March 7, 2018 • 34 mins
The concept of having food delivered to your home is centuries old, but technology and culture are constantly changing what -- and how -- we order. Anney and Lauren explore the history and tech that drive delivery.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to food Stuff. I'm Lauren Vulcan and
I'm Annie Reese, and today we're talking about food delivery
and take out um. And this is a topic that's
been on my mind for a while because since moving
to a city and becoming a city girl, I have
become quite spoiled with delivery that I can get it
at anytime. Oh yeah, just about anything you want. I mean,
(00:31):
as long as what you want is kind of like
cheat Chinese food or pizza or pizza. Yeah. I have
had a bit of a scandal I've uncovered in my
building because I've I've had a bad habit of falling
asleep when I ordered food right and it so I
wake up and I go outside and it's not there,
and I have thirteen angry voicemails and I feel terrible
(00:52):
about it, But you know, what can I do? Well,
it turns out there's somebody in my building that's pretending
to be my boyfriend and he's been claiming my delivery food.
Oh man, right now, I'm trying to trap food delivery trap.
I've narrowed it down to two people. I suspect um
(01:15):
and my friends. My group of friends is they're like,
it's like a romantic comedy. You like the same fears.
I'm like, no, this is the opposite of a meat cute.
This is an enemy that has been made. But I've
been traveling recently and discovered that delivery isn't as big
(01:36):
and a couple of countries I've been to, like in
Japan it wasn't that big of a thing, or at
least where I was, which is pretty big cities, and
in South Africa wasn't that big of a thing. So
it's been on my mind for a while, the history
of this and how did you get started, and why
did it take off in certain places and not others?
The answers to this and more. But first delivery and
or take out? What is it? Oh my goodness, we
(02:01):
didn't do the research, flower, and I don't know all right.
You know when when you want food from a restaurant,
but instead of like sitting down and eating there, you
want to take the food with you somewhere else, hypothetically
to your home, or you have it delivered directly to
your home, either by a restaurant employee courier that's more traditional,
or by a third party service of some kind. There
(02:24):
you go um and if we look at delivery numbers,
six percent of Americans order take out on an average day,
and pizza is the most delivered food. Ademy probably are
not surprised by that at all. Over a billion are
delivered a year in the United States. In Americans spent
a collective three point five billion on food delivery, and
(02:47):
this seems like a lot. The pizza thing totally is,
but when we look at that six percent number, it
only accounted for three percent total restaurant transactions. Some restaurants
will have a way more like pizza places and others
way less. Still, the market is moving more and more
in the delivery direction, and some restaurants are designing their
(03:10):
floor plans and or menus around being delivery friendly. You've
probably been to plenty of restaurants that already have a
separate window or a counter for delivery or takeout orders. Globally,
the market is worth a hundred and one billion dollars
per year and accounts for about one percent of the
total world food market and four percent of restaurant sales
(03:32):
YEP And according to statistics provided by door Dash, of
American restaurants don't offer delivery, and of those that do.
Grub hub claims that of them are still relying on
paper menus. Again, Globally, about two thirds of delivery orders
are still placed by phone. What market researcher mckensey believes
(03:55):
that that will flip to two thirds being placed online
Sometime After over a billion dollars was invested in food
delivery technology from meal kits to grocery delivery, some restaurants
have started adding space for delivery drivers specifically instead of
(04:15):
more seating in the restaurant, or perhaps seating at all. Yes,
perhaps it's a market with this huge perceived potential. Grub
hubs marketing budget in was over eighty five million dollars,
and the top five global companies were worth as often
over twelve billion dollars together. Yeah, and uh. People who
(04:36):
use these new electronic type services, many of which handle
everything from the ordering to the delivery for the customer
um rather than simply relaying the order to the restaurant
and having it handled the delivery. These customers are very particular.
