is sold and how it is consumed

That's what some here have suggested but it hardly seems to be common understanding.

11. Fast Food is always served ready to carry (in a bag for "to go" orders - on a tray for dining in)

Pizza.

12. Fast Food is portable without general loss of quality

It tends to be portable and it tends to lose quality. Ever try an hour-old McDonald's Value Meal?

13. Generally speaking, Fast Food comes from a chain restaurant

I'd say this is completely false. There are chains and non-chains selling fast food. And most fast-food chains, of course, start out as a single establishment.

14. Fast Food is paid for up front when ordering

Usually, though not at Pizza Hut. Moreover, ordering and paying up front is common at buffets and other non-fast-food restaurants.

15. Fast Food is generally not cooked to order

There are plenty of examples where it is, ranging from pizza to subs.

There will be exceptions, of course.

Does anything not really belong? Is something still missing?

There are so many exceptions that it's very difficult to build a definition from those criteria, which would in any event form a very complex definition. That's pne part of why I've argued repeatedly that the term "fast food" isn't really worth defining. Or, if we are going to define it, let's just look to an industry definition and say QSR equals fast food and be done with it.

[Holly Moore]

I put Fuddruckers more in the Chili's category than fast food.

I have a hard time thinking of fast food restaurants being other than a chain. Independent hamburger restaurants typically have soul. Fast food hamburger restaurants are mindless factories.

[Toliver]

I put Fuddruckers more in the Chili's category than fast food.

I have a hard time thinking of fast food restaurants being other than a chain.  Independent hamburger restaurants typically have soul.  Fast food hamburger restaurants are mindless factories.

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I agree. Fuddruckers is not Fast Food. It is a chain without dedicated table service. But you usually have a considerable wait for your burger and then you have to dress your burger to your liking. It's food that takes time to receive and to prep (by the customer).

There's nothing fast about it except for eating it.

[Toliver]

A place like Fuddruckers uses pagers. You go sit down, and when your food is ready they page you to come get it.

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You must have upscale Fuddruckers in your area. The Fuddruckers I've dined at call out your name on a loudspeaker when your order is ready (as an aside, we always gave unusual names when we ordered. "Keanu, your order is ready" )

2. How it's made: High volume pre-prepared food, quickly assembled when ordered and quickly given to the customer

This however doesn't distinguish fast food from non-fast-food restaurants like Denny's. It also doesn't account for fast-food deli chains like Subway and Quizno's, or for pizza.

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Sure it does. Subway & Quizno: They deal in high-volume. The ingredients are pre-assembled. The sandwiches are made to the customer's order while you are standing there and the completed sandwich is then, in a relatively short time, given to the customer who then pays for it. Fast Food.

5. No waitstaff/table service

Pizza Hut has both.

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Not in my Pizza Huts. The pizza may be delivered to my table, just as my food would be delievered to my table in a Carl's Jr restaurant by a staff member, but the staff member doesn't get my drinks, doesn't refill my drinks, doesn't come back to ask how everything is and doesn't get a tip since they're not waitstaff.

9. No eating utensils needed/Fast Food can be eaten out-of-hand

- "A burger difficult to pick up and eat is not likely to be a FF burger"

Lots of fast-food places now serve salads.

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See "There will be exceptions, of course."

10. Fast Food isn't determined by the food itself but by the restaurant selling it - the restaurant determines whether the food can be labeled as Fast Food through the food production/assembly, how it is sold and how it is consumed

That's what some here have suggested but it hardly seems to be common understanding.

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Hence, the point of this discussion...to determine what makes a Fast Food burger or restaurant just that.

11. Fast Food is always served ready to carry  (in a bag for "to go" orders - on a tray for dining in)

Pizza.

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Not getting your point. Pizza is either carried out in a box or when dining in, brought to the table on a serving platter (substitute "tray") by an employee.

12. Fast Food is portable without general loss of quality

It tends to be portable and it tends to lose quality. Ever try an hour-old McDonald's Value Meal?

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The original poster in this discussion who brought this up gave the example of taking the Fast Food meal 5 blocks from the Fast Food restaurant back to the workplace. This is a lot more reasonable than stating "...try an hour-old...meal".

Perhaps customer intention should be brought into this discussion, then. We don't go to a Fast Food restaurant and buy food that won't be eaten until an hour later. We go there specifically to quickly buy quickly made food and eat it quickly. And if it can't be eaten until you get 5 blocks away, then it is still quite edible at that time.

14. Fast Food is paid for up front when ordering

Usually, though not at Pizza Hut. Moreover, ordering and paying up front is common at buffets and other non-fast-food restaurants.

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Again, your Pizza Hut experiences are quite different from mine. At my Pizza Huts, you pay up front when you order from the counter.

And my buffet experiences are also quite different from yours. About 99% of the buffets I've dined at require payment at the end of the meal, not up front.

15. Fast Food is generally not cooked to order

There are plenty of examples where it is, ranging from pizza to subs.

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Of course, there are always exceptions. I've already agreed on this point.

It's already been mentioned that when Fast Food restaurants originally came into existence, you didn't special order Fast Food. You got what you got and that was it. "Having it your way" is a more recent Fast Food phenomenon and is exactly what FF restaurants like Subway & Quizno's are all about. And this "Having it your way" trend is also why we now have salads and non-buger-ish Fast Food items on FF menus.

The pendulum swings both ways these days.

My listing of the defining characteristics of Fast Food was just a courtesy to board members following this discussion to summarize what had been discussed here so far. It wasn't meant to suggest that these are the Fifteen Commandments to determine what is or isn't Fast Food. I thought they'd be easier to discuss being grouped into one post.

You're welcome.

[Fat Guy]

Thanks.

I agree you've summarized the main points people in this discussion have cited as ways to define fast food.

I happen to think most or all of those points are wrong. I don't blame you for that. I'm just trying to be helpful.

[slkinsey]

I rigorously apply the Justice Potter Stewart Standard.

[genarog]

Here is an example using one of my favorite fast food places in NYC: Pommes Frites

1. How it's ordered (order food at a counter, stand and wait for it, then leave with it)

At the counter

2. How it's made: High volume pre-prepared food, quickly assembled when ordered and quickly given to the customer

First frying is done in advance. Second done when ordering.

3. Limited menu items

Very limited... only fries. Large selection of toppings.

4. Cheap food but good value

Very good value

5. No waitstaff/table service

No waitstaff

6. Possibly having drive-through service

No

7. Fast Food is made for quick consumption by the restaurant

Yes

8. Fast Food is quickly consumed by the customer. In a Fast Food restaurant, the customer doesn't linger. The food is consumed quickly and then they leave.

Yes

9. No eating utensils needed/Fast Food can be eaten out-of-hand

- "A burger difficult to pick up and eat is not likely to be a FF burger"

Customers are given a fork, but it's not really needed

10. Fast Food isn't determined by the food itself but by the restaurant selling it - the restaurant determines whether the food can be labeled as Fast Food through the food production/assembly, how it is sold and how it is consumed

Place and food are both fast food

11. Fast Food is always served ready to carry (in a bag for "to go" orders - on a tray for dining in)

The cone can be carried...

12. Fast Food is portable without general loss of quality

Very portable. Fries are way too hot right off the frying pan anyway.

13. Generally speaking, Fast Food comes from a chain restaurant

Not in this case

14. Fast Food is paid for up front when ordering

Yes

15. Fast Food is generally not cooked to order

Second frying is