I was on vacation in Chicago this past week, and while I try to stay up to date on current events as much as I can when I'm out, that usually just equates to me watching a ton of college football and forgetting the outside world exists.

Last week was no different, and when I got back home on Monday night and started to shift back into "OutKick mode," I saw the fine dining establishment known as the Cheesecake Factory was trending on social media.

I felt pretty out of the loop, but after seeing people pick a side of the aisle to fall on in the Great Cheesecake Factory Debate as well as rank some of their other favorite sit-down restaurants, I knew it was time to throw my hat in the ring.

BABY BOOMERS CROWN THEIR FAVORITE CASUAL DINING CHAIN AS GEN Z CHOOSES A DIFFERENT WINNER

If there are three things you must know about me, it's that I'm passionate about sports, music and eating at restaurants.

That might come as a shock to anyone who has seen me in person, considering I'm about 160lbs soaking wet and looked like an emaciated child until I was 25 years old, but I am a chain restaurant connoisseur of sorts.

With all the commotion surrounding the Cheesecake Factory, and American eateries as a whole, I thought now would be as good a time as any to share my Mount Rushmore of fast-casual sit-down restaurants.

AMERICA'S FAVORITE FAST-FOOD CHAIN NAMED: MCDONALD'S WINS HEARTS BUT NOT BEST BURGER, SURVEY SAYS

This isn't just some slapped together list either (shout out to "Rolling Stone"), as this topic is something that I'm constantly revisiting and reevaluating.

This Mount Rushmore represents a good mix of four different kinds of food and dining experiences, with different menus, atmospheres, and themes.

With all the preamble out of the way, let's begin.

Olive Garden

We start this list off with a bang, and a somewhat controversial one at that.

I'm not sure why Olive Garden has this reputation as a classless knockoff (my dad calls it the McDonald's of Italian food), but I would never slander a place that offers endless breadsticks and pasta.

The soups are incredible, the variety of pastas is awesome, and the entrées are varied and filling.

BELOVED RESTAURANT CHAIN DWINDLES FROM 850 LOCATIONS TO 87, BUT EXPERT SEES 'A LOT OF LIFE LEFT'

The vibes are immaculate too, giving me a classy place to "sample The Boot."

My go-to choice is the chicken parm (duh), but I've never had a bad meal at Olive Garden and I don't plan on it anytime soon.

Texas Roadhouse

If you're looking for good old American fare at solid prices, look no further than Texas Roadhouse.

Their steaks are some of the best you can get at their price point, and the ability to smother them in sautéed onions and mushrooms is underrated.

Texas Roadhouse isn't just a one-trick pony, though, as their appetizers — the cheese fries in particular — are immaculate, and their chili is some of the best in the biz.

I know what you all are here for, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention the bread rolls, which would probably merit placement on this list by themselves.

They really lean into their Texas themes here, too, and if you've ever had a birthday at Roadhouse, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Can I get a "yeehaw?"

Chuy's

Maybe it's just because I lived in Dallas for six years, but TexMex is supremely underrated and should be more of a national delicacy.

Luckily, Chuy's is a national TexMex chain that is worthy of both Lone Star State natives and outsiders alike.

Their signature sauces go with just about any of their entrées, and although I'm not a big drinker, I have to say that their frozen margarita machines are worth the price of admission alone.

Whether you're into spice or just some good old-fashioned, hearty fare from the southwest, Chuy's has you covered.

The biggest selling point, to me though, is the creamy jalapeño ranch dip they give you with your chips and salsa.

Every great sit-down restaurant has a "gimmick," and this one is undeniably delicious.

THE CRAIG CARTON SHOW–UNFILTERED, UNAPOLOGETIC AND UNMISSABLE. DOWNLOAD HIS DAILY PODCAST NOW!

It's the perfect blend of creamy ranch and spice that will have you filling up on chips before your meal even comes out.

Chili's

For my money, there is no greater fast-casual sit-down establishment in this great country than Chili's.

The menu is insanely diverse. You can get seafood alfredo, steak, southwestern salad and traditional American fare all on a single page.

CHILI'S GOES VIRAL AFTER ROASTING FAST-FOOD PRICES: 'WHY LET THEM PLAY YOU LIKE THIS?'

Their lunch deals are also second to none, with the Three-For-Me and Three-For-$10 being go-to's for yours truly.

There is nothing better than sitting in the Chili's bar on a college football Saturday afternoon, ordering some chips and salsa and an ice-cold Coke and just soaking in the ambience.

My personal favorite has to be the Chipotle Fresh Mex Bowl, but I've been known to get a classic sirloin, the Margarita Grilled Chicken, or even the boneless wings, which are incredible even though I'm normally a traditionalist when it comes to wings.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

I could write an entire book on my love for Chili's, but this has gone on long enough and my mouth is starting to water, so if you'll excuse me, I think I hear a Triple Dipper calling my name.

• Wendy's was founded in 1969 by Dave Thomas, a former KFC employee.
• He named his burger restaurant after his daughter, Melinda "Wendy" Thomas.
• Some fans claim a secret message is written in the Wendy's logo.

Wendy's could be undergoing major changes.

When Wendy's opened in 1969, its menu had just five items: burgers, Frosties, fries, chili, and soft drinks.

More than five decades later, the chain has grown into the nation’s second-largest fast-food burger brand based on sales, according to QSR Magazine.

Now, Wendy’s could be headed for another major change: a potential acquisition.

On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trian Fund Management, which is owned by billionaire investor Nelson Peltz, and its partners offered $1.4 billion, or $7.35 per share, to buy Wendy’s and take the company private.

The proposal is still under review by a special committee, so no acquisition has been finalized, but it would mean a major shake-up for the burger chain.

Here are 9 things you probably never knew about Wendy's.

Wendy's founder, Dave Thomas, worked for KFC and the real Colonel Sanders before opening his own fast-food chain.

Before opening his own franchise, Dave Thomas worked as a head cook at a Hobby House restaurant, a chain that would eventually become Kentucky Fried Chicken.

During his time working for the company, Thomas helped improve brand recognition and encouraged Colonel Harland David Sanders to appear in more commercials.

This strategy, along with the design of the iconic red-and-white-striped fried chicken bucket, helped grow KFC's popularity.

Thomas was sent to Columbus, Ohio, to revitalize a few failing KFC franchises, turn them around, and sell them back to Sanders for a big profit, the Greensboro News & Record reported. He used this newfound cash to start his own franchise: a hamburger chain named Wendy's, inspired by his inability to find a good burger during his years in Columbus. 

The first Wendy's opened in Columbus, Ohio, in 1969 with just five items on the menu.

The first Wendy's restaurant opened at 257 East Broad Street on November 15, 1969. By that time, there were already two major players in the fast-food burger industry: McDonald's, which opened its first franchise in 1955, and Burger King, which was founded in 1954.

The chain still stands as the second-largest fast-food burger chain in the US.

Wendy's was different from the other two chains in that it served square-shaped burger patties and chocolate shakes called "Frostys."

Apart from the burgers and Frostys, there were only three other items on the first menu: french fries, soft drinks, and chili.

You might already know that Wendy's is named after Dave Thomas' daughter, but her given name is actually Melinda.

Melinda "Wendy" Thomas was just 8 years old when her father founded Wendy's, and he already had a vision for how she would become the brand's mascot.

Inspired by Sanders' success as the face of KFC, Thomas decided to create a similar image for his brand. 

"He wanted a character, because he worked for the Colonel at Kentucky Fried Chicken and knew how much that persona mattered," Wendy Thomas wrote in a blog post for the company in 2019. "He said, 'Wendy, pull your hair up in pigtails.' So, I did. He got his camera and took pictures of me and my sister and said, 'Yep, it's going to be Wendy's Old-Fashioned Hamburgers.'"