Most of them order from home instead of the workplace
or four home. They will stick with whatever app they
(04:57):
downloaded first, and they will not tolerate waiting more than
an hour, they won't. Oh my goodness, well Atlanta, we
haven't reached I was expecting to find more articles, and
maybe I just wasn't specifically looking for it, but I
(05:17):
was expecting to find more articles about these millennials and
they're so antisocialness staying and knows and they don't want
to go to restaurants. And I did read a couple
of years ago a bunch of articles about how people
are eating alone in restaurants more often. Yeah, it's becoming
more of a thing. So I'm kind of, oh, yeah,
they're They're probably out there, and I just didn't run
(05:38):
into that, but we'll have to. We'll have to check
out that, like the societal societal implications, Yes, of these
sorts of things in another episode. Absolutely, And that food
delivery technology has changed the types of foods that can
be delivered. Yes, remember that whole hullabaloo about the eggs
and food kits. Do I remember that? It was like, Wow,
(06:00):
they're delivering EAGs now. And in countries like France, for example,
which has been a holdout in delivery, options have been
traditionally fairly limited until the introductions of services like Take
Eat Easy, Uber Eats and food Dora. According to take It,
(06:21):
I can't even do it. Take eat Easy spokespeople after
launching in Paris, they've seen monthly growth in the double
digits and as far as the employees of these services go,
Several lawsuits against food delivery companies or services have been
in the news lately. Door Dash, cub Hub, and Postmates
(06:42):
have all been accused of misclassifying employees as independent contractors
so as to avoid paying them the minimum wage or
giving them benefits. This is all ongoing currently, like things
are being settled and then more lawsuits and being settled. Yeah. Yeah,
it's all up in the air. But we certainly hope
the companies shape up and treat people like people. Yes,
(07:06):
we certainly do. Um, but for a nice people note,
Pizza Hut employees use kayaks to deliver pizza to people
trapped during Hurricane Harvey, which I found kind of kind
of lovely. Yeah. Yeah, uh, and take out and delivery
has a pretty interesting history, I've got to say. Yeah,
(07:28):
it goes back further than I thought it was going to. Yes,
and we'll get into that, but first let's get into
a quick break for a word from our sponsor, and
we're back. Thank you sponsor. Okay, so take out food,
(07:52):
Our food that passers by would grab and go goes
all the way back to ancient Rome and the Aztecs,
and it probably goes back further than that. Yeah. Yeah,
that's just the first evidence that we have. Yes, exactly,
delivery is a bit younger. Wealthy dwellers of fourteenth century
Paris could expect the butcher to deliver their products straight
to their homes. I guess you could kind of classify
(08:14):
a lot of those traveling like the muffin man sort
of fits in there. In the US, food delivery got
its start in the eighteenth century. That's what the records indicate. Anyway.
A handful of hotels and big cities offered whatever meal
it was that they cooked that day for take out.
They package it for you as long as you could
send someone, usually a servant, to go and pick it up.
(08:37):
Some restaurants would deliver smaller items like oysters or pastries.
Oyster delivery was so big, I know, that was one
of the most surprising things of this whole episode in
me just delivering oysters, and we'll be mentioning it a
bit more me. But first let's talk about this, uh, Okay,
the legend goes at the first pizza delivery I heard
(08:57):
in Italy in eight nine. Pizza had already been around
for a while in Italy, and it was really popular
item for the working class um, but it was in
a particular area. And when Italy united all these previously
disparate towns and cities, pizza, which had been this more
regional thing, became more available countrywide. And the first queen
(09:21):
of this unified Italy was Queen Margharita. That Margarita maybe.
She was doing a sort of unity tour around Italy,
and by the time she reached Naples, where pizza was popular,
she wanted something other than the fancy her word, typically
French food that was standard for her. She wanted something local,
(09:43):
a commoner's meal, and the most well known pizza chef
was ordered to make pizzas for the queen and deliver
them to her. He brought her three different kinds, including
one with the colors of the newly adopted Italian flag,
red tomatoes, white mazzarella, and green bay sell He later
got a letter about how much she enjoyed that particular pizza,
(10:04):
and the chef thus lie named it after her, giving me.
According to this legend, my favorite type of pizza the
marguerite and marguarita pizza. If we go back to post
Civil War US, signs began popping up for lunches put
up meant for tourists are others passing through um, and
these were intended for those that maybe didn't have much
(10:26):
spending money um. And they came in boxes for Sunday picnics.
By the nine twenties, restaurants might sell boxed lunches with sandwiches, salads,
and ice cream. Hm hmmm. Still, most takeout options were
situated near transition hubs like train stations and generally more
for the working class. Restaurants in big cities offered take
(10:50):
home specials, and again oysters are a popular option. The
wealthy wod send a servant to go get their food.
That was a common practice, and takeout business itself was
associated with African American women. We mentioned it for a
bit in our Fried Chicken episodes, how they would often
sell food from train stations or on the cars themselves.
(11:13):
Of course, this is one of the only avenues available
for African Americans to make money at the time, and
also as a way for black customers to avoid segregation
at restaurants, or sometimes segregated restaurants would only serve takeout
to black consumers and back back to the oysters again, Well,
I'll take away. Oysters aren't really think anymore. The containers
(11:35):
that held them were precursors to the Chinese takeout boxes
that we know today. The company that made them they
were called oyster fails. Originally Bloomer Brothers of New York
got their start in nineteen hundred. By nineteen seventy seven, though,
they were called fold Pack, which is the company behind
our current Chinese takeout container technology. Makes perfect sense. You
(11:57):
need something that's watertight, and I know oyster pails oyster fail.
If only we hadn't totally destroyed the oyster population. If only. Oh.
Speaking of Chinese dake out, the first written reference to
that in the US comes from when a restaurant in
Los Angeles called kin Chow Cafe UM claimed it was
(12:18):
the only West Coast restaurant that would deliver real Chinese food,
and delivering takeout wasn't a thing only in the US.
