Greased Lightning

“The legend goes that White Castle founder Walter ‘Walt’ Anderson started making hamburgers in the early to mid-1910s after he grew frustrated with how long it took to cook meatballs. So one day, Anderson smashed a meatball with a spatula, and, boom, he had a hamburger patty that he could cook much faster. If that’s true, Anderson’s embrace of hamburgers was really part of a quest for greater productivity — to cook and sell more meat sandwiches in less time. That origin story may or may not be bogus, but after founding White Castle in 1921, Anderson and his co-founder, Billy Ingram, pioneered many of the hallmarks of the fast-food industry, including helping to make hamburgers a national staple, standardizing practices across their chain restaurants and bringing an assembly-line mindset to food production.” Since then, fast food only got faster. At least until the productivity gains slowed down for a couple decades. Well, they’re back, and fast food is faster than ever. And consumers are partly to thank. NPR: Fast-er food: A productivity surge at U.S. restaurants.

+ Can AI make fast food even faster? Chipmaker Taco Bell taps chipmaker Nvidia. (Sounds like I’m gonna need a new chip for my glucose monitor.)