Most historians agree that the American company White Castle was the first fast-food outlet, starting in Wichita, Kansas in 1916 with food stands and founding in 1921, selling hamburgers for five cents apiece from its inception and spawning numerous competitors and emulators.
McDonald's and Burger King started in the franchise food business in 1955 and 1954, respectively. 12 McDonald's has always been the larger company, but each firm has unquestionably influenced the other throughout their six-decade-plus rivalry.
White Castle started in 1921 in Wichita, Kansas — decades before competitors McDonald's or Restaurant Brands International's Burger King arrived on the scene. White Castle laid the groundwork for those chains, and it played a key role in making the hamburger synonymous with American cuisine.
The present day's good vibes harken back to what many consider the golden age of fast food: the 1980s, when Baby Boomers, fueled by a massive expansion in disposable income and two-income households, began outsourcing meal preparation en masse to accommodate their busier lives.
In the 1950s and 60s, fast food chains – epitomized by McDonald's – revolutionized the restaurant industry and changed farming and food distribution businesses.
Kentucky Fried Chicken was the first big chain to come to Australia, opening their first restaurant at Guildford in Sydney's western suburbs in 1968.
The oldest McDonald's restaurant is a drive-up hamburger stand at 10207 Lakewood Boulevard at Florence Avenue in Downey, California, United States. It was the third McDonald's restaurant and opened on August 18, 1953.
What Is the Oldest Fast Food Restaurant? Many scholars agree that the American chain White Castle, which started in 1916 as a collection of food stands in Wichita, Kansas, and was formally established in 1921, was the first fast food restaurant.
Burger King actually started selling the Whopper in 1957, 11 years before McDonalds's introduced the Big Mac in 1968.
Back in 1971, we opened our first restaurant in the Sydney suburb of Yagoona. Today there are over 970 McDonald's restaurants across Australia and we employ more than 100,000 people across our restaurants and management offices.
If you're in a hurry, stay away from Chick-fil-A. The fried chicken chain has the slowest average drive-thru experience at 8 minutes and 29 seconds. The fastest, on the other hand, was KFC, which got customers in and out in an average of 5 minutes and 2 seconds.
Today, American-founded fast-food chains such as McDonald's (est. 1940) and KFC (est. 1952) are multinational corporations with outlets across the globe.
'The rest of my life': Donald Gorske celebrates eating a Big Mac every day for the last 50 years. A man celebrated his 50-year anniversary not with his wife, nor with his job, but with his love for McDonald's Big Macs.
The world's oldest McDonald's hamburger will turn 21 on July 7, 2020. What will its first legal drink be? David Whipple, who bought the burger more than two decades ago, says he didn't even realize he still had it until his wife found it while they were moving.
One Utah man's prized possession is turning 21 this year — and it's a hamburger. David Whipple claims to own “the world's oldest hamburger,” which he says he purchased at McDonald's on July 7, 1999. He shared a picture of the burger on his personal Facebook profile.
Meat was a luxury after the war, so it was no hardship to eat lamb and beef regularly. Many families continued to eat corned beef, tripe and lamb's brains as well as jellied tongue. Tinned foods became more available and tinned corned beef and tinned beetroot were particularly popular.
According to Mode Australia, a now-defunct magazine published by Australian Consolidated Press, French fries, fresh crab cakes and mesculun (sic) salads were very 'hot' at the end of the '80s. On the other hand, crocodile steaks, doner kebabs and char-grilled anything were 'cold'.
Cheese fondue, cob loaves, French onion dip and prawn cocktails – it was all acceptable in the 80s, and you know what? It all made a huge comeback in 2022. As we opened our homes and our gardens to entertaining once again, these were the dishes we all turned to.
1950s Dinners
There was no such thing as the keto diet in the 1950s—meat and potatoes reigned supreme. You'd find hearty main dishes like Salisbury steak, beef stroganoff and meat loaf on a '50s dinner menu, plus scrumptious sides. Casseroles were also popular, particularly those featuring seafood or ham.
Kentucky Fried Chicken was founded by Harland Sanders in 1955, but it really took off by 1963 when it became the largest fast food operation in the United States with 600 locations. With a market dominated by burgers, KFC's chicken and secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices was an instant hit.