Excellent listen throughout, but you can skip to 17:30 for competition with McDonalds.
McDonald’s pioneered franchising. Even the actual restaurant wasn’t original, Ray Crock just bought the name from the actual McDonald’s brothers after visiting their single burger stand and having the idea of duplicating it so he could sell more milkshake machines.
Hold up. The McDonald’s brothers had some great original innovations for running a hamburger stand. They were using assembly line techniques to produce burgers faster than ever before. They weren’t using cutlery or plates for the first time ever. They built a very streamlined business. THAT is what Ray Crock saw potential in, and that is what he bought. That is what the fast food industry is built upon.
That was White Castle that innovated that, see podcast.
And then it dawned on them that selling ice cream machines was the real racket.
Unfortunately they could never figure it out and every ice cream machine across the entire goddamn planet seems to be in a perpetual state of brokenness.
…or they are just a pain in the ass to clean so no one wants to clean them so everyone claims they are broken so they dont have to serve ice cream and clean the machine.
They just have to buy a new one. That’s the point.
Yup it’s all in the podcast.
There was a film with Michael Keaton recently
It’s apparently questionably accurate, historically speaking. I haven’t seen it, though.
If you go to Nashville you can go to a white castle and a krystal burger to compare. theyre only a few miles apart.
nearly identical, but theres definitely a difference
As an aside, I will never trust a southern company that has replaced the “c” in their name with a “k”. It is suspect.
To be fair, you are correct for that being the reason in almost all cases when seen in the south.
Wait you’re telling me it’s not because they have a Kubernetes product?
KDE
KDE Kubernetes Kommander. Don’t ever initialize the name.
The southern chapter of the Kool Kids Klub does not appreciate your suspicion.
Why not? Just the other day I got some delicious fried chicken from the Coo Cluck’s Clan down the street and… ohhh I see the problem.
Like Kompact Kar Korner? (real place)
WTF, it is!
So they’re the same, but different?
indeed
Yeah like the same, but different yeah
One has bite size chili dogs and the other doesn’t. The only important difference.
Krystal appears to have the bite size chili dogs, not White Castle.
Yes, and here I am stuck in Michigan with no Krystals in sight.
Krystal has a little wiener.
Loved Krystal Burger growing up. Seldom got a chance to eat there. Now I live in a place without them.
Of course it was bad for me, but at least it tasted really good. Fast food now is unhealthy and most of it tastes like dogshit. Which is probably a good thing as it keeps me away.
If you haven’t, try white castle. It reminds me of trips with my grandma.
I will keep that in mind!
Gotta shout out the Jersey City White Mana, inventor of the slider. Possibly. That’s what they say at least. I don’t know.
I went there a few weeks ago before a trip to Manhattan and it was legitimately great. Reminded me of Montreal’s DicAnn’s.
How would you compare it to In-N-Out?
Completely different style of burger. White Castles are little sliders that are cooked by steaming them. You can buy them in a 30 pack if you want.
They’re also pretty gross tasting with a 90% chance of diarrhea afterward. In N Out is more like McDonalds with a tiny menu and better quality ingredients.
I think more accurate is that White Castle has an incredibly polarizing flavor. More than almost anywhere else I’ve ever eaten, people either love it (some even become devotees and will travel across multiple state lines to get it, and their Valentine’s Day special event books up months ahead of time) or they hate it (as, apparently, you do). It’s almost exactly 50/50. There might be like 1% of people who are like, “yeah, I mean, it’s ok.”
World HQ is in Columbus, OH. Represent!
So what’s Columbus like? I find the Midwest interesting.
Columbus is kind of known for not being known for anything.
I’ve lived here for a little over 15 years and various places in Ohio for every bit of my 40 years. There are things to like about it (low cost of living compared to the rest of the country, 4 seasons of weather) and things to not like about it (really, too many people for me – I’m from a rural area, and local and state government are not great). I like that it’s kind of a generic Midwestern town. Plenty of sports to watch if you like that kind of thing.
I think it’s underrated. People are moving here like crazy, so maybe they agree, but it’s causing rents to get out of control. I feel bad for those moving here. It’s a lot less affordable than when I came in 15 years ago.
I hear that because Ohio is so average, fast food chains typically trial out their experimental menu items there before the rest of the country to see how well they would do. You guys have that going for you as well.
Good city. Weird. It’s my kinda place though
Not enough third spaces, but I hear that’s everywhere these days
Please don’t judge us by OSU football.
99 PI is brilliant!
“White Castle fries only come in one size”
Ate those with an a&w rootbeer when i was a kid
Yeah but white castle tastes like a jock strap that seven NFL players used for a season each without washing.
Toss me that jock strap, then, I’m about to get to lickin
I take it you don’t like onions.
Not in the capacity they use them lol.
Why do you know what that tastes like?
McDonald’s tastes like compressed napkins. They didn’t always taste that way, but they sure do now.
It’s definitely not the way it used to be. I wonder what’s up with that.
There’s a distinctive flavor difference when McD’s food gets cold. With most food, it just tastes like the same food except it’s cold; but with McDonald’s, it goes from smelling appetizing and tasting decent to smelling horrible and tasting worse. The thing I have noticed is that, in the past decade or so, that window of flavor has gone from a gradient to a really stark dividing line, about 20-30 minutes after the food is cooked.
McDonald’s food has no flavor. It has all been destroyed during their manufacturing and preservation process. What you’re “tasting” is actually scientifically engineered odors that are added to the food with chemicals. When the food gets old, or cold, those smells dissipate and you taste what it actually tastes like. This whole process was outlined in detail in the book Fast Food Nation back in the late 90’s or early 00’s. I imagine that the issue has only gotten worse since then through ever present cost cutting strategies. McDonald’s is absolutely disgusting, and nobody should eat there. It barely qualifies as food.
Actually, in the second edition, Schlosser added an epilogue talking about how much things had changed in a positive direction in the decade or so since he published the original. So if anything, I think the downturn in quality is probably due to the removal of the artificial stuff. Maybe it’s just proving that they never used good ingredients to begin with.
To my knowledge the only positive change is that they stopped using pink slime in their beef, but that is a big step in the right direction.
Oh no McDonald’s definitely isn’t great, but I’ll take a McDouble any day over White Castle
I’ve only ever had the frozen whitecastle little cheeseburgers, which are basically a ball of transfat and cholesterol. They’re okay though
Agreed. McDonald’s sucks but I literally throw up about 1/3 of the time I have White Castle and it doesn’t even taste good.
It’s not about the taste, it’s about the texture.
“What’s that? You wanted a hamburger? Too bad! You get C E L L U L O S E.”