Accounts from U S soldiers in China and Japan detail
lunches and boxes available on trains by the nineteenth century,
and Mumbai daba Allah delivered homemade lunches to workers as
(12:40):
in homemade and it's so efficient it has some high
tech companies beat. The practice came about during British colonial
rule and it's really cool run. One group of wallas
retrieved the boxes of food to be delivered and on
the side of the boxes are colors that indicate which
railway stations the box needs to pass through to arrive
(13:00):
at their designated delivery station, where they are hand sorted
and delivered. Then the boxes make a return trip to
be reused. Yeah, for frequently, these these round tins, these
these round metal tins. But yeah, are you just iconic
and wonderful? Yeah, I had so much fun reading about that.
It's really amazing. Meanwhile, back in the United States, two
(13:22):
technologies would create a huge boom in delivery and or
take out after World War Two, the television and the
personal automobile, as the growing middle class bought cars and
TVs through the fifties and sixties, spending less time therefore
sitting down in restaurants and more time either at home
in front of the TV or out traveling or even
just cruising around restaurants started advertising takeaway meals if they
(13:46):
had even ever offered sit down meals refew Remember from
our McDonald's episode, Yes, McDonald's fact of the episode. Before
adding indoor seating, McDonald's was known as McDonald's carry out restaurants.
This let them keep costs down, and you know, many
other fast food chains followed suit until all that car
culture created a desire for people to have people come
(14:06):
in sit down um. In the early fifties, traditional restaurants
that started offering take out sometimes called television meals, increased
their sales twenty in a single year, according to industry
data from that time. That's pretty amazing. But how did
the pizza become so big? Besides being delicious? Besides that,
(14:29):
it has to do with the with the soldiers who
returned from Europe after World War Two and the wave
of popularity thus enjoyed by Italian restaurants in America. UM.
The New York Times ran an article in explaining one
of Southern Italy's new implants, a pie made from a
yeast dough and filled with any number of different centers,
(14:50):
each one containing tomatoes. They explained that these curious treats
could be ordered to take home packed hot in special boxes.
Speaking of pizzas, it might have been a pizza joint
that offered the first free delivery surface Surface Surface, and
a few years later in Los Angeles, one Cassa dia
More would deliver pies for free after you met the
(15:12):
two dollars and fifty cents order minimum. I'm familiar with
this delivery minimum. In nine, Domino's Pizza in American fast
foodizza chain introduced a delivery guarantee promising thirty minutes it's free.
Fast forward to after facing multimillion dollars settlements stemming from
(15:34):
Domino's delivery drivers involved in car accidents, a few with fatalities,
and Domino's does away with the thirty minute guarantee. The
company never outright said these car accidents were because delivery
drivers were rushing to beat the thirty minute deadline. What
the owner did say was he hoped that dropping the
policy would fight quote public perception of reckless driving and
(15:58):
ear responsibility. The current you got thirty minutes slogan is
meant to be interpreted as the customers thirty minutes to
prepare themselves for a pizza in their face, but it
could take longer. It'll take thirty minutes or longer or
long but that's how long you have to prepare yourself.
I went on such a Domino's tangent Um. We could
(16:20):
do a whole episode on on that particular company. I
think maybe in the future. Yeah, it's very fascinating. Yes,
oh definitely. UM online ordering had popped up by about
The New York Times again at the bleeding edge of
all of this, UM published an article about a blooming
online service out of Westchester, New York that hosted menus
(16:42):
for forty restaurants and had a checkout system and UH
used a third party delivery service to get stuff from
the restaurants to the customers. They reported that at the time,
more than five hundred people had visited the website five
gloren my eating Hot. The New York Times also added
(17:04):
there is no charge to visit to the website, but
the customer pays the delivery fee, varying from four to
six dollars depending on the service used. Oh Man fives
of chair year great UM. That was near the beginning
of the whole dot com boom. That was from about
(17:25):
it say one. Over the next few years, just tons
of development and investment brought online services to the forefront,
including online grocery shopping. Yeah, and of course, grocery delivery
is not like an Internet age idea. Before the spread
of refrigeration technology to homes, families would have perishables like eggs, milk,
(17:47):
and ice delivered regularly in small quantities for their small
ice boxes. The huge fridges and the personal vehicles of
later decades squashed that industry and created the market for supermarkets.
But but the Internet has brought grocery delivery back. Well,
it did for like a couple of years sort of.
At first there um and it's heyday. In the late
(18:09):
nineteen nineties, a site called home grocer dot com was
doing over one million dollars a day in online grocery sales,
but it would crash along with much of the digital
market in the early two thousand's, and attempts by existing
chains like safe Way over the next few years would
ultimately collapse, lacking profitability. That reminds me of pre Harry
(18:31):
Potter tangent Um how her first Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone are Philosopher's Stone, where depending away from Um
was turned down by not more than one publisher because
she had the milk the milkman delivery in the beginning,
and they were like, this is so great. No one
will understand. We can't connect with this. And then I'm
(18:54):
sure today they're like well, They're like, well, I guess
people can connect to the milk little bit to their
homes and we will return to grocery delivering a minute.
