Fast Food Book Report

Business Builders in Fast Food

For my book report I chose the book Business Builders in Fast Foods by Nathan Aaseng. This book is about the growth of the fast food industry and individual fast food restaurants. The first chapter was a introduction over the food industry and the rest of the chapters were over the begining of fast food restaurants including: Harvey’s House, White Castle, Dairy Queen, McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Domino’s and their creators.

Furthermore, before the fast food industry people just had home cooked meals. Everywhere they went either that be church events or family gatherings, everything people ate was home cooked. If people were traveling the worst part of the trip would be the fact that they could not eat

home cooked food. Taverns served meals, but it was not a privilege to eat their food. Then the only other places to eat at would be the really fancy restaurants, which the majority of Americans could not afford at the time. Then someone created the portable meals using wagons or food carts to serve to industrial workers at lunch. Industrial workers usually walked several miles to get to work and did not have the time to walk home for meals. So most brought whatever they could from home. Food vendors then seeing an opportunity there took advantage of it. Food vendors started business by selling meals to the works. It first started with the food carts, which become wagons, which then became permanent diners. Which then ended up started the fast food industry.
One of the first, most successful chain restaurants would be Harvey’s House. Created by Fred Harvey, who had gone through lots of rough spots before finally making his first successful restaurant. He had gone through two bad partners and a couple other business before finally coming up with the Harvey’s House around the 1880’s. He took a gamble and started a small restaurant out in the middle of nowhere. Before he passed away he made a business empire of 47 restaurants, 30 dining cars, 15 hotels, and a art and craft collection.
Another successful idea was the creation of the hamburger. Which leads us to the creation of White Castle. One day while on the job Walter Anderson started experimenting with ground beef and ended up creating the hamburger. Though it isn’t proven that he was the first to do so, he still ending up taking it to a whole new level. After discovering his skill, he decided to start his own business. He bought a old shoe repair stand and sold hamburgers for five cents, starting the hamburger era. Later on Anderson gained a partner, Billy Ingram, who helped the hamburger earn good reputation. Their legacy is still around today.
As a final point, we will end with McDonald’s and how it began.

McDonald’s was created by the McDonald’s brothers(hint the name), Maurice and Richard, who wanted, from the beginning, to start their own business. After four years of trying to run a movie theater, the brothers decided to start a drive-in restaurant. By 1940’s the brothers started earning $50,000 a year. Instead of being happy, the brothers grew bored. Together they came up with a new idea and remodeled their whole place into a fast food place. No more serving people in their cars, time to serve people fast and cheap. Revolutionizing the food industry

completely.

Relation/Option

This book relates to business entrepreneurship, because it tells the stories of several ideas that revolutionized the food industry.

It shows the struggles of creating a successful business in the real world and the hard work that goes along with it. It teaches people how a business has to evolve with their customers needs and wants. The business can’t stay the same, it has to keep changing in order to keep the flow of customers.

When I first picked up this book, I was like, “This is going to be so boring.” Then halfway through the second chapter, I started to get interested. By no time, I finished the book and realized I enjoyed it. I was able to learn about people’s ideas and how hard they worked to get their business to be successful. It was really interesting to learn about these people’s lives and how they changed over time. Also, how their business changed over time as well. Most of these people went through several different business, before they became successful.

Next time when I pick up a book, I will try to judge it by the cover. I that the book was great. I definitely encourage others to read it. Everyone could benefit from reading it, whether they want to start their own business or not. This book teaches about self-confidence, work ethic, and

more.