WI No fast food chains.

Tin time.

So what would there be if there was no places like Macdonalds, Burger King, KFC and Pizza Hut. Would fast food still be popular, but with local family firms selling their take on the meals. Would their be as big of a problem with weight issues in the western world. More local food? No fast food at all? I'm not talking about fish and chips or your local curry house.

I don't see how you get rid of fast food unless you prevent the invention of the automobile, which is going to have some serious side effects outside of fast food, too. For one, no automobile means a more socially conservative west, as the automobile, along with the pill, was one of the biggest drivers of the sexual revolution of the 1920s.

I really don't think you can create an environment that has both cars and no fast food. You can perhaps limit the proliferation of fast food restaurants with either a more mass transit-oriented transportation development path (maybe the car companies aren't successful in tearing up trolleys in the United States, for example) or more proactive government regulation. Fundamentally, there probably won't be a less unhealthy (insert nation here) simply because fast food is limited; it's a comfort food situation. If you reduce overall stress levels in a society (by adopting policies like universal child care or something like that, in addition to many others) you ultimately end up reducing stress and creating a more healthy society. Limiting fast food's growth alone won't do that. You'd very likely just have a lot more alcoholics and a lot more smokers.

Forget automobiles. Railways had something like fast food restaurants, with the same look & ambience. The idea was to make customers feel at home. That it contributed to a homogenization of food, & exclusion of local varieties, was an unintended side effect...

I do agree, it was cars that sparked the spread, even explosion, but you need to change more than that to keep it out of the culture entirely.

phx1138 said:

Forget automobiles. Railways had something like fast food restaurants, with the same look & ambience. The idea was to make customers feel at home. That it contributed to a homogenization of food, & exclusion of local varieties, was an unintended side effect...

I do agree, it was cars that sparked the spread, even explosion, but you need to change more than that to keep it out of the culture entirely.

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I can agree with most of that. When I was a lad (well younger than I am now) the only chain we had in Cambridge was Wimpy and I think we only got that in the late '70's. MacD was well into the 1990's before we got one, it was after Moscow got their's.

phx1138 said:

Forget automobiles. Railways had something like fast food restaurants, with the same look & ambience. The idea was to make customers feel at home. That it contributed to a homogenization of food, & exclusion of local varieties, was an unintended side effect...

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Interestingly, it was also the railroads that drove up the quality of restaurants across the USA. Remember Fred Harvey, who ran hotels and restaurants at Santa Fe Railway stations and operated diner cars for said railroad? Because Harvey was a stickler for high-quality food, that resulted in many passengers choosing Santa Fe for the Chicago to Los Angeles route and forced the competing railroads to upgrade food service and restaurants in cities along the Santa Fe routes to also start upgrading their food and service to better compete against the Harvey organization.

Fast food of one kind or another would still be popular, so if the big chains were eliminated the gap would be filled by family-owned businesses on the same model as the fish and chip shop.

It's not easy to see how to prevent the rise of chains like McDonalds, KFC etc. Apart from public demand, the main reason you see these places practically everywhere you go is that they operate on the franchise system. Buying a fast food franchise is a good way to get into business for someone who can raise the necessary funds but doesn't want to create their own business from scratch. So either some bright spark has to create a better option for would-be franchisers, something that would be an even better investment than a fast food franchise (and if I could think of something better, I'd be out trying to develop it) or external circumstances have to make it impossible for the franchise system to operate. The only thing I can think of that would do that would be a government either banning the franchise model altogether or over-regulating and over-taxing them to death. Something like that would have to happen very early on in the development of the franchise system, before the idea has had a chance to prove its value.

tallthinkev said:

I can agree with most of that. When I was a lad (well younger than I am now) the only chain we had in Cambridge was Wimpy and I think we only got that in the late '70's. MacD was well into the 1990's before we got one, it was after Moscow got their's.

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You would still have "diners". Many of the had a daily special, usually called the Blue Plate special, that could be served quicker than other food. Regional chains like White Castle would still be there. Remember the big fast food chains started as single store concepts.

