Talk:Fast-food restaurant

Rationale for split
I've just re-split this from fast food because that article was getting schizophrenic in its desire not to portray a US-centric look at the "concept of fast food", whatever that is. This article should be specifically about the kind of Western-originated food chains which spawed the term. It does not include fish and chip shops (except Harry Ramsden's etc.), kebab shops, TV dinners or anything else which doesn't have a drive-thru bolted onto the side. This is because the "Western variant" is notable enough for its own article, which can explore the themes present in all such endeavours without having to worry about unrelated-but-still-fast world concepts. Chris Cunningham 16:59, 25 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Do you have a citation or reference to support your viewpoint? Is this just your "gut-level" feeling on how this article content should be treated? dr.ef.tymac 20:28, 25 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Replying at Talk:fast food. Chris Cunningham 06:57, 26 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I can't say I agree. The term 'fast food' is indeed American. It's probably one of the most readily associaable American thing there is. But the definition given on the main article is accurate: "Fast food is food that can be prepared and served very quickly... [T]ypically the term refers to food which is cooked in bulk in advance, kept warm or reheated to order, and sold ready-to-eat from an outlet."
 * That refers to sushi and kebabs just as much as McDonalds. That the term was originally invented to describe McDonalds-esque food doesn't limit its meaning at all.
 * I'm not opposing the split as such. I'm just not sure it was necessary, for the reasons listed above. --Matthew Proctor 22:32, 2 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Have you followed the current fast food discussion? There's a serious move to expand the article to include all sorts of things which don't fit under the US-style fast food banner. If you feel there should only be one article, go fight for deletion or move there. Chris Cunningham 23:14, 2 October 2007 (UTC)


 * "One of the most readily associaable American thing there is"... I kept the spelling and semantic errors in there in quoting. There are LOTS of fast food restaurants all over the world and lots of them are unique to their country or region. I think you have a very poor understanding of anything that happens outside the US (I am referring to Matthew Proctor's comment.), as, unfortunately, most US citizens do. I'll give just one example, but I shouldn't even have to do this... the fast food restaurants that sell fries in the Netherlands and Belgium. Of course, most US citizens would be completely ignorant about those... 67.8.55.66 (talk) 20:34, 16 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Fast food is most definitely not only North American. There are many local fast food restaurants around the world as well as the more international brands. For example, in Israel there are fast food restaurants serving kebabs and falafel, in Russia there are fast food restaurants that serve Russian cuisine etc. Wikipedia is an international encyclopedia, not a US one, and it should allow people from around the world with the requisite knowledge to contribute, rather than creating US-centric articles and denying that the rest of the world exists, or where it does exist it simply copies America. Let's open this up to other nations and cultures and stop treating Wikipedia like it's an American product. It's a shame. 79.179.123.225 (talk) 13:55, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Call for legislation on toilet hygiene for fast food restaurant
To my knowledge, lots of travellers use toilet facilities in fast food restaurants if they can't find the public one nearby. Therefore, regulating toilet hygiene in the industry is an urgent agenda. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.139.115.12 (talk) 05:11, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

The description of fast food restaurant is somewhat misleading...
I strongly agree that Fast Food Reataurants are a special case of "fast food", and I support this distinction. However, the introductory paragraph includes the sentence:

--- "Food served in fast food restaurants typically caters to a "meat-sweet diet" and is offered from a limited menu; is cooked in bulk in advance and kept hot; is finished and packaged to order; and is usually available ready to take away, though seating may be provided." ---

Very little of the food in a fast food restaurant is "Cooked in bulk in advance and kept hot"

The normal QSR attempts to cook the majority of its hot foods at the time of order. Even french fries are not stored longer than several minutes before they are discarded. Pizza is ONLY cooked upon order. The old technique of cooking burgers ahead of time has all but been eliminated at restaurants such as Wendy's.

If you want to see an example of food which is "cooked in bulk in advance and kept hot" visit a diner. Diners are in general not QSR's.