But first another Dominoes fact in two thousan eight Dominoes
makes yet one more appearance. Actually no, there's another on
our delivery food timeline. When it rolls out, it's online
(19:18):
pizza tracker. With this thing you can track as your
pizzas being made. The little pizza icon is goes into
the oven and then after a predetermined six to seven minutes,
there is no one updating the tracker. Sorry to break
anyone's heart about that. Um, it's boxed and then it
goes out for delivery. I spent a lot of time
(19:39):
in college watching this thing hungry like a lion washing
its prey being delivered straight to its mouth. I know
that feeling. Um, And here's something that I might cut
out later, but I'm gonna I'm gonna record it now perfect.
There is as of I think a last week a
(19:59):
sex to ay that will order Domino's pizza after you orgasm.
So technology abound. You know that there really is an
Internet answer for everything I I'm curious about. I guess
you have to push the button. It doesn't like sense
you orgasms. We shouldn't be talking about orgasms as much
(20:21):
in the delivery food episode. Who knew it would come
up at all? Um? Meanwhile, UH, the the iPhone debut
in two thousand seven, ushering in the era of food
delivery apps. UH, and the popularity of delivery has really
oldly increased as access to the Internet and smartphones has increased.
This plays out in data that looks at delivery trends
(20:43):
across countries with high online access like Sweden versus say,
areas of Latin America that are currently adopting these technologies. Right,
and the capacity that these apps provide some restaurants to
take orders is causing a bit of US like supply
demand breakdown on UM. This one sandwich chain in southern
California reported having to turn off door dash during surge
(21:05):
hours and thus has turned away over five hundred thousand
dollars in sales from just three restaurants doing during less
than a year period UH due to their inability to
keep up with orders. UH. Restaurants that are able to
keep up with the demand, even ones like the above
UM which have had to make changes to accommodate the
(21:26):
influx restaurants are reporting significant increases in sales like up
to Folks in the industry are even suggesting that new
restaurant tours might start opening kitchens with no dine in space,
only drive through windows, but instead of engaging with individual customers,
they would be largely for delivery drivers. Such a weird
(21:47):
twist on the on the drive through UM. And the
spread of online technologies has even brought grocery delivery back again.
Amazon had been offering dry goods and then added fresh
foods for delivery in select areas, online ordering for in
store pickup, debut at chains grocery chains like Publics in
the early twenty teens, and then last year Amazon purchased
(22:11):
Whole Foods for thirteen point seven billion dollars. You know
as you do, yeah, um. Sam's Club just announced that
they're going to start partnering with instat Cart for same
day delivery, and Instatcart already has partnerships with Alberton's, Kroger
and Costco, prompted by Amazon's move I. Um. The other day,
I was in public and there was a woman in
(22:33):
front of me and check out and she worked for
I think they had their public says, their own specific
one or maybe these instant cart Either way, she worked
for grocery delivery service. And it was just funny to
hear conversing with the checkout people like, oh, how many
more do you have to day? Like she's just going
through the checkout over and over again. Um. And she
was talking about coupons and how people are losing out
(22:55):
on money because you can't use coupons grocery delivery services.
It was just an interesting seeing seeing that in action.
What a fascinating job. We still have some science for you, yes,
but first we have one last quick break for a
word from our sponsor. And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes,
(23:24):
thank you, And we're back with science technology, the future
future perhaps, um. But first we're going to start with
the pizza saver, the best technology ever. It's sometimes called
the pizza nipple, and it is that white thing with
spears placed at the center of the pizza that well
(23:46):
I thought it was to hold it together, but now
I think it holds the box exactly. Yeah. A patent
for this thing was filed by Camela Vatale and three
and she was not um like an inventor necessary early.
She just enjoyed a lot of pizza, had a big
family and was like, this is a problem, um. And
the problem she was trying to solve was pizza's arriving
(24:09):
with stripped cheese or smushed because of the steam coming
off of a hot pizza, the top center of the
box would sag and stick to the center of the
pizza because there was no pizza saver there and when
you open it, in all of your excitement, you ripped
the cheese off. Yeah, and the pizza saver solved this problem.
The patent says it can quote resist temperatures as high
(24:33):
as about five hundred degrees fahrenheit or two hundred and
sixty degrees celsius. And it has been slightly improved upon,
but pretty much it's the same same pizza saving. Yeah exactly.
I think it costs one cent to make. And they're
trying to figure out, like how to make it better.
