Why can’t adults order from the kids menu?
NO SUCH THING
iHeartPodcasts and Kaleidoscope
4.6 • 609 Ratings
🗓️ 6 August 2025
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, we take a deep dive into the frustrating conundrum of the kids menu. Why would a restaurant show me they’re capable of making a delicious and adorably small offering of chicken nuggets, only to restrict it to those fortunate to be 12 years old or younger? Are these restrictions an economic necessity, a moralizing judgment, or something else? We speak with a few industry insiders to learn the history of the kids menu and put these limits to the test.
Our guest this week is Kate Lindsay, longtime sufferer at the hands of Big Kids Menu, host of Slate’s internet culture podcast ICYMI and writer of the newsletter Embedded. Thank you to our restaurant industry expert Lori Rakoczy from Technomic, and our anonymous movie theater server.
If you liked this episode, check out Ep. 11: Can you cure picky eating? (w/ Search Engine)
Have a question you want us to answer? Email us at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at (860) 325-0286
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Mani. |
| 0:00.8 | I'm Noah. |
| 0:01.5 | This is Devin. |
| 0:02.3 | And this is No Such Thing, the show where we settle our dumb arguments and yours by actually doing the research. |
| 0:07.4 | This week, we look into a severely under-discussed form of discrimination upheld by the food industry. |
| 0:12.4 | They can tell me no if the reason is like, we have to kill one kid if we give you. |
| 0:19.9 | There's no such thing. |
| 0:21.8 | No such thing. |
| 0:24.8 | No such thing. |
| 0:27.7 | No such thing. No such thing. |
| 0:30.9 | No such thing. |
| 0:35.1 | So we have a fourth mic with us today, Kate Lindsay, internet culture writer and co-host of |
| 0:39.8 | I-C-Y-M-I, Slate's Internet Culture Podcast. |
| 0:43.7 | Slate's Internet Culture Podcast. |
| 0:46.0 | Welcome to the pod, Kate. |
| 0:47.4 | Thank you so much for having me. |
| 0:48.7 | This is a dream come true. |
| 0:51.2 | Mostly because of the topic. |
| 0:53.1 | No one's ever allowed me to speak on it before. |
| 0:55.9 | Yeah, now's your chance. |
| 0:57.0 | So this week's topic came from a conversation we had when we first launched the podcast a few months ago. |
| 1:01.4 | I can tell you what happened. |
... |
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