Now there are some examples of pre-cooked food. Doughnut shops are one example. However, most people do not consider doughnuts as a mainstream QSR, because you are not buying a full meal. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.37.159.189 (talk) 00:11, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

McDonalds burgers are cooked in advance and then frozen, not kept hot. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.210.194.82 (talk) 12:56, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Legal Issues?
This section should be in this article. It seems as if it belongs in one about tort-reform. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.101.166.218 (talk) 01:42, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Inconsistent data on Subway
Subway is listed here as being second to McDonalds in numbers, but the Subway article seems to state otherwise, indicating that they have 32,000+ stores, while McDonalds (and this is listed in that article too) has only 31,000+. Sasquatchbill (talk) 14:48, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

'Fast food restaurant' definition and 'Alcohol beverages' court case
I once heard that there was a court battle over the definition of the words "Fast food restaurant". The reason was places like Pizza Hut wanted to sell alcoholic beverages like beer and others wanting to sell wine, but there were laws preventing this as they could be classified as Fast food restaurants. From what I heard the decision was that a 'Fast food restaurant' was any place were you could get and eat your food in under 30 minutes, and therefore the people would be driving or walking away, and alcohol couldn't be sold in those type of restaurants. While pizza and other such restaurants took 15 or more minutes to serve the food and thus didn't fall under the fast food restaurant laws, since they weren't fast, and the alcohol had time to filter out of their blood stream. I'm not sure where or when this court case was, but I think it was in the late 90's and I heard about it while living in Colorado, or Kansas. Could someone find some information about when and if it was only in one state/town that they had this court battle? It seemed to have alot of media coverage at the time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.39.131.20 (talk) 11:23, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Deletion of Starlink information
I deleted text (dif) added to this article by Canoe, about the Starlink corn recall, with edit note "deleted text about starlink - recalled shells were from supermarkets, not restaurants. not a fast food issue per se". Canoe just reverted that deletion (dif) with edit note "Please don't remove sourced material without discussion)".  As per WP:BRD I am opening a discussion.  As per my edit note, Starlink was never found in taco shells used at Taco Bell restaurants -- it was only found in Taco Bell-branded shells sold at supermarkets.   So it is irrelevant to the topic of this article, which is "fast food" - meaning food sold at fast food restaurants.  As a technical note, this material has no sources (there are plenty available, but none were used here). Looking forward to the discussion.  Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 16:37, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
 * The sources are in the main linked article so they don't need to be added here as well. Shells were recalled from Taco Bell as well as other fast food products. Please stop removing negative material about Monsanto and GMO from articles unilaterally and without discussion. Our readers have the right to see it.--Canoe1967 (talk) 17:19, 14 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Please stop assuming bad faith. I have added negative material about Monsanto to many articles.   The question here is whether the content you added, is relevant to this article and is accurate and reliably sourced. Jytdog (talk) 17:42, 14 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I added an RS "The recalled products included those served at restaurants such as Applebee's, Wendy's, Del Taco, Casa Solana and La Cantina, according to a list released Wednesday as part of the FDA's weekly enforcement report."--Canoe1967 (talk) 17:26, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
 * The source does not say that shells were recalled from Taco Bell restaurants. The source does not support the content which says "In September 2000, up to $50 million worth of Taco Bell's shells were recalled from its restaurants as well as supermarkets"Jytdog (talk) 17:42, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Then re-write it to match the source instead of just censoring negative GMO material.--Canoe1967 (talk) 18:04, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, I will do! I am NOT censoring anything.  Please stop ABF. Jytdog (talk)

adding relevance to the Gastronomy in Singapore (poll)
removed my addition of the Gastronomy in Singapore template from this article without any comments.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fast_food_restaurant&type=revision&diff=680484254&oldid=680478036

Let's do a quick poll to KEEP/REMOVE this detail on this article?


 * KEEP I think because the article has already a list of restaurants as a template it's a good thing having an article about

the Gastronomy in Singapore. --huggi - never stop exploring (talk) 09:05, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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Date Conflict
The opening section states that White Castle opened the first fast food restaurant in 1921, but the source given for that has been flagged as possibly unreliable. This source:

https://www.accupos.com/pos-articles/history-of-fast-food-in-america/

Gives the year as 1916.