"That was it," Thomas continued. "There was no marketing research, no nothing. Just boom. That's it."

One photo of Thomas wearing a blue-and-white-striped dress with her red hair in pigtails became the ultimate inspiration for the chain's logo. While the logo has been altered slightly over the years, the overall idea has remained the same.

Wendy's restaurants used to have their own salad bars where you could completely customize your salad.

Salad bars were added to restaurants in November 1979, and they were popular among customers throughout the 1980s.

However, as more diners opted for drive-thru and carry-out service, salad bars were phased out in favor of more portable salad options. 

Wendy's serves about 300 million Frostys every year.

Wendy's chocolate Frosty is arguably one of the chain's most famous and popular menu items. Introduced as one of five menu items when the chain first opened in 1969, Frostys were only available in chocolate until 2006.

That all changed when the chain launched its vanilla Frosty.

According to a Wendy's press release from 2006, the chain serves about 300 million Frostys every year.

Wendy's changed the fast-food industry with the introduction of its pick-up window.

While other chains have claimed to have invented the drive-thru, Wendy's says it changed the fast-food industry when it introduced its own pick-up window in November 1970.

The window was originally referred to as a "drive-in window" but was renamed "Pick-Up Window" to better reflect the chain's quick-service model. 

According to Wendy's, "This innovation was so revolutionary that customers needed instructions on how to talk through the speaker to place an order."

Wendy's was the first fast-food chain with fewer than 1,000 restaurants to have its own national TV commercial.

According to the company's website, in 1977, Wendy's became the first fast-food chain with fewer than 1,000 restaurants to air a national commercial.

Wendy's now has around 6,000 restaurants nationwide.

One Wendy's advertisement from September 1976, presumably a local commercial, featured an animated Wendy and dancing hamburgers. In the commercial, the cartoon characters described how Wendy's "old-fashioned" hamburgers were cooked to order: "Your choice down at Wendy's, where quality is our recipe!" 

Clara Peller, who starred in Wendy's famous "Where's the Beef" campaign, was reportedly let go after she shaded the company in a Prego ad.

Peller became one of the biggest names in fast food after she began starring in Wendy's commercials, shouting out the slogan, "Where's the beef?"

The first advertisement, which appeared in 1984, claimed that Wendy's hamburgers had larger patties than those of the chain's competitors.

The campaign was so popular that it led to a 31% boost in Wendy's annual revenue, according to the chain. However, things took a turn in 1985 after Peller appeared in a Prego commercial that implied she had "finally found" the beef she was looking for. 

"I'm sorry that the company that I worked so hard for does not want to use me in commercials anymore," Peller said in a statement through her attorney, according to The Sun Sentinel in 2006. 

"The commercial infers that Clara found the beef at somewhere other than Wendy's restaurants," William M. Welter, executive vice president of Wendy's International Inc., said in a statement. "Unfortunately, Clara's appearance in the ads makes it extremely difficult for her to serve as a credible spokesperson for our products."

Peller died at age 86 in 1987, just two years after the dispute.

Some people believe there's a secret message hidden in the Wendy's logo.

After Wendy's introduced its newly designed logo in 2013, a website author claimed to have found a secret message hidden inside Wendy's iconic blue-and-white dress.

ABC News reported that a posting on the website StockLogos.com pointed out that the word "mom" appeared to be hidden on Wendy's collar. Another website agreed, perhaps prompting the chain to issue a statement clarifying whether the hidden message was purely a coincidence or a ploy to get customers to associate Wendy's food with "Mom's cooking."

"We are aware of this and find it interesting that it appears our Wendy cameo has 'mom' on her ruffled collar. We can assure you it was unintentional," Denny Lynch, Wendy's former senior vice president of communications, said at the time.

• The first Cheesecake Factory restaurant opened in Beverly Hills, California, in 1978.
• Its CEO and founder, David Overton, opened it to promote his mother's cheesecake business.
• Today, it's one of the top restaurant chains in the country.

The Cheesecake Factory is having an unlikely moment in political discourse.

Over the weekend, former President Barack Obama joked at a Cleveland rally that President Donald Trump had made the White House look like “Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory,” referring to the president's propensity for gold-heavy decor and the renovations he has overseen during his tenure.

The chain’s former vice president of design pushed back on Obama's comments in a CNN interview, saying the White House looks nothing like a Cheesecake Factory, while the White House’s X account defended the chain as “a great American institution.”

Trump also responded to Obama's comparison, telling reporters that calling the White House a Cheesecake Factory "just shows why you were a lousy president."

One of the top 40 restaurant chains in the US, The Cheesecake Factory is known for its extensive menu of cheesecakes, pastas, sandwiches, and appetizers, including its famed avocado egg rolls.

But fans may not realize that the publicly traded company, with a market cap of around $3 billion, was a family-run bakery business for years before it scaled across the US and abroad.

"Growing up, it was all about cheesecake. And we knew people loved it," Cheesecake Factory CEO David Overton said in a video on the company's website.

What started as a family recipe has since grown into a global business. Take a closer look at The Cheesecake Factory's early beginnings.

Evelyn Overton, with her husband, Oscar, started making cheesecakes for local restaurants in Detroit in the 1940s.

In the 1940s, Evelyn Overton found a dessert recipe in a local Detroit newspaper that inspired her to create her "original" cheesecake.

She tweaked the recipe and started making her own cakes.  She eventually opened her own bakery. 

"Everyone loved it," David Overton said. "It became famous."

In time, she gave up the business to focus on raising her two children, David and Renee. She moved her baking equipment into her basement kitchen and continued selling cheesecakes to Detroit restaurants.

"Growing up, it was all about cheesecake," David Overton said about his mother's cheesecakes.

In the 1970s, David Overton moved to San Francisco to study law. He persuaded his parents, who were then in their 50s, to move to Los Angeles so his mom's cheesecake business could get another chance in a bigger market.

With the last of their savings, Oscar and Evelyn Overton packed up their car and drove cross-country to Los Angeles. They had $10,000 to their name.

In 1972, at their son's behest, Oscar and Evelyn Overton moved to Los Angeles and opened a 700-square-foot commercial bakery in North Hollywood.  

"This was probably the size of one of our walk-ins today," David Overton said in the video.

His parents opened The Cheesecake Factory bakery in 1972 and began selling Evelyn Overton's cheesecakes to restaurants throughout Los Angeles.

They worked around the clock, attempting to turn her lifelong dream of owning a successful business into a reality.

David Overton, a musician in the late '70s, moved to Los Angeles to help his parents promote the business.

Evelyn Overton developed more than a dozen varieties of her cheesecake and other desserts. Her husband was the salesperson. He drove from Santa Barbara to San Diego, selling his wife's desserts to restaurants across Southern California.

While their business found modest success, the patriarch would get the same feedback: "No one needs more than one flavor of cheesecake." 

This frustrated David Overton, especially as some restaurant owners began switching to other suppliers that made less-expensive cheesecakes that he saw as inferior.

"Literally for $0.05, some of these restaurants would switch to another brand," David Overton said.

"We knew we had the Cadillac of cheesecakes," David Overton said. So he decided to showcase the cheesecakes at their own restaurant.

To prove the demand for his mom's desserts, he opened his own restaurant in Beverly Hills in 1978, despite having no restaurant experience. He named the restaurant The Cheesecake Factory after his parents' bakery. 

On opening day, he was so nervous he didn't open the restaurant until 2 p.m. to avoid the lunch rush. When the doors finally opened, the restaurant filled up within 10 minutes.

The first two-sided menu was light on options by the chain's current standards.