There's no better. Yeah, They're like, I always assumed when
(24:54):
I was a child that these were um like like
dollhouse toys. Yeah, I think read that an article. Yeah,
somebody said they used it for polly pocket. Yeah, I
mean waste not to want not. The pizza box has
also gone through a lot of shifts technology wise. In
order to keep the pizzas shape, to be stackable, and
(25:17):
to retain heat, Pizza used to rely on corrugated cardboard
boxes to keep the pizza warm, but Dominos again is
credited with coming up with our current stackable, sturdier shape.
But this advancement wasn't so great at delivering a warm,
crispy product. Enter Ingrid Cossar in Ur she was determined
(25:38):
to solve this problem and she went around to pizzerias
with a probe to test pizza temperatures. I love that
Domino's standard was degrees faheit or sixty degrees celsius for
forty five minutes. That's what they were trying to achieve.
And from the data she gathered and she ate a
lot of pizza m she patented the insulated livery bag.
(26:01):
It reduced temperature loss to five degrease fare and heighten
our This meant that the steam would escape the box
into the bag, allowing the pizza to state both warm
and crispy. After a contract with the US government to
keep pizza's warm for soldiers and a revamp and part
revamp that was in partnership with Domino's, Costar filed for bankruptcy,
(26:23):
but it was discharged and from what I understood is
maybe not making a comeback, but you know, still moving along.
She had a lot of competition from foreign competitors pizza technology.
So much of delivery technology is pizza technology. I found.
Oh yeah, yeah, it's it's just so big, it's so
such a large portion of the market. So what about
(26:46):
the incredible future food delivery? Will it involve drones? As currently?
Signs point to maybe a few drine delivery stunts started
making headline around the world around or so A Pizza
and Mumbai Coca Cola and Singapore sparkling wine within this
one resort hotel in Saslito, and let us never forget
(27:09):
Silicon Valley's tacocopter. Never forget tacocopter. Amazon even floated off
floated the idea of drone delivery um, but the whole
concept seemed relegated to mere stunt status due to a
couple of things of flight regulations from bodies like the
Federal Aviation Administration or f a A here in the
States and elsewhere. Um. Also, the tech was still clumsy.
(27:33):
Light white batteries don't last long enough, the carrying capacity
isn't great enough, stuff like that. But big companies like
like Bell Technologies and Boeing Big are working on the
tech end, possibly for contracting to the military first, and
their level of influence may sway organizations like the FAA
to open it up for commercial use. Wow. Um. There
(27:58):
is one service current available as far as I understand,
in a Rakovic iceland that's already using drones to circumvent
the city's bay, shaving some twenty minutes off of delivery
times to the two or between the two halves of
the city. UH. Couriers will drop deliveries off at one
drone hub for launching, and other couriers deliver the food
by bike or foot on the other end. Um. And
(28:20):
they're they're planning though, for for home deliveries sometime in
the future supposed I don't know about that. Uh. And
all of this could be a serious boon for the
environment if it takes off truck and um, personal gas
powered vehicle transportation create just a lot of greenhouse gas emissions,
(28:42):
and large electronic drones could really help due to their
energy efficiency. Personal electric vehicles and electric trucks would also
be good, but not as good as drones efficiency wise. Yeah. Um.
Oh and one more that I forgot to write down,
but I saw at C Yes, this here, which is
a a consumer it's it's it's a it's a media
(29:04):
place these days, but it's about electronics. Pizza Hut was
showing off their concept for a automated pizza delivery vehicle. Yeah,
like like a like a right, I remember the self
driving car just for pizzas. Oh my goodness. Which apparently
there's a Black Mirror episode that's kind of about I
(29:25):
haven't watched that one, but I don't know. I get
the articles delivery. The article that I read about it
was like it is the stuff of nightmare? Have they
not watched Black Mirror? And I was like, oh, I
haven't either, but okay, so yeah, I don't recall any
pizza delivery Nightmare episode, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Sure,
(29:47):
there is something kind of menacing about it to see
this truck and no nobody in there, but no pizza.
I don't know. It could be wonderful. I don't know. Yeah,
it sounds sort of beautiful to me. It has potential
for either I think yes, As with all technology, that's
how you use it. That is true. That is true, Lauren.
(30:10):
That brings us to the end of our delivery take
out episode. It does yes and means it's time listen
to me. That was nice. Dominique wrote, I just listened
to your ketchup episode and thought you should know of
the Canadian ketchup. Sagas Hines had a tomato plant in Leamington, Ontario,
(30:36):
and decided to shut it down after a change in ownership.
The plant had over seven hundred full time employees and
the manufacturing accounted for a huge portion of the Ontario
tomato crop, so Ontarians were pretty upset about the whole thing. Meanwhile,
french Is who made mustard, started producing Ketchup. Their Ketchup
(30:58):
sales were slow as they were lower on the shelf
than high but they used real sugar, so they appealed
to the anti high fruit toast corn sirup crowd and
use Canadian tomatoes. Although didn't push that through marketing. The
Frenches sales were so low. That are so low, so
slow that our major supermarket chain low blaws. Oh man,
(31:20):
I don't know how to pronounce that. I hope that
was closed. UM was about to pull it off their
shelves until one viral Facebook post by Brian Fernandez touting
the source of the tomatoes changed everything. People started calling
into their grocery store demanding French is catchup, and a
supply shortage meant it soon sold out. The sales have
gone through the roof due to people wanting to support
(31:41):
Canadian farmers, and even I have been buying Frenches ever since.
