The Colonel’s fixin’ to throw up five more this year. By the end of 2020 he’ll have 106. Ronald the badly lipsticked clown already has 167 splattered across the nation, while BK, king of the bourgeoisie has 83 royal establishments up and down the country employing 2,600 loyal servants. 

The stats department tells us that 26 bucks out of every $100 we spend on food goes into the tills of takeaway establishments and restaurants. 

New Zealanders hunger for fast food has never been greater… Though wash my mouth out, I shouldn’t refer to it as such. Those in the industry would prefer their outlets to be known as Quick Service Restaurants while others insist on a new category - “Fast Casual” - the way you might dress for an ill-considered tinder date.

It’s not often I find myself at a fast food joint, sorry – QSR. As a culinary outsider I often wonder at the popularity of these places. Not in a snobbish or prudish  manner, I hope, but more in a “what the heck am I missing” sort of a way. No really, what’s the attraction?

Is it the allure of the food? That winning combination of fat, salt and sugar?

This from Medical News Today:

“According to a study paper in the journal Health Promotion Perspectives, fast food tends to contain various substances that are generally unhealthful. It is high in sugar, salt, and saturated or trans fats, as well as many processed preservatives and ingredients. It is also low in beneficial nutrients.”

Perhaps the more health experts tell us to avoid them, the more people see fast casual food as a naughty indulgence. 

Is it the advertising?  Fast food companies spend large on targeted ads increasingly aimed at kids online. Recent research shows kiwi children are exposed to 27 junk food ads every day.

As parents at the end of a long day we’ve probably all heard the breathless fast food refrain “we want Maccas” from our little darlings.

Also US studies indicate the advertising focus of junk food also tends to be on the poorer sections of the community. As the Huffpost reported last year:

“Companies that deal in the unhealthiest of foods are targeting television advertising at black and Hispanic youths, according to a new study, even after many of those corporations pledged their commitment to promoting healthier eating.

“Food companies in the US spent $11 billion on television ads in 2017, and 80 percent of that, about $8.8 billion, was spent on their unhealthiest offerings ― sugary soda, fast food, candy and unhealthy snacks. What’s more, black teens are more than twice as likely as white teens to see commercials for these items.” 

No doubt such blatant targeting is working for the industry, but surely that can’t be the only reason. Are we that susceptible to advertising?

Is it the cost savings? Except, doesn’t everyone know that takeaways cost so much more than wholesome home-cooked food?  Every nutritionist and budgeting expert in every article on fast food since the year zip has been making that point.

But perhaps we’re not listening. A small survey in 2015 showed half of kiwis believed fast food was cheaper than supermarket shopping.

Is it the convenience? Just drive the car round the corner, talk into the speaker and minutes later the food comes out of the hatch. But I reckon, no matter how close you live to Maccy D’s I could probably make scrambled eggs or corn fritters before you got back.

Are the customers lazy? That’s what some right leaning commentators might posit around their heaving Christmas tables. Then insist on people's right to be lazy and the right of fast food companies to keep making vast profits while screwing people’s health – but that’s another rant.

A Californian study on rats from 2014 seems to suggest the opposite connection between laziness and fast food. That those on a junk food diet become lazy because of their food rather than choosing  junk food because they are lazy.

“Our data suggest that diet-induced obesity is a cause, rather than an effect, of laziness. Either the highly processed diet causes fatigue or the diet causes obesity, which causes fatigue."

Thinking this over, I’m not convinced that the indulgent fare, the incessant ads, the perceived savings, proposed convenience or non-evidenced indolence of the customers explains everything. There has to be more to it. I wonder if there’s something subliminal around power shifts going on inside this business model.

Driving back from Taranaki through one moribund small town after another and needing a toilet stop, my travelling companion pointed at a well known sign. He went in and ordered. I asked him to get me some fries. 

While I was waiting at a table outside about five metres away a middle-aged woman in a dented burgundy Japanese import pulled up to the drive through. From the waist up, which is all I could see, she looked as beat up as the car. Not physically so, though I wouldn’t have discounted it, but just that wary put-upon presence which comes with a crap car, two to four kids and living in a damp house on, or near, the poverty line in a provincial rural town with no prospect of a different reality.

She rolled down her window. I expected a resigned, plaintive tone. The put-upon burgundy Mazda driver then completely surprised me.  She was assertive, no actually downright rude, picky, dismissive and to be honest completely beastly to the poor young woman in the booth. Who, at pain of losing her job, stuck to the script-of-many-thank-yous.

That sort of artificial subservience is what the North American school of deep fried retail has been impressing upon its staff for nearly seven decades. Not only is the customer always right, no matter how unright they might actually be, no matter how rude, how nasty, condescending and boorish they are. Your job is to sit there and take it. They are “do you want fries with that” human punch bags.

Perhaps this contrived politeness and submissiveness is the key to the QSR success story. The unseen ingredient in the secret recipe – giving the downtrodden an opportunity to shit-talk someone in a lesser position.

Your life may be awful but for a precious few moments, you, my penniless friend, will live like a king – including being as cruel as you want to the servants.

Maybe these Fast Casuals are not actually selling food, but the underlying product is a unique master/slave experience where the customer can feel they are lords and ladies of all they survey. A taste of power in an otherwise powerless existence.

On the other side of that bankable experience stand the equally powerless minions playing the most servile role in late stage capitalism – flipping burgers and taking shit for a pittance of a wage.

This interesting Vox article compares working in a QSR to the “Pit of Despair”, which neuroscience researchers try to create when testing anti-depressants on rats.

I may be completely wrong about this, and you may think me a smelly unreformed Marxist – yes brothers and sisters the capitalist system is turning the poor against each other to stop them joining hands and throwing off the yoke of oppression. 

But set aside the politics for a minute. It appears to me that something fundamental has been lost in this everyday human transaction. Call me a nostalgic but I would much rather shop at a place where the relationship is more equal. Where the conversation I have is based upon mutual respect and honesty about what’s being bought and sold. 

Wouldn’t that make for interesting chats at the drive through?

Yes we target the poor, this stuff is shit for your health and bad for your bank balance and you know what, just for today I’m not going to demean myself by grovelling to you in order to extract three dollars for some dodgily raised meat in a bun.

Wouldn’t that be refreshing.

Have a nice day.