Due to his lack of restaurant experience, David Overton "created a simple and straightforward menu with generous portions," The Cheesecake Factory told Business Insider.  

The original menu was a single-page, two-sided document, and it featured 60 items, many of which he knew how to cook himself.

One side featured lunch and dinner options such as burgers, hamburger steak, quiche of the day, and roasted chicken. Salads, grilled meats, and open-faced sandwiches included classic American staples such as crab Louie and tuna salad. One dish, Oscar's special sardine sandwich, was named after his father.

Breakfast featured egg dishes, cereal, toast, and espresso drinks. 

Some of the cheesecake flavors were chocolate chip, peanut butter, mocha chocolate chip, and fresh strawberry.

The original dessert menu featured a variety of baked goods and desserts, including cheesecake, carrot cake, zucchini cake, strudel, whipped-cream cakes, chocolate-mousse pie, black forest cake, cream puffs, ice-cream sundaes, milkshakes, banana splits, and Belgian waffles topped with ice cream and whipped cream. The ice cream on the menu was billed as "extra rich."

Prices ranged from $0.85 for a dish of ice cream to $1.95 for the chocolate-mousse pie. A slice of cheesecake cost $1.25.

When The Cheesecake Factory first opened, it also featured a salad bar.

The Beverly Hills salad bar was called the Fabulous Factory Salad Bar. The cost of a build-your-own salad was $1.95 for a medium plate or $2.95 for a large salad plate.

Salad bars at this time were more closely associated with steakhouses.  The first four Cheesecake Factory restaurants had salad bars. It stopped adding them when the fifth restaurant opened in 1991 in Washington, DC.

The Cheesecake Factory filled the gap between fast-food options and expensive restaurants.

"There really were, in the area, high-end restaurants and then fast food, but there was really nothing in the middle," Alethea Rowe, the senior director of public relations and global branding at The Cheesecake Factory, told Business Insider. "And David purposefully created a restaurant that was very much in the middle."

It appealed to middle-class diners who, amid the boom of frozen and microwaved meals, enjoyed the restaurant's made-from-scratch cooking.

The service also helped. Hostess Linda Candioty (pictured) started working for Evelyn Overton in the bakery in 1977. She became the restaurant's first hostess and has held a variety of key positions within the company over the years. Today, she is the company's vice president of guest experience.

"She knew how to please the guest," David Overton said. "I loved operating. I love being in the background. She loved being in the foreground."

David Overton had no initial plans to open a second restaurant, but he soon grew to love the business. In 1983, the second location opened.

The new location was in Marina del Rey, an affluent Los Angeles-area coastal community.

David Overton immediately fell in love with the location.

"I went there, and I said, 'Wow, who wouldn't want to sit out here and have a wonderful meal,'" he said.

Candioty, in the company video, described the bay location this way: "On the water. On the beach. Palm trees. Volleyball. Windsurfers. It was amazing. And it was a zoo from the beginning."

The restaurant was packed full all summer.

"We became an instant hit. It took us about five years to recover from that opening," she said.

Original Beverly Hills servers wore café aprons.

After the success of the Marina del Rey restaurant, David Overton chose another coastal spot for its next location: Redondo Beach, California. 

After that, David Overton set a goal to open at least one restaurant every year or every two years.

"So we started to grow because of our success and because people loved our product, and our culture grew right along with it," he said in the company video.

The Cheesecake Factory's famous murals started with the opening of the Redondo Beach restaurant in 1988.

The Redondo Beach restaurant had a lot of empty wall space. So David Overton turned to employee Mary D'Astugues, who was known as an artist. He asked her to paint a ceiling mural and one behind the bar.

She painted while the restaurant was under construction.

"David really liked the aesthetic that Mary's artwork added to the restaurant, and from that point forward, as each new Cheesecake Factory opened in cities across the country, Mary painted custom murals for each location," the company told Business Insider.

The Cheesecake Factory went public in 1992.

David Overton, in a 2011 interview with CNN, said his parents were able to semi-retire as the restaurants performed well in the first several years. 

"Our investors were making a lot of money," he said. "In September 1992, we went public. The stock opened at $20 and went to $27.25 the first day." 

He became the CEO and chair of the board when the company went public. Before that, he was the company's president. He is the only CEO the chain has ever had.

Today, the Cheesecake Factory ranks 36th among US chains by sales on Technomic's top-500 list. Among casual dining chains, it's ranked No. 9.

In 2012, The Cheesecake Factory opened its first international location in Dubai.

The restaurant opened in the Dubai Mall under a licensing agreement with Alshaya Trading Co.

The Cheesecake Factory has over 200 domestic restaurants and over 30 international locations. None of the US locations are franchised.

International restaurants are licensed locations. This is an unusual tactic for a large publicly traded company, which typically grows through franchising. Other publicly traded chains that don't franchise include Chipotle and Shake Shack. 

In 2016, the first Cheesecake Factory in China opened in Shanghai.

Some of the 36 international locations have opened in top tourist destinations.

In 2016, the company opened its first restaurant in China. The location opened in Disneytown at the Shanghai Disney Resort.

The Cheesecake Factory's famous "brown bread" launched in grocery stores in 2018.

The bread was launched under the Cheesecake Factory at Home brand.

Other restaurant items sold in grocery stores include a handful of whole frozen cheesecakes, including the original cheesecake and the strawberry-topped original cheesecake. 

The Cheesecake Factory was one of the first national restaurant chains to work with DoorDash.

To gain market share, DoorDash went after large, established restaurant chains. Early partnerships included The Cheesecake Factory, Buffalo Wild Wings, and Wendy's.

While other restaurant chains have expanded delivery services to include other apps such as Uber Eats, Cheesecake Factory remains an exclusive delivery partner with DoorDash.

In 2019, The Cheesecake Factory expanded with the acquisition of Fox Restaurant Concepts, which owns the brands North Italia and Flower Child.

"It became evident that the combination of two of the most experiential and entrepreneurial restaurant companies could drive greater value as one organization," David Overton said in a statement. 

In 2020, the private-equity firm Roark Capital, whose fast-food empire includes Arby's and Jamba, invested $200 million in The Cheesecake Factory.

The April 2020 investment helped The Cheesecake Factory's "liquidity position" as it navigated the COVID-19 pandemic, David Overton said at the time.

In June 2021, The Cheesecake Factory reacquired most of the equity stake it had sold to Roark Capital in a transaction valued at $457.3 million, Restaurant Business reported.

Today, the Cheesecake Factory menu has more than 250 items across nearly 20 pages.

New items are rolled out twice a year, replacing lower-performing items.

In a 2022 Vox article, the writer Alex Abad-Santos called The Cheesecake Factory an "uncanny" chain whose success was built on defying standard industry rules.

The chain's massive menu is one of those industry-defying traditions. Most chains preach operational efficiency by providing a limited menu of dishes that are all profit generators.  

Not at The Cheesecake Factory. 

"The menu was seemingly written by someone who was hungry for everything they could think of but couldn't name what they actually wanted at that moment," Abad-Santos wrote. "The rules that govern regular restaurants have no power over The Cheesecake Factory. If there is one rule at The Cheesecake Factory, it's that the conventional wisdom of the restaurant industry — keeping costs low, concepts simple, and menus under 200 items — is meant to be ignored."

Many menu items are named after people. Adam's peanut butter cup fudge ripple, for example, is named after the founder's son, Adam.

This cheesecake favorite combines all of Adam's favorite childhood treats: Butterfingers, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, caramel, and the chain's classic cheesecake.

The "Evelyn's Favorite Pasta" dish is named after David Overton's mom.

The dish is made with broccoli, zucchini, asparagus, peppers, tomato, onion, garlic, and fresh herbs. It's tossed with Parmesan.