Frenches even moved a bottling plant from the USA to
Canada because of the niche sales here. And she sent
us a news article about it, and UM, I had
not heard about it. I've never seen Frenches catch up.
I don't know if I'm not sure, but it was very,
(32:04):
very enjoyable and fascinating read and thanks to Emily Um.
She also wrote in to us about this too. Yeah yeah, uh,
Jordan wrote, I recently recalled an embarrassing moment I had
as a child in elementary school when you were discussing
the papers or foils that line cupcakes. I accidentally ate one.
A classmate of mine had a birthday, and per elementary
(32:25):
school tradition, they brought in cupcakes to share with the class.
I had never had a cupcake before this day, and
I was probably in the second or third grade and
did not know about the paper that you're supposed to
peel off, so I ate the whole thing. After I
finished my cupcake, I was looking around and noticed every
other student had peeled and discarded that cup that cupcake
paper on their desk, and I didn't have one to
(32:46):
throw away. I think my teacher and a few students noticed.
I was embarrassed at the time, but looking back on
that day is hilarious. In my defense, the cupcake paper
does get oily from the batter and is the same
color and very similar in texture to an overbaked cupcake. Yeah.
I also recently told this to my mom and we
could not stop laughing. She apologized for not giving me
(33:08):
proper cupcake etiquette in my youth. Haven't we all been there,
embarrassing elementary school or adulthood. Yeah, you're right, I still
feel that way in some fancy restaurants. Oh my gosh,
me too. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm going
to blatantly stare at the person next to me to
(33:29):
try to figure out absolutely protocol. Thanks to both of
them for writing in and if you would like to
write to us, we would love to hear from you.
Our email is food stuff at has dot com. We're
also on social media. You can find us on Facebook
and Twitter at food stuff hs W or on Instagram
(33:50):
at food stuff. We hope to hear from you. Thank
you so much to our amazing producer, Dylan Fagan. Thanks
to y'all for listening, and we hope that love more
good things are coming your way. H
Hello, and welcome to food Stuff. I'm Lauren Vulcan and
I'm Annie Reese, and today we're talking about food delivery
and take out um. And this is a topic that's
been on my mind for a while because since moving
to a city and becoming a city girl, I have
become quite spoiled with delivery that I can get it
at anytime. Oh yeah, just about anything you want. I mean,
(00:31):
as long as what you want is kind of like
cheat Chinese food or pizza or pizza. Yeah. I have
had a bit of a scandal I've uncovered in my
building because I've I've had a bad habit of falling
asleep when I ordered food right and it so I
wake up and I go outside and it's not there,
and I have thirteen angry voicemails and I feel terrible
(00:52):
about it, But you know, what can I do? Well,
it turns out there's somebody in my building that's pretending
to be my boyfriend and he's been claiming my delivery food.
Oh man, right now, I'm trying to trap food delivery trap.
I've narrowed it down to two people. I suspect um
(01:15):
and my friends. My group of friends is they're like,
it's like a romantic comedy. You like the same fears.
I'm like, no, this is the opposite of a meat cute.
This is an enemy that has been made. But I've
been traveling recently and discovered that delivery isn't as big
(01:36):
and a couple of countries I've been to, like in
Japan it wasn't that big of a thing, or at
least where I was, which is pretty big cities, and
in South Africa wasn't that big of a thing. So
it's been on my mind for a while, the history
of this and how did you get started, and why
did it take off in certain places and not others?
The answers to this and more. But first delivery and
or take out? What is it? Oh my goodness, we
(02:01):
didn't do the research, flower, and I don't know all right.
You know when when you want food from a restaurant,
but instead of like sitting down and eating there, you
want to take the food with you somewhere else, hypothetically
to your home, or you have it delivered directly to
your home, either by a restaurant employee courier that's more traditional,
or by a third party service of some kind. There
(02:24):
you go um and if we look at delivery numbers,
six percent of Americans order take out on an average day,
and pizza is the most delivered food. Ademy probably are
not surprised by that at all. Over a billion are
delivered a year in the United States. In Americans spent
a collective three point five billion on food delivery, and
(02:47):
this seems like a lot. The pizza thing totally is,
but when we look at that six percent number, it
only accounted for three percent total restaurant transactions. Some restaurants
will have a way more like pizza places and others
way less. Still, the market is moving more and more
in the delivery direction, and some restaurants are designing their
(03:10):
floor plans and or menus around being delivery friendly. You've
probably been to plenty of restaurants that already have a
separate window or a counter for delivery or takeout orders. Globally,
the market is worth a hundred and one billion dollars
per year and accounts for about one percent of the
total world food market and four percent of restaurant sales
(03:32):
YEP And according to statistics provided by door Dash, of
American restaurants don't offer delivery, and of those that do.