I don't know if this is a more reliable source, but clearly one of the two is wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.89.176.249 (talk) 00:46, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

Taco Bill - established 1967 in Australia
Taco Bill was established on the Gold Coast at Mermaid Beach in 1967 by Bill Chilcote. Taco Bill currently has 29 restaurants in Victoria and Albury NSW. According to your list, this would make Taco Bill the longest operating chain of restaurants in Australia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sdd001 (talk • contribs) 11:13, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
 * FWIW this site doesn't count it as fast food, and the Wikipedia article seems to refer to international chains. Graham 87 14:19, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
 * No article, no inclusion. Ajf773 (talk) 01:10, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Keith G. Cramer
Please change "Kieth J. Kramer" to "Keith G. Cramer", which is the correct name according to reference 9. 147.147.154.23 (talk) 18:21, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the note. I've removed the name from the URL because we normally don't include search queries in website addresses. Graham 87 02:27, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for shortening the URL, but that's not what was requested. What was requested was to fix the incorrect name of the co-founder. The article still currently reads "Originally opened in 1953, the founders and owners of the chain, Kieth J. Kramer and his wife's uncle Matthew Burns". This is wrong. It should read "Originally opened in 1953, the founders and owners of the chain, Keith G. Cramer and his wife's uncle Matthew Burns". Here are five more sources for this claim. 146.198.110.7 (talk) 04:29, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Oops, sorry about that! I've fixed the name properly now. I use a screen reader with a speech synthesiser that doesn't distinguish between "Keith" and "Kieth" and, since I only knew about the former spelling, just searched for it in the article without checking the spelling properly. Graham 87 14:09, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Are you referring to Burger King or McDonald’s in Bangladesh
I think you’re referring to Burger King since there are no McDonald’s in Bangladesh. Abdullah Al Manjur (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 13:26, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Wow, I didn't know that. It's indeed not in Wikipedia's list of countries with McDonald's restaurants. I've just removed it from the sentence. Graham 87 15:01, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Secular movement of transitioning to non-cow 'beef'
Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are making headway with Pizza Hut International, and Subway, KFC, and Taco Bell in China, and other QSRs (quick serve restaurants), as well as in Walmart and Whole Foods.. That current movement should be noted (at least in 1-2 sentences). MaynardClark (talk) 03:32, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 30 April 2022
Please remove this sentence:

In the United States, consumers spent about US$110 billion on fast food in 2000 (which increased from $6 billion in 1970).

and add this one

In the United States, consumers spent about $110 billion on fast food in 2000 (which increased from $6 billion in 1970).

Since the sentence begins with "In the United States", readers will assume that the $ currency is US dollars, not Australian dollars or Mexican pesos or other $ currencies. 49.198.51.54 (talk) 11:23, 30 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Done. Graham 87 17:15, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 25 July 2022

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: Moved (non-admin closure) Iffy★Chat -- 13:12, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Fast food restaurant → Fast-food restaurant – The article title originally had a hyphen, and the unhyphenated form redirected to it; however, both were redirected to Fast food and later the article was re-split at the unhyphenated form. I believe MOS:HYPHEN (3) applies. The hyphenated form is also more common (in at least scholarly sources, who are likely to use proper hyphenation?):. J3133 (talk) 09:38, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Support move, if only because it was originally located at the hyphenated form.  O.N.R.  (talk) 11:31, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Fast food and Fast food restaurant should use the same spelling. If "fast-food restaurant" was used significantly more than without the dash, it might be a different story, but I'm not convinced that either is option is used significantly more than the other (they're fairly similar in the ngrams), and consistency between the two articles should take precedence. --Cerebral726 (talk) 13:06, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
 * One is a noun, in the other it takes the role of an adjective; that is how hyphenation works. J3133 (talk) 14:05, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Change to Support. I agree it is more grammatically common to format adjectives that way, but I wasn't convinced it was the actual more common usage for fast food restaurant. I looked through the sources available and saw plenty of instances of no dash, but looking at the NY Times and the Washington Post, among others, it seems it's commonly used enough that I can support the more grammatically correct version. --Cerebral726 (talk) 14:23, 25 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Support hyphenating the compound adjective per MOS. ╠╣uw [ talk ] 16:00, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Support. I'm a bit surprised to find myself here, as by far the most common related form I've seen is "fast food", no hyphen, but when "restaurant" is added, J3133 is correct about hyphenation, and if I'm reading it right, Google NGrams supports popularity. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 00:47, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Support per nom. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:45, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Support per MOS:HYPHEN, and to be WP:CONSISTENT with other articles with compound modifiers in their title.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:29, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.