This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we continue here with our American stories.

Pulling up at your favorite drive-thru and grabbing a quick familiar meal is a part of everyday American Stories. Pulling up at your favorite drive-thru and grabbing a quick, familiar meal

is a part of everyday American life. But this idea was once unheard of. So how did fast food

and drive-thru restaurants come to be such appealing and significant aspects of American culture?

Here's Adam Chandler, author of Drive-Thru Dreams, A Journey Through the Heart of America's

Fast Food Kingdom, with the full history and evolution of fast food in our country.

The history of fast food is a fascinating one in part because it really is the history of America.

You can look back 100 years. That's basically when fast food started as we know it in Wichita,

which is where we have the birth of White Castle. And what White Castle does is create this

experience that is very standardized.

It looks the same wherever you go.

And that is a large part because people were very suspicious of food and ground beef especially

at that time in American history.

That infamous book, The Jungle, had come out

15 years earlier and really kind of riled people up about what was in the food they were eating.

So they made a big show of emphasizing that this food was affordable, but also clean and prepared

expertly in very sterile environments because there was a real fear about

the health and safety of what you're eating. White Castle's old slogan was buy them by the sack,

which meant you'd buy all these small sliders for Nicola Pop and you'd walk out and you'd have

food for however long you want it.

Billy Ingram is the kind of marketing pioneer behind White Castle

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