Grub hub claims that of them are still relying on
paper menus. Again, Globally, about two thirds of delivery orders
are still placed by phone. What market researcher mckensey believes
(03:55):
that that will flip to two thirds being placed online
Sometime After over a billion dollars was invested in food
delivery technology from meal kits to grocery delivery, some restaurants
have started adding space for delivery drivers specifically instead of
(04:15):
more seating in the restaurant, or perhaps seating at all. Yes,
perhaps it's a market with this huge perceived potential. Grub
hubs marketing budget in was over eighty five million dollars,
and the top five global companies were worth as often
over twelve billion dollars together. Yeah, and uh. People who
(04:36):
use these new electronic type services, many of which handle
everything from the ordering to the delivery for the customer
um rather than simply relaying the order to the restaurant
and having it handled the delivery. These customers are very particular.
Most of them order from home instead of the workplace
or four home. They will stick with whatever app they
(04:57):
downloaded first, and they will not tolerate waiting more than
an hour, they won't. Oh my goodness, well Atlanta, we
haven't reached I was expecting to find more articles, and
maybe I just wasn't specifically looking for it, but I
(05:17):
was expecting to find more articles about these millennials and
they're so antisocialness staying and knows and they don't want
to go to restaurants. And I did read a couple
of years ago a bunch of articles about how people
are eating alone in restaurants more often. Yeah, it's becoming
more of a thing. So I'm kind of, oh, yeah,
they're They're probably out there, and I just didn't run
(05:38):
into that, but we'll have to. We'll have to check
out that, like the societal societal implications, Yes, of these
sorts of things in another episode. Absolutely, And that food
delivery technology has changed the types of foods that can
be delivered. Yes, remember that whole hullabaloo about the eggs
and food kits. Do I remember that? It was like, Wow,
(06:00):
they're delivering EAGs now. And in countries like France, for example,
which has been a holdout in delivery, options have been
traditionally fairly limited until the introductions of services like Take
Eat Easy, Uber Eats and food Dora. According to take It,
(06:21):
I can't even do it. Take eat Easy spokespeople after
launching in Paris, they've seen monthly growth in the double
digits and as far as the employees of these services go,
Several lawsuits against food delivery companies or services have been
in the news lately. Door Dash, cub Hub, and Postmates
(06:42):
have all been accused of misclassifying employees as independent contractors
so as to avoid paying them the minimum wage or
giving them benefits. This is all ongoing currently, like things
are being settled and then more lawsuits and being settled. Yeah. Yeah,
it's all up in the air. But we certainly hope
the companies shape up and treat people like people. Yes,
(07:06):
we certainly do. Um, but for a nice people note,
Pizza Hut employees use kayaks to deliver pizza to people
trapped during Hurricane Harvey, which I found kind of kind
of lovely. Yeah. Yeah, uh, and take out and delivery
has a pretty interesting history, I've got to say. Yeah,
(07:28):
it goes back further than I thought it was going to. Yes,
and we'll get into that, but first let's get into
a quick break for a word from our sponsor, and
we're back. Thank you sponsor. Okay, so take out food,
(07:52):
Our food that passers by would grab and go goes
all the way back to ancient Rome and the Aztecs,
and it probably goes back further than that. Yeah. Yeah,
that's just the first evidence that we have. Yes, exactly,
delivery is a bit younger. Wealthy dwellers of fourteenth century
Paris could expect the butcher to deliver their products straight
to their homes. I guess you could kind of classify
(08:14):
a lot of those traveling like the muffin man sort
of fits in there. In the US, food delivery got
its start in the eighteenth century. That's what the records indicate. Anyway.
A handful of hotels and big cities offered whatever meal
it was that they cooked that day for take out.
They package it for you as long as you could
send someone, usually a servant, to go and pick it up.
(08:37):
Some restaurants would deliver smaller items like oysters or pastries.
Oyster delivery was so big, I know, that was one
of the most surprising things of this whole episode in
me just delivering oysters, and we'll be mentioning it a
bit more me. But first let's talk about this, uh, Okay,
the legend goes at the first pizza delivery I heard
(08:57):
in Italy in eight nine. Pizza had already been around
for a while in Italy, and it was really popular
item for the working class um, but it was in
a particular area. And when Italy united all these previously
disparate towns and cities, pizza, which had been this more
regional thing, became more available countrywide. And the first queen
(09:21):
of this unified Italy was Queen Margharita. That Margarita maybe.
