History 101

It's May of 2011,

and Don, a retired American prison guard,

reveals why he's probably McDonald's biggest fan.

When I was 19 years old, I had eaten my first 1,000 Big Macs.

I thought, like, "Man,"

you know, "How long before I hit 10,000?"

Thirty-nine years to the day after eating his first Big Mac,

he's just eaten his 25,000th,

almost 14 million calories.

Well, I plan on eating Big Macs until I die.

Don might be an extreme example,

but he's far from alone in his love for fast food.

There are almost a quarter of a million fast food restaurants in the US alone.

Globally, fast food generates revenues

of over $570 billion each year.

That's more than the entire economy of Sweden in 2018...

and almost four times the amount NASA spent getting to the moon.

According to one survey, 96% of American children

know who Ronald McDonald is.

The only character more recognizable

is Santa Claus.

The rise of the fast food industry

is one of the most remarkable stories of the past 80 years.

But it hasn't always been pretty.

- Shove it in there! - If we are what we eat,

what does the enduring popularity of fast food say about us?

By definition,

fast food is food made and presented to customers quickly,

usually with preheated or precooked ingredients,

prepared in bulk and sold in packaging.

The concept has been around since the urban Automats

that were a hit from the 1920s to 1940s.

Automats are cafeterias

where customers drop coins in a slot

and, in return, obtain food quickly.

You can get almost anything out of a machine these days.

A drink before lunch and a good, hot lunch, as well.

They're obviously foolproof.

Anyone can work 'em.

But the fast food industry as we know it today

really starts back in 1921 in Wichita, Kansas,

with White Castle, a burger joint

that pioneers a faster, cleaner system for cooking burgers.

But the idea doesn't take off, yet.

Throughout the Great Depression and World War II,

people still tend to eat their meals at home.

Wow. Does my mom cook 1,095 meals a year?

That's a lot of meals.

Well, that's just what she does.

But after the war, the way we eat starts to change.

With more disposable income,

people start looking at dining out as a form of entertainment,

especially if it's tasty and served up quick.

In 1948, brothers Dick and Mac McDonald

use their Speedee Service System

to offer tasty burgers for just 15 cents,

about the equivalent of $1.60 today.

Their restaurant is a hit.

And over the next decade, new fast food chains

start blooming across the country.

In-N-Out Burger also gets its start in 1948,

with California's first drive-through burger stand

in a space barely ten feet square.

Colonel Harland Sanders opens Kentucky Fried Chicken

in 1952 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Burger King launches in 1954 in Florida.

The Whopper arrives three years later.

Dan and Frank Carney start the first Pizza Hut

in Wichita in 1958,

after borrowing $600 from their mother.

Many chains choose to franchise,

meaning individual owners can buy into a proven system,

using standardized machinery and ingredients.

Owners pay a fee to the chain,

plus a percentage of their monthly profits.

Kentucky Fried Chicken is one of the first to franchise.

In 1952, they start shipping

their top-secret premixed chicken seasoning

all over the US.

The fast food revolution is on.

One reason for their success,

in 1950s America,

car culture reigns supreme.

Drive-in movies and drive-in restaurants become all the rage,

taking convenience to another level.

You don't even have to get out of your car.

I was glad I didn't have to get out. I'd forgotten which knob opened the door.

The waitress was pretty automatic, too.

A salad and a glass of milk, please.

In the mid-60s,

a new technology for quickly heating up food

has everyone buzzing.

When the customer chooses his meal,

it's taken from the deep freeze and placed in a special oven.

And here's the real breakthrough.

The oven uses radio waves at the frequencies used in radar.

This reheats the meal in an incredibly short time.

A complete meal in around 45 seconds,

a hot dog in 15.

Fast food quickly takes advantage of the microwave

to thaw, cook, and sell food even more quickly,

while saving costs.

And that's when fast food

really starts to take off.

In 1976,

Wendy's, which only launched seven years earlier,

opens its 500th restaurant.

By 1978, around 60,000 fast food outlets

are scattered across the US.

And the battle for hungry mouths...

...heats up.

When you drive to Wendy's and order a Single,

you get more beef than the Whopper or the Big Mac.

Where's the beef?

The huge increase in stores

starts having an impact on the way food is produced.

Chains centralize their processing centers,

so every patty and nugget going out to franchises

is the same.

It's not just good for cutting costs.

That consistency turns out to be one of the biggest appeals of fast food.

In any given restaurant,

you always know what you're going to get.

Meanwhile, as the US market becomes saturated

with new fast food chains,

the older ones start looking beyond America's borders

for new mouths to feed.

Soon, fast food outlets

are springing up in Australia,

the UK, and Japan,

becoming America's latest cultural export.

But they're not always welcome.

After a Kentucky Fried Chicken opens in Bermuda,

the government there blocks any more foreign franchises from opening,

to protect the charm and economy of the island.

But in the rest of the world,

fast food is welcomed with open arms and mouths...

even in China.

And by the 90s,

fast food has really gone global.

Chains start appearing in the most unlikely places.

After the Soviet Union declares its new policy of perestroika,

allowing foreign businesses

to operate on Soviet soil,

the ultimate symbol of American capitalism

opens its first outlet in Moscow.

Twenty-five thousand people applied to work in the Moscow McDonald's.

Outside, inevitably a queue.

Some have been waiting for two and a half hours.

And because this is Moscow,

not everyone knows why.

This woman joined the line knowing something must be on sale here.

She thought it was ice cream.

But in Soviet Russia, McDonald's has a problem:

finding a high-quality, reliable supply of food products.

So they operate their own processing plant

and work with local businesses to shorten supply chains.

All over the world, the arrival of McDonald's

has a huge impact on local businesses,

igniting a massive demand for large-scale food production.

When McDonald's opens its first restaurant in South Africa,

after the end of apartheid,

80% of the food

is supplied by local farms and producers.

This is the 86th country opening for McDonald's.

And it's been a long road for us to get here.

But we finally made it.

- I am home. - This is American food.

- South Africa is home. Mmm. - This is the best.

This is the new South Africa right here, baby.

In the decades to come, American fast food chains

can be found in almost every country on the planet.

McDonald's has nearly 38,000 restaurants worldwide.

But the prize for the most outlets in 2019

goes to Subway,

with over 41,000 stores...

...nearly 24,000 of them in the US...

but just one in Croatia.

Every year, an estimated 3.6 million Japanese households