It's one of 14 pasta dishes listed on the menu. 

Linda's fudge cake is one of the desserts that Candioty created while working as a test baker.

The fudge cake remains one of The Cheesecake Factory's most beloved desserts, the company told Business Insider.

The avocado egg roll, a top-selling appetizer, was inspired by David Overton's dining travels.

Avocado egg rolls are a top seller on the menu.

The inspiration for it came after David Overton tasted a crunchy avocado cheese straw while dining at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. Avocado was also used as a garnish on the dish. 

It made him wonder whether The Cheesecake Factory could make an egg roll stuffed with avocado chunks. Experimenting commenced, and after multiple tries, The Cheesecake Factory's avocado egg rolls were developed.

Their exact debut is unknown, but they've been around since the late '90s or very early 2000s, the company said. 

Almost every item on the menu is made in-house from scratch, except for the chain's cheesecakes.

Business Insider got a behind-the-scenes look at how The Cheesecake Factory manages its massive menu, with chefs relying on coordinated prep stations, digital timers, and strict deadlines to keep orders moving.

Even though the menu hovers around 250 items, most are made from scratch. The one exception is the chain's cheesecakes, which are delivered frozen to each restaurant and garnished with whipped cream during service.

Staff prepare ingredients for hundreds of dishes before service begins, including more than 100 sauces and dressings at a single station.

Entrées are expected to be out about 15 minutes after they're ordered, while appetizers have a seven-minute goal.

Although the chain continues adding around 10 new dishes each year, executives say the menu is nearing its practical limit due to the kitchen's complexity.

The Cheesecake Factory isn't just famous for its food. The chain recently made headlines for getting caught up in a political squabble.

In October, former President Barack Obama joked that President Donald Trump had made the White House look like "Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory," a reference to Trump's gold-heavy Oval Office design and other White House renovations.

The Cheesecake Factory's former vice president of design disputed the comparison in a CNN interview, while the White House's X account defended the restaurant chain as "a great American institution."

Trump also addressed Obama's remark, telling reporters that the comparison "just shows why you were a lousy president."

• McDonald's brought back the McRib for a national farewell tour in the fall of 2022. 
• The McRib has had at least three other farewell tours and has been on and off menus since 1981.
• It's returned to menus every year since 2023 and is back in select cities on October 27.

When bidding fans a final goodbye, the McRib appears to be taking cues from rock bands like The Who and KISS. The bands are known for farewell tours that didn't stick. The iconic McDonald's sandwich is also pulling a fast one with fans. 

In 2022, McDonald's said the barbecue-slathered boneless pork hoagie would say goodbye to fans in an event billed as the McRib's farewell tour. But the McRib returned to select McDonald's locations in November 2023, and has made similar returns every year since. In fact, the chain announced it will release the McRib again in October in select cities.

For 45 years, the McRib sandwich has been popping up randomly on the McDonald's menu. 

Here's a look at the history of the sandwich. 

Mary Meisenzahl and Nancy Luna contributed to an earlier version of this story.

The origin story of the McRib is tied to the success of another iconic McDonald's menu item: McNuggets.

After McNuggets were introduced in 1979, franchisees couldn't get enough of them and demanded another hot product to sell.

A nationwide chicken shortage left some franchises without McNuggets, so McDonald's chef René Arend created a fast, affordable alternative.

Arend was inspired to create the McRib after a trip to South Carolina, where he ate local barbecue.

The design for the McRib used new technology to create a "restructured meat product" developed by Richard Mandigo at the University of Nebraska, NPR reported.

Arend designed the McRib's shape to "look like a slab of ribs," and while the product is made with pork, it doesn't include any actual rib bones.

The McRib officially debuted in test markets in 1981.

Made with boneless pork, barbecue sauce, onions, and pickles, the menu item sparked early interest from customers nationwide.

However, while customers showed up to try the McRib for the first time, not many returned for repeat visits, and it disappeared from menus in 1985.

"The Simpsons" gave the McRib a permanent place in pop culture with a 2003 episode parodying the sandwich, titled "Ribwich."

That same year, McDonald's introduced a mini version of the sandwich, the McRib Jr.

McDonald's took the McRib on three farewell tours in 2005, 2006, and 2007.

The McRib found success as a limited-time offer. In 2007, McDonald's sold 30 million sandwiches, Maxim reported.

In 2008, devoted McRib fan Aaron Klein started the McRib Location website that used crowdsourced tips to help people find the sandwich at select locations nationwide.

In 2020, the McRib returned to menus nationwide for the first time in eight years.

"The McRib has been a beloved menu item at McDonald's since its inception nearly 40 years ago," Linda VanGosen, McDonald's vice president of menu innovation, said in a statement at the time.

"There's nothing quite like the taste of the McRib. To our customers, it's become more than a delicious, saucy moment … it's a season, and it's taking the internet by storm. That's why this year we're proud to serve the McRib nationwide for everyone to enjoy."

The launch proved successful and boosted sales that were declining amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Restaurant Business reported.

We tried the McRib for ourselves and didn't quite get the hype.

During the pandemic, chains including Burger King and KFC turned to nostalgia, offering customers familiar comforts during an uncertain time.

However, despite the hype, we were a bit underwhelmed.

The rectangular pork patty reminded us of the sausage McDonald's uses on its breakfast sandwiches, while the pickles and onions tasted crisp and fresh.

We enjoyed the toppings, but the sandwich was missing the barbecue flavor we expected — likely because it arrived with barely any sauce, unlike the much saucier McRibs seen online. This could've been a restaurant-specific error at the time, but we haven't been back to reorder it since.

In 2022, McDonald's announced that the McRib was heading out on yet another "Farewell Tour," suggesting the cult-favorite sandwich might be gone for good.

But yet again, the sendoff didn't stick.

The McRib returned to menus in 2023, 2024, and 2025, continuing the long-running cycle of limited-time disappearances and comebacks.

However, unlike previous years, the McRib was only available in select cities in 2025.

Despite its many supposed farewell tours, McDonald's is relaunching the McRib once more in 2026.

After years of dramatic goodbyes and limited-time returns, McDonald's brought the polarizing pork sandwich back once again in 2026.

Starting on October 27 at select locations in cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Dallas, fans can purchase a McRib for a limited time, the company told USA Today. Customers in other cities are encouraged to check their McDonald's app for availability.

Its latest comeback proves the McRib's strange staying power.

Every time it disappears, fans wonder whether this will finally be the last time — and head to their nearest location to try it for (possibly) the final time.

• Sweetgreen just rolled out a new incentive and compensation plan for restaurant managers.
• A higher base salary and new revenue-share bonus could push top performers above $200,000.
• "As we approach 300 restaurants, we're betting big on our Head Coaches," CEO Jonathan Neman said.

Sweetgreen restaurant managers are about to see some more sweet green.

The salad bowl chain said Tuesday it is rolling out a new compensation and incentive plan for the new year that would raise annual pay for managers of high-performing locations to more than $200,000.

"This sets Sweetgreen up to be in the top tier of restaurants for total compensation for general managers," chief operating officer Jason Cochran told Business Insider. "Our ability to be able to attract, retain, and also inspire many of our internal team members to want to be head coaches — I think it's going to be meaningful for many years to come."

Managers need to have at least three years on the job to be eligible for the highest pay bands, and a new revenue-share bonus will directly reward leaders when their location beats it sales goals, the company said. Managers may also receive shares of Sweetgreen stock based on their performance.

Cochran said the typical tenure of restaurant managers ranges from three months to 10 years, and that store teams consist of about 25 to 50 employees.

