Essay: In-N-Out Burger

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING:

Every day, fully one quarter of adult Americans do it: They eat at a fast food restaurant. Add in their kids, and you've got a tidal wave of fast foodies getting their grease fix, their refillable drinks, their preprocessed fries, the whole health-challenging compote that is dining out American style — quick, clean, cheap, and highly caloric.

This is a reasonably recent phenomenon that began in the southern California suburbs in post-World War II America. It came with the cars and the entrepreneurial hustle of a handful of visionaries, Carl Karcher of Carl's Jr., and Ray Kroc, who took McDonald's global.

CUSTOMER:

Hamburger with cheese, please.

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING:

They anticipated the pace of modern life– the cheap, quick inhalation of tasty, high-fat food that could keep the country's digestive engines running like a quick fill-up at the gas station. In short, they saw the future and made it their own. According to Eric Schlosser, the author of "Fast Food Nation," they significantly fueled the growth of large-scale corporate agribusiness, helping to drive out small farmers in the process. They employ vast armies of minimum-wage workers. At some point in their lives, one out of every eight American workers has been employed by McDonald's, and they help make us fatter.

One out of every five adult Americans is now obese, as are one out of ten preschool children. And all these fast food chains are busily marketing their wares directly to these kids, often in their very own schools. It's heartbreaking, literally.

Do I sound like a scold, another cranky food prude, or one of those aerobicized elitists who actually prefers fennel to a fat burger? I'm really not. I understand full well that for many American families, the only affordable way to eat out is to eat fast food. I don't like fennel, and I do like hamburgers, which brings me here, to the rarest of the rare: The good guy food chain.

There actually is such a place. Like its predecessors, it, too, began right here in southern California. Welcome to In-N-Out Burger, a small operation by comparison, just 166 locations, all in California, Arizona, and Nevada, the company still privately owned– no franchises, no freezers, all meals made to order.

Here you have to wait a few minutes for your food. You can actually talk to your kids or your spouse. It's almost like dining. And the fries are cut here, not trucked in from some pre- processing, flavor-enhancing plant miles away. Milkshakes are made from ice cream. And though the burgers won't make you any skinnier, they sure do taste better.

Among the fast food hip, In-N-Out definitely has a cult following. And there's a bonus: According to Eric Schlosser, the company pays the highest wages in the fast food industry– $8 an hour for part-timers. Full-time workers actually get medical, dental, and life insurance. The average In-N-Out manager has been with the company more than 13 years and makes more than $80,000 a year. Knowing all of that makes everything taste even better.

But even here, there is sometimes a kind of chirpy, antiseptic loneliness–everything so clean, so fast, so here today, gone tomorrow; so in-and-out. For all its made-to-order details, there is still a brand- name blankness to these places, a lock-step munchability that can leave one stuffed, but still strangely hungry for a little spontaneity, a little personality, a little lingering over the meal.

Strange how we eat in such a hurry, in such clean, well- lighted places. There is something moving about it, literally and otherwise– Americans so energetic, so unstoppable– and yet there's something also melancholy. But when I need my next fast food fix, that will not keep me from coming back here.

I'm Anne Taylor Fleming.