"A diner is a prefabricated restaurant building characteristic of North America, especially in the Midwest, in New York City, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and in other areas of the Northeastern United States, although examples can be found throughout the United States, Canada and parts of Western Europe. Some people apply the term not only to the prefabricated structures, but also to restaurants that serve cuisine similar to traditional diner cuisine even if they are located in more traditional types of buildings. Diners are characterized by offering a wide range of foods, mostly American, a casual atmosphere, a counter, and late operating hours. "Classic American Diners" are often characterized by an exterior layer of stainless steel—a feature unique to diner architecture. In recent years, Denny's has re-branded many of its locations as Denny's Diner and has used nostalgic decor as a theme for these locations."

SactoMan101 said:

Interestingly, it was also the railroads that drove up the quality of restaurants across the USA. Remember Fred Harvey, who ran hotels and restaurants at Santa Fe Railway stations and operated diner cars for said railroad? Because Harvey was a stickler for high-quality food, that resulted in many passengers choosing Santa Fe for the Chicago to Los Angeles route and forced the competing railroads to upgrade food service and restaurants in cities along the Santa Fe routes to also start upgrading their food and service to better compete against the Harvey organization.

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Huh. I did not know that. Thx. (Needless to say, it was Harvey I was thinking of. I do recall he set high standards for service quality, too, which was a rare thing.)

Now, that "feel of home" & homogenization really is a product of McD's more than anything. McD's makes a real point of it. They train their people carefully so the burgers are made the same, cooked the same, & taste the same, & the sites look & feel the same, regardless where you are.

There is also the influence of the Interstate, that universal bugaboo & whipping boy, which bypassed a lot of local diners & made it easy for the drive-in places to thrive...

The franchise influence may be really important, too. (I'm not qualified to judge.) It's a factor I've rarely seen mentioned as contributing.

Something else to consider, tho. If you're in an unfamiliar place, & you have a choice between a local restaurant you know nothing about & a McD's or Burger King or Taco Bell, which do you choose? Even if the McD's or Taco Bell is pretty mediocre, it's a sure thing... (Have you ever done that even in the city where you live?)

When you say no fast food , do you mean no TV dinners in stores or other food you do not need to cook just heat?

A lot less health problems and more people eating home cooked meals.

Since locally owned diners and cafes sell mostly fattening foods, the only advantage I saw at first glance for eliminating chain restaurants would be that it'd be better for small businesses, but after some thought, that doesn't appear to be the case. Since the chain restaurants rely on franchise models, eliminating them would actually destroy one of the easier ways to start a small business.
After some more thought, I've noticed some more changes. Taking out the large franchises will take out their advertizing power and ability to persuade children to love their crappy food. It seems to me that every major fast food restaurant got powerful while the baby boomers were young. Individual, locally owned restaurants would not be able to do such a thing, so eliminating the fast food chains would wipe that out. Also, perhaps local restaurants have less difficulty obtaining fresh fruits and vegetables, and are more nimble at changing the menu based on what's locally in season, so they can rely more on real food than the larger restaurants do.
So, I think that a world with no chain restaurants but otherwise like OTL would be healthier overall. However, I don't see any plausible way to keep the chains from appearing and taking over.

Thinking of advertising, there's another issue. Get rid of fast food places, it takes a lot of money out of TV & radio stations, & magazines.

And then there's another. What about all the jobs they create? Not just in the stores themselves, but in the supply chain: delivery drivers for their supplies, production of supplies (condiments, buns, beef, so forth). Plus the wages of all the people they hire, & all their suppliers hire, which goes to everything from movie theatres to albums to clothes.

How much does that all add up to? Billions of dollars, I wager. So... Can you afford to hurt the economy that much?

While I agree that the rise of fast food is inevitable, I'll go with the spirit of the thread and think about what a world without franchised fast food chains would be like.

There would probably be more localized food culture with more overall variety in a planetary scope. But everyone's individual diet would likely contain less variety. In all likelihood, local food wouldn't be as good.

For all the bad rap fast food has (most of it deserving) it does help broaden the palate. "Strange" foods are rendered "safe" under the aegis of a familiar brand.

There could be some health benefits to local-only cheap food. Diets tailored to location can account for important health concerns, which fast food chains can't key into. For example, I recall a story from Glasgow about five years ago where youth were eating more chain fast food and shying away from things like fish and chips, which contains vitamin D. As a result of a growing vitamin D deficiency, cases of rickets were on the rise. Good ol Glasgow.