"One of the shift leads was telling me they heard the news and how excited they were for their career at Sweetgreen," he said. "She's been with us six years."

The company also said the changes at the top are part of a larger push to improve talent retention and training within the chain.

"Great leaders build great teams, and great teams build a great business. As we approach 300 restaurants, we're betting big on our Head Coaches," co-founder and CEO Jonathan Nemen said in a statement. "The restaurant industry has always been one of the great engines of opportunity, and we want to make that real for thousands of people."

• As a sommelier, I love trying new wines at restaurants, but they're not all winners.
• Many miss out on Italian whites, which are some of the most underappreciated wines in the world.
• Skip bottles from popular wine regions and order from their neighbors instead.

It can be overwhelming to be handed an extensive wine list at a restaurant. Multiple pages with small print can be an overload of information — anxiety ensues, and you're not sure what to order.

But as a sommelier, I've trained to understand all those little details, so you don't have to.

Here are the mistakes I see people make when ordering wine — plus advice for what to do instead next time you're dining out.

Ordering something they can readily buy at their local grocer

Sommeliers work hard to curate thoughtful and interesting wine lists at restaurants. If you can get the wine at your grocery store or any retailer you frequent, skip it while you're out.

Dining out is a time to explore and discover something new. This can be a grape you've never had, a producer you've never heard of, or a wine from a new-to-you region.

Sure, you've had a Tuscan red wine, but have you had a red wine from Oltrepò Pavese made from pinot-noir grapes? At Italian restaurants, I always look out for bottles of La Genisia pinot.

Exclusively sticking with overpriced bottles from major wine regions

Bordeaux is widely considered one of the finest wine regions in France, and Napa Valley reigns supreme in the US. So, it's no surprise that their wines often have price tags to match their elite status.

Instead, I always look for areas near these benchmark regions to expand my horizons and save a few bucks.

Just outside Bordeaux is a region called Cahors, which is known for making wines from the malbec grape. Crocus Wines is a reputable brand to try.

In terms of Napa alternatives, I tend to reach for bottles from the Anderson Valley in Mendocino. Classic producers include Goldeneye Winery and Husch Vineyards.

Only ever ordering white wines within their comfort zone

Ubiquitous, "comfort zone" white wines like chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, and pinot grigio tend to have cultlike followings.

If you're open to branching out and are in a white-wine rut, I say start by taking a closer look at the menu. For example, Italy has a treasure trove of "under the radar" varieties.

The country is home to over 1,000 native grape varieties, but my favorite Italian regions to look for on menus include Sicily, Collio, and Lugana.

Planeta and Monteleone are two of my favorite brands in Sicily. Primosic and Terre del Faet are top producers in the Collio region. And in Lugana (an all-white wine region), Ottella and Selva Capuzza reign supreme.

There are so many great varieties worth trying if you know a few keywords to look for.

Going for the full-bodied, high-alcohol reds

Over the years, I've observed that American wine drinkers really like big, assertive reds.

The problem with ordering such wines at many restaurants is that the bottles are often too young. They'd benefit from some aging, but restaurants need to sell their wines, so it's a bit of a conundrum.

My solution is to dapple with light-bodied reds that are ready to drink when bottled. The best examples include gamay, Cinsault, and valdiguié wines.

Some of my favorites include Camins 2 Dreams' gamay, Two Shepherds' Cinsault, and J. Lohr's valdiguié.

If it's hot out, consider enjoying these reds lightly chilled. Have the sommelier put the wine on ice while you peruse the menu and order your food.

By the time your appetizers are served, the wine will be ready to enjoy.

This story was originally published on September 15, 2024, and most recently updated on October 26, 2026.

• Restaurants are buying fewer paper cups and takeout containers.
• Companies making the goods say their North American sales declined in results released this year.
• It's the latest sign that diners are eating out less.

Even the humble disposable coffee cup suggests that diners are eating out less at restaurants.

Companies that sell paper cups, plates, delivery containers, and similar packaging to restaurants say that they're seeing less demand from US businesses.

Essity, a Swedish company that sells paper towels and cleaning supplies to businesses, including restaurants, said on Thursday that the dining pullback in the US was affecting sales. The company's sales volumes and prices in the US fell during its third quarter, it said.

"Consumers are not going out to restaurants as much as they do in Europe," CEO Ulrika Kolsrud told Reuters on Thursday.

Finland-based Huhtamaki Oyj, which makes disposable cups and takeout containers for fast-food restaurants, said that second-quarter sales in North America decreased.

Analysts at Jefferies wrote that results in the region, which accounts for about one-third of Huhtamaki Oyj's sales, will likely be hurt by lower consumer spending at fast-food chains in the US.

Higher prices at some chains, and many consumers still working from home, "have impacted sales volumes, and ultimately packaging demand," the analysts wrote earlier this month.

With wages stagnant and the lingering effects of inflation, many diners are eating out less. Those who are still spending tend to look for good deals — a trend that has tested value menus at fast-food chains like McDonald's and benefited others, such as Chili's, which offered deals that got consumers ordering.

That doesn't necessarily mean Americans have stopped spending on restaurant food altogether. Many diners are still willing to pay for food delivery, a trend that has bolstered results at DoorDash and Uber.

Do you have a story idea? Contact this reporter at abitter@businessinsider.com or via encrypted messaging app Signal at 808-854-4501. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

In recent years, one of the predominant policy initiatives of the progressive left has been raising the minimum wage in locales around the country. At the same time, left-leaning politicians have sought the elimination of what's known as the tip credit, which allows employers to pay restaurant servers and other tipped employees a lower hourly base wage that they then bolster with gratuities.

Just a few years into this experiment, however, policymakers are showing signs of an about-face on the tip credit's abolition as they grapple with the unfortunate, and predictable, economic results.

In 2022, Washington, D.C., made news headlines when voters passed Initiative 82. As originally designed, it would have repealed the tip credit and required servers to be paid the District's full statutory minimum wage by 2027. (D.C.'s minimum wage was $16.10 per hour in 2022, but has since risen to $18.40 due to inflation indexation.) Prior to Initiative 82, D.C. servers could be paid a $5.35 tipped wage, so long as they earned enough tips to make up the difference between the lower tipped wage and the higher traditional minimum wage.

D.C.'s Initiative 82 was just the beginning. One Fair Wage, a progressive group that lobbies against subminimum wages, quarterbacked an all-out push to eliminate the tip credit in jurisdictions across America. Chicago became the second prominent city to follow suit. States like New York, Connecticut, and Illinois also quickly saw legislation introduced to eliminate the tip credit at a statewide level. (Apart from this recent wave, a small handful of American states—including California, Oregon, and Alaska—have long operated without a tip credit).

But just when it seemed like momentum against the tip credit had reached its apex, progressive politicians started to see the writing on the wall. In the aftermath of the tip credit's repeal, D.C. saw a close to 5 percent decline in full-service restaurant jobs. Tipped worker earnings also dropped by just under $12 million—likely a result, at least in part, of restaurants reducing hours for staff in the face of higher labor costs. At the same time, many D.C. restaurants began implementing service fees or so-called auto-gratuity policies that added mandatory 10-20 percent charges onto customers' bills.

Mugged by this economic reality, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser called for the full repeal of Initiative 82. Ultimately, the D.C. Council settled for a partial repeal in 2025, maintaining at least some semblance of a tipped wage that sits below the traditional minimum wage into the years ahead (although the tipped wage eventually rises to 75 percent of the traditional wage by 2034). This was a familiar story: The council had previously repealed Initiative 77, a near-identical attempt to abolish the tipped wage that voters passed in 2018.

After Chicago moved to eliminate the tip credit, the Illinois Restaurant Association found that 89 percent of Windy City restaurants raised menu prices; another 79 percent responded by reducing worker hours. Again bowing to economic reality, the progressive Chicago City Council voted to freeze the tip credit's planned elimination, only to see the effort vetoed by Mayor Brandon Johnson. Eventually, a compromise was brokered to at least pause the tip credit at its current level for two years—which punts the issue until after Johnson stands for election again, allowing a potential successor to endorse a more lasting reversal.

In Michigan, a 2024 state supreme court ruling set the tip credit on the path toward elimination by 2030. But state lawmakers intervened last year, deciding to maintain a 50 percent tip credit in perpetuity after 2031. Notably, Michigan is currently governed by a Democratic trifecta in the governorship and both houses of the Legislature. The tip credit's revival garnered key support from Republican lawmakers to pass in a bipartisan fashion, before being signed into law by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

While progressive efforts to eliminate the tip credit may be motivated by an earnest desire to ensure waiters are paid more, the math isn't that simple. Requiring a server to be paid a $16 traditional minimum wage—up from a $5 tipped wage—might appear to raise their pay on paper. But this fails to consider several important factors.

Under our "No Taxes on Tips" new normal, raising the minimum wage for servers could lead to a partial reduction in tips, which under certain scenarios can result in less take-home pay for waiters once the taxman takes his cut. If more server earnings come in the form of "auto-gratuity" policies—which are treated as taxed wages under the law—then the tax repercussions may grow even grimmer.

But more broadly, these laws attempt to subvert basic economics. As of 2025, Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that D.C. restaurants shed over 1,600 jobs in aftermath of Initiative 82; meanwhile, between 2022 and 2025, restaurant job growth in the District declined by more than 8 percent. This is just one example. The fallout is the inevitable result of restaurants responding to labor costs that suddenly skyrocket, forcing establishments to cut worker hours and sometimes transition to quick-service models that require less hourly staff. And that's to say nothing of the diners who bear the cost with higher prices and new service fees.

"We're watching a beloved bar back, a beloved busser, a dishwasher have their jobs taken away," D.C. restaurant worker Valerie Graham told Reason in 2024. "Not because our owner-operator is an evil billionaire but because they're an independent business owner who had to make some business decisions and there's a callousness with which our industry is talked about."

To be sure, the tip credit has only survived in modified and reduced form in D.C., Chicago, and Michigan—and in the case of Chicago, the about-face is only temporary. But the partial reversals show the tip credit's elimination is not a foregone conclusion. Economic reality continues to rear its head.

The post Some Progressives Tried To Abolish the Tipped Minimum Wage. Now They're Backtracking. appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Ahead of National Curry Week in the UK (5-11 October) MPs are being urged to revive the Parliamentary Tiffin Cup. 

The Tiffin Cup was an annual competition where MPs (advised by their constituents) nominated the Best South Asian Restaurant in their area.

One restaurant from every region was then shortlisted and invited to participate in the Grand Final cook-off event held in the House of Commons in London, and judged by MPs and guest celebrities, with the proceeds going to charity.

The Tiffin Cup was last won in 2019 by Kuti’s Restaurant in Southampton, where former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says he worked shifts “just for fun” as a student.

The competition was created by a group of MPs with Keith Vaz as its chairman to celebrate quality South Asian food. The trophy was usually presented by the Speaker of the House of Commons.

Demands for its return are led by George Shaw, editor of the respected Good Curry Guide.

He told this site “These are challenging times for the hospitality sector, with both restaurants and customers being hard hit by rising costs.  The Tiffin Cup will help to promote what is a vital part of our economy. 

“Most curry houses are small independent businesses – not a ubiquitous chain which sucks cash away from the local area, funnelling profits to a corporate headquarters many miles away, or to an offshore bank account.

“Curry is a firmly established part of British history and culture. 

“Queen Elizabeth I granted the first charter in 1600 allowing London merchants to trade with the “East Indies”, hoping to break the Dutch monopoly on the spice trade.”

The earliest surviving curry recipe in English was published in 1747.

The first Indian restaurant in London, the Hindoostane Coffee House, was opened in 1810 by Sake Dean Mahomed, a former captain in the British East India Company.

He went on to become ‘personal shampooing surgeon’ to George IV and William IV.

British appetites for spice became entrenched during the British colonial era in India, from 1600 to 1947.

Queen Victoria, ‘Empress of India’ was introduced to Indian cuisine by her ‘Munshi’, Abdul Karim. 

Thereafter she ate curry every day, with great relish and in considerable quantities, until the end of her life, 25 years later.

The ritual of enjoying a refreshing lager with Indian food was introduced by Prince Axel of Denmark. 

The Prince attended the British Empire Exhibition in 1924. 

During his visit he discovered the cuisine of Veeraswamy (London’s first high end Indian restaurant and still in existence), which ran a “pop-up” at the Exhibition.  

The Prince brought a barrel of Carlsberg with him and continued to send one each Christmas.

Shaw is urging restaurant curry fans to write to their MPs asking them to reestablish the Tiffin Cup competition as an annual fixture in Parliament, with their own nominations.

Spice lovers can find the email address of their MP via https://www.mysociety.org/wehelpyou/who-is-your-mp

Gabe Bullard | Longreads | September 15, 2026 | 3,401 words (12 minutes)

Watching The Jetsons as a kid in the ’80s, I was obsessed with the food machine, and how it dispensed a full meal at the touch of a button. The show was set in 2062, exactly a hundred years on from its original broadcast. We’ve made it to 2026, but life today resembles nothing like that slick space-age future. We have gadgets, but they’ve arrived as phones, apps, and smart home devices—and I’m not sure they’ve made my life better.

“Accepting modern conveniences too often means accepting lower standards,” writes Gabe Bullard in Against Convenience: Embracing Friction in an Age of Endless Ease. Lower standards for material goods, for labor conditions, for socializing, for art and entertainment. “Experiences become transactions.” Bullard isn’t anti-technology. His argument, he writes, “is an argument against how we use and are pushed to use technology.” In his new book, he examines the conveniences that have crept into his life—and likely yours—and offers ideas for living with them more sustainably and equitably.

In this excerpt from chapter seven, Bullard sets this scene: a physical world, the one we’ve moved through for centuries, slowly reshaped by the virtual one we increasingly live in. Cars drive from one dot on a map to another, ferrying takeout to people at home on sofas. Food deliverers make some extra money. Businesses take orders both online and off. It appears easier, efficient. But Bullard examines the costs—to the customer, to the driver, and to the restaurant owner, who still has to make sure the fries are crispy once they reach your door.

—Cheri Lucas Rowlands

The artist Jake Longstreth paints landscapes of America, often the West and Southwest, with their distinctive vegetation, deserts, and mountains. In the foreground of many of his paintings are features that evoke a time more than a single place—CubeSmart self-storage, Taco Bell, a sun-bleached facade with shadows where the words Toys ‘R’ Us once hung.

In one series, each painting is a different view from the parking lot of a Walmart in Scottsdale, Arizona. Ferns, trees, and desert grasses obscure the sharp edges of the boxy store. Semitrailers and loading docks peek from behind the brush. In a painting from a different series, a Home Depot abuts a Civil War battlefield. 

The work has a loneliness that’s reminiscent of Edward Hopper’s paintings. But unlike Hopper, Longstreth rarely paints people (one exception is a group of soldiers in uniform at the grand opening of a Chili’s). The only signs of humanity are occasional cars and the chains that “make up, basically, an American commons,” as Longstreth described them in an interview promoting an exhibition of his work in 2024. “Most people don’t really have a super-deliberate relationship with these places,” he added.

There’s a certain democracy to the scenes: Anyone, anywhere can eat the same value meal as anyone else. There’s also an intrusion: The chains’ architecture imposes a sameness on once-unique landscapes. The stores and restaurants are dropped into spaces that weren’t made for them. Flat, square plots are pressed into hills, ample parking provided.

The encroachment of a drive-thru on a lush California valley is a good representation of many modern conveniences. The services that claim to make something faster, easier, or cheaper are built on top of physical landscapes, legal frameworks, or social orders that were not made to accommodate them. The systems absorb the change, but they do it awkwardly and end up forever altered. Starbucks becomes a place to pick up app orders; appliances become accessories to connect to your phone; QR codes sit on restaurant tables; analysis replaces news; art becomes Content; machines replace people. 

Uncomfortable intrusions and uneven responses are everywhere.

Examples abound: Grocery delivery apps bring an old idea to a new reality. Grocers offered delivery over a century ago, but the stores were set up and staffed for this. Modern grocery stores are built for customers to come in and do their own shopping. Delivery apps now let customers pay someone to do the same physical task the user would do if they went to the store themselves. What seems like a simple process can quickly become inconvenient. Grocery stores evolved to let customers pick out their own fruit, check dates on packages, and otherwise get things for themselves based on what looked good (or what the store suggested they buy). Virtual shoppers do this picking for customers, sometimes in a hurry so they can fulfill more orders. Mistakes can happen even under the best circumstances. Better deals go ignored. There’s confusion when an item is out of stock and the customer hasn’t chosen an alternative. It can lead to a customer essentially steering a shopper through the store on their behalf.

Rentable electric scooters have become a fixture of urban sidewalks in the past decade. The scooters speed up trips that are too far to walk, too short for a car ride, and not covered by public transit. But these are more of a tacked-on convenience than a real solution. City streets aren’t often built to accommodate smaller vehicles, leaving scooter riders to either use car lanes (putting the rider at risk) or sidewalks (putting pedestrians at risk). Poorly parked scooters clutter neighborhoods. And the environmental benefits are questionable, if at times nonexistent: Broken scooters need to be replaced and vans typically pick up scooters for charging. These problems could be solved through a more active response from cities—more adequate public transit, sustainability requirements for the rental companies, limits on where scooters can be ridden and parked. Cities could build better infrastructure, too, to favor bikes, scooters, and pedestrians over cars.

The postal system and most homes were built to accommodate the delivery of mail and packages. But the scale of e-commerce deliveries has forced inconvenient adjustments to physical and social spaces. In the years I lived in a large apartment building, package drop-off was a constant frustration. Every afternoon, the lobby filled with Amazon and Chewy boxes. They sometimes sat there for days (rush delivery wasn’t essential after all). What was built as a place for neighbors to mingle became a warehouse for boxes of dog food where people occasionally waited for rideshares.

For private homes, the doorbell camera offers convenient, instant notification that a package has arrived and security footage if the package is stolen. It’s an inelegant, antisocial solution. The old-style doorbell was already a notification a package had arrived. The new gadget moved the chime and the peephole to the pocket (and gave users another reason to stay glued to their phones). Package theft is a crime of convenience created by constant online shopping and delivery, and it’s not clear the cameras are stopping it. In my old neighborhood, people often posted grainy images of package thieves to local message boards. Sometimes the person said they were giving the information to the police, as if the police would bother tracking down whoever took a box that had most likely already been replaced. Perhaps the footage will go into a database to be scanned by facial recognition software instead. Doorbell cameras might be meant to catch crimes, but more often, they create Content like the videos of accidents I scroll past online. Everyone is eager to share their personal view of the panopticon.

Is the convenience worth the cost of constant surveillance and suspicion of every person who steps on your stoop (not to mention a subscription to the software that runs the camera)? Even if the cameras prevent a package theft, it’s unlikely the increased surveillance is a deterrent for violent crimes, or that it has an effect on overall neighborhood safety. That would take a collective solution. The camera lets the homeowner feel optimized to take on (or hide from) the world’s troubles alone.

Ridesharing’s “disruption” is perhaps the most prominent example of convenience overloading existing systems, and those systems bending to accommodate it. In this case, the systems were municipal regulations, employment standards, and users’ expectations for how to get around a city. In his book Blood in the Machine, tech journalist Brian Merchant notes that the arguments against regulation echo one the mill owners made in the fight against the Luddites in the early 1800s. Existing laws regulated mills and set standards for worker training and for the quality of cloth. As businessmen automated manufacturing, they argued that “the regulations on the books are out of date, should not apply to new technologies, and are stifling innovation; they’re really not that important, and no one plans on violating them anyway,” Merchant writes.

The argument that our existing laws are inadequate in the face of progress is so pervasive in the tech industry, breaking rules is basically a strategy. OpenAI’s CEO has said it’s impossible to create their products without access to copyrighted material, and as I write this, the debate continues over how AI firms should license—or should have licensed—the material they use to train their software.

We are still adjusting to new technology—legally, morally, socially. The adjustment will go deeper than making room for a new way of shopping, computing, or getting around. How we react in these (still) early stages—how we comport ourselves and what we demand of the apps and our governments—will have ramifications for generations to come.

It’s not looking good.

The spread of generative AI is the most worrying sign at the moment, but I hear about new, supposedly convenient, yet ultimately unnecessary, technologies every day. Not long ago, it was facial recognition for buying concessions at sporting events. It’s mind-blowing computing power put to mundane use, and it raises big questions about privacy and security. I wonder if the food tastes any better.

To get a sense of the stakes of all-encompassing adaptation to new technology, go outside: massive parking garages in downtown real estate (somehow still necessary even with rideshares); four-lane streets in residential neighborhoods; houses with no stoop and a garage door as the most prominent feature on the facade; interstates along riverfronts; drive-thru-only restaurants; restaurants with double-wide drive-thrus. Cities and landscapes have been remade to accommodate privately owned personal cars. Shared cars or scooters might offer some relief, but the infrastructure has already been changed—these solutions are technology to solve the problems of technology, built not just on top of a system that wasn’t made for them, but on top of a system that wasn’t made for people at all.

This is the world I see in Longstreth’s paintings. The buildings are in places that are hostile to anyone traveling without their own car—shopping centers between batches of suburbs and man-made deserts of pavement. The paintings remind me of the long drives I’ve taken across the US—every exit has the same few fast-food restaurants and gas stations. The public commons is a place people stop at on their way somewhere else. Everyone eats the same value meal because there’s nothing else to eat.

The encroachments of high-tech convenience create a second reality—one that’s virtual and smooth. To someone using a grocery app, the store looks like a list of products on a screen, not the physical supermarket where a worker will go to pick out an order. To a person in a rideshare or driving by GPS, the world between two destinations looks like a line on a map. It’s a little like the augmented reality game Pokémon Go, which dropped monsters and training gyms onto the grids of city streets. Physical reality is a support structure for a world that exists on an individual’s screen. The virtual world imposes its demands on the physical world, often with results that aren’t better for the user or the real world.

Delivery food, for a long time and in many places, meant pizza or Chinese. This wasn’t by accident. Restaurateurs (and in the case of pizza, chains) refined the business model for delivery and developed containers that kept dishes in the best condition possible for the trip to a customer’s house. Modern food delivery promises to make any food into something you can eat at home. But not every dish, and not every restaurant, is built for this.

Traditionally, restaurant dining was a two-party affair. A customer went to a restaurant to dine in or carry out, or they ordered food over the phone that was delivered by an employee of that restaurant. Modern delivery adds two more parties: a food deliverer who is typically classified as an independent contractor and the app that mediates the relationship between everyone involved. The customer orders in the app. The app dispatches the driver. The customer tips the driver through the app. To the user, all of this is virtual—even the handoff of the food can happen through a smart doorbell.

Delivery apps offer something to each party they work with. To customers, the offer is any meal delivered to their door. To restaurants, the offer is new customers, more orders, e-commerce tools, and delivery without the staff (though some apps offer to let restaurants use their own couriers). To deliverers, the offer is the flexibility of the gig economy—be your own boss, work when you want. (I’m going to use the words “driver” and “deliverer” interchangeably, though in many cities, delivery is done on bike.) Each of these parties makes trade-offs if they accept the offer. Drivers take on the usual hazards of gig work. Claude Bahati lives in the UK and signed up to drive for Deliveroo because he liked the autonomy. But the money has been inconsistent. He sometimes works eighteen hours a day, five to seven days a week. Early on, he cleared about a thousand British pounds per week. He earned occasional bonuses by logging on when orders were heavier, too. Now he’s not seeing as many boosts and the orders have dropped. “You’d be lucky if you hit £700 a week,” he says. In response to questions, Deliveroo said this may be related to a change in which deliverers are paid based on distance traveled. (Bahati and many of his fellow drivers have organized with the GMB labor union in the UK to push for changes to pay and to how the apps treat drivers—and these have led to agreements on minimum pay for time and transportation.)

Paying drivers more would mean either reducing profits, upping the fee on the restaurants, or raising prices for customers. “It is always the drivers who get pinched,” Bahati says. The actual cost of a service is unclear to customers in the virtual world. “As a customer, you’re thinking, ‘which one’s the cheapest?’ ” Bahati says. “I don’t think you think about a driver and how much they’re being paid. I think you’re thinking, ‘How quickly can the driver get here?’”

Restaurants can choose whether to be on the apps, but this wasn’t always the case. When DoorDash, GrubHub, Postmates (since purchased by Uber Eats), and Seamless (it’s odd they’re all compounds of short words) launched, restaurants sometimes found themselves listed on the apps without agreeing to participate. Some restaurants sued. California banned the practice. Most apps changed their policies in response.

Given the thin margins of running a restaurant, opting out isn’t an easy decision, especially as customers come to expect delivery. Liz and Jesse Huot own two hamburger restaurants and a bakery in Louisville, Kentucky. They were hesitant to offer delivery at first. “You don’t have control over your food once it leaves,” Jesse says. “Kind of like handing your kid off to a babysitter you’ve never met,” Liz adds. Besides the loss of control, trade-offs for restaurants include fees from the apps and a potential decline in dine-in customers.

The Huots signed up to have their food delivered by DoorDash in 2023. They realized customers seemed okay with a dip in quality in exchange for the ease of delivery. “It’s normal for you to know that your fries suck when you get them delivered,” Liz says. Customers also didn’t mind paying a 30% extra charge for the food—a price the Huots settled on to cover the 15% app commission, the additional packaging, and to offset the drop in tips for servers.

Delivery orders are strong, and the Huots say they feel pressure to make the menu more accommodating. “Our two sides are fries that get soggy and Brussels sprouts that, ten minutes after they’re made, they get a little funky,” Jesse says. “So I’ve considered changing the sides. But people in-house love them, and if I change that, I think it would hurt us.” The solution to soggy fries is a starchy coating that some restaurants have adopted. It keeps them crispier, but it can cause indigestion. To add these, the Huots would need a larger kitchen with room for another frier.

With orders coming in online, the Huots are essentially running additional restaurants out of the same space they had before (they took their bakery off the app due to the challenge of managing inventory between physical and virtual lines). They favor their in-house customers, who provide the bulk of business and who the Huots have a direct relationship with. Online, their restaurants are among the businesses that pop up if someone searches for burgers. In person, the restaurants are a destination and an experience. That experience is why the Huots started their business in the first place. “I’m not passionate about food that lasts a long time in a car,” Jesse says. “That’s not what I got in this for. And if that’s what it became, I would question if I still want to do this.” 

Sometimes the Huots turn off online orders to tend to a packed house, which leads to emails from customers asking why they can’t order. This isn’t the only entitled behavior the pair has encountered since the rise of delivery apps and the isolation of the pandemic. Liz has noticed an impatience and a demanding attitude from in-person patrons that wasn’t as prevalent a few years ago. Customers get angry when something is out of stock. At the bakery, they complain if they can’t get an ornately made cake without ordering ahead. “That kind of convenience, people expect it when they walk in the building, too,” Liz says.

This is the discomfort that comes from the virtual and real worlds overlapping. Most of us exist in both places. Yet the rules of the real world don’t always apply virtually, and the behavior of the virtual world, in real life, is typically weird and antisocial. Online, we shop without assistance, lurk on conversations without taking part, and pay to have whatever we want brought to us. The world is shaped around the user, with targeted ads and algorithmic feeds. Spending so much time in the virtual world shifts expectations for the physical world.

Participation in the virtual world is the cost of doing business in the physical one. Besides adopting to delivery, many restaurants have changed their lighting, decor, and menus to be visually friendlier for diners who post to Instagram or TikTok. One trend saw posters raving about dishes with melted cheese that stretched as far as possible. Like viral Starbucks drinks, the taste was secondary—what mattered was documenting the consumption.

The virtual world of platforms and apps has given rise to the ghost kitchen—a restaurant that, for the user, exists only on apps. Some ghost kitchens operate out of shared facilities with no storefront, and can give aspiring chefs a way to test out ideas. Other times, a restaurant owner sets up a second, online-only brand in their kitchen to boost sales. The concept is an outgrowth not only of delivery apps, but of the rise in commercial rents. The crisis of the pandemic made moonlighting via ghost kitchens essential for some restaurants to survive.

Not every virtual eatery is a passion project. Some are chains managed by a corporate parent and are often branded with celebrity endorsements or gimmicky names that appeal to novelty on the apps—examples include Egg the F* Out, OMG BBQ LOL, and B*tch Don’t Grill My Cheese. Virtual chains compete against the small restaurateurs who the concept of ghost kitchens was supposed to save—and sometimes restaurateurs are competing against themselves, if they add a virtual brand to their business. People pursuing their passion are made to pursue it in the same kitchen that turns out pancakes for a virtual chain called Granny Pannies (a real ghost kitchen). The customers may not know the difference between the businesses, since every restaurant looks the same on the app.

As of May 2025, a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich from Egg the F* Out in New York City is $19.09, more than three times what it would be at one of the city’s many bodegas. Food delivery was never about being cheaper, though. It’s not guaranteed to be faster. It’s rarely better. Delivery via app offers users control over their participation in a once-public activity—a virtual alternative to reality. It lets diners get whatever they want and eat it alone, away from the friction of the physical world and away from reminders of what it takes to make and serve food, and the people who do this work. If diners want to be social, they can get a viral dish that looks good on camera.

A few years ago, I went to my hometown in rural Illinois for Christmas. On a walk, I saw a sign advertising MrBeast Burger sticking out of the snow-covered grass at the edge of a park. I wondered who had put it there over the holiday—out in the cold, surrounded by cornfields, hoping someone might pick up their phone and order a burger. I thought about the person who might place the order—curious, looking for novelty, unaware of what it would take to get a meal themed around their favorite YouTube star. I wondered where the food would come from and how far someone would need to drive to drop it off. But these were concerns of the physical world. More and more, that’s not where we live.

Gabe Bullard is a journalist, critic, and broadcaster. He has written for NPR, The New York Times Magazine, Nieman Reports, 99% Invisible, Bright Wall/Dark Room, The Washington Post, and Smithsonian Magazine, among other outlets. He was a Nieman journalism fellow at Harvard University and is co-founder of Together, Alone, an online magazine of television criticism. He’s from the Midwest and now lives in Switzerland.