She was doing a sort of unity tour around Italy,
and by the time she reached Naples, where pizza was popular,
she wanted something other than the fancy her word, typically
French food that was standard for her. She wanted something local,
(09:43):
a commoner's meal, and the most well known pizza chef
was ordered to make pizzas for the queen and deliver
them to her. He brought her three different kinds, including
one with the colors of the newly adopted Italian flag,
red tomatoes, white mazzarella, and green bay sell He later
got a letter about how much she enjoyed that particular pizza,
(10:04):
and the chef thus lie named it after her, giving me.
According to this legend, my favorite type of pizza the
marguerite and marguarita pizza. If we go back to post
Civil War US, signs began popping up for lunches put
up meant for tourists are others passing through um, and
these were intended for those that maybe didn't have much
(10:26):
spending money um. And they came in boxes for Sunday picnics.
By the nine twenties, restaurants might sell boxed lunches with sandwiches, salads,
and ice cream. Hm hmmm. Still, most takeout options were
situated near transition hubs like train stations and generally more
for the working class. Restaurants in big cities offered take
(10:50):
home specials, and again oysters are a popular option. The
wealthy wod send a servant to go get their food.
That was a common practice, and takeout business itself was
associated with African American women. We mentioned it for a
bit in our Fried Chicken episodes, how they would often
sell food from train stations or on the cars themselves.
(11:13):
Of course, this is one of the only avenues available
for African Americans to make money at the time, and
also as a way for black customers to avoid segregation
at restaurants, or sometimes segregated restaurants would only serve takeout
to black consumers and back back to the oysters again, Well,
I'll take away. Oysters aren't really think anymore. The containers
(11:35):
that held them were precursors to the Chinese takeout boxes
that we know today. The company that made them they
were called oyster fails. Originally Bloomer Brothers of New York
got their start in nineteen hundred. By nineteen seventy seven, though,
they were called fold Pack, which is the company behind
our current Chinese takeout container technology. Makes perfect sense. You
(11:57):
need something that's watertight, and I know oyster pails oyster fail.
If only we hadn't totally destroyed the oyster population. If only. Oh.
Speaking of Chinese dake out, the first written reference to
that in the US comes from when a restaurant in
Los Angeles called kin Chow Cafe UM claimed it was
(12:18):
the only West Coast restaurant that would deliver real Chinese food,
and delivering takeout wasn't a thing only in the US.
Accounts from U S soldiers in China and Japan detail
lunches and boxes available on trains by the nineteenth century,
and Mumbai daba Allah delivered homemade lunches to workers as
(12:40):
in homemade and it's so efficient it has some high
tech companies beat. The practice came about during British colonial
rule and it's really cool run. One group of wallas
retrieved the boxes of food to be delivered and on
the side of the boxes are colors that indicate which
railway stations the box needs to pass through to arrive
(13:00):
at their designated delivery station, where they are hand sorted
and delivered. Then the boxes make a return trip to
be reused. Yeah, for frequently, these these round tins, these
these round metal tins. But yeah, are you just iconic
and wonderful? Yeah, I had so much fun reading about that.
It's really amazing. Meanwhile, back in the United States, two
(13:22):
technologies would create a huge boom in delivery and or
take out after World War Two, the television and the
personal automobile, as the growing middle class bought cars and
TVs through the fifties and sixties, spending less time therefore
sitting down in restaurants and more time either at home
in front of the TV or out traveling or even
just cruising around restaurants started advertising takeaway meals if they
(13:46):
had even ever offered sit down meals refew Remember from
our McDonald's episode, Yes, McDonald's fact of the episode. Before
adding indoor seating, McDonald's was known as McDonald's carry out restaurants.
This let them keep costs down, and you know, many
other fast food chains followed suit until all that car
culture created a desire for people to have people come
(14:06):
in sit down um. In the early fifties, traditional restaurants
that started offering take out sometimes called television meals, increased
their sales twenty in a single year, according to industry
data from that time. That's pretty amazing. But how did
the pizza become so big? Besides being delicious? Besides that,
(14:29):
it has to do with the with the soldiers who
returned from Europe after World War Two and the wave
of popularity thus enjoyed by Italian restaurants in America. UM.
The New York Times ran an article in explaining one
of Southern Italy's new implants, a pie made from a
yeast dough and filled with any number of different centers,
(14:50):
each one containing tomatoes. They explained that these curious treats
could be ordered to take home packed hot in special boxes.
Speaking of pizzas, it might have been a pizza joint
that offered the first free delivery surface Surface Surface, and
a few years later in Los Angeles, one Cassa dia
More would deliver pies for free after you met the
(15:12):
two dollars and fifty cents order minimum. I'm familiar with
this delivery minimum. In nine, Domino's Pizza in American fast
foodizza chain introduced a delivery guarantee promising thirty minutes it's free.
Fast forward to after facing multimillion dollars settlements stemming from
(15:34):
Domino's delivery drivers involved in car accidents, a few with fatalities,
and Domino's does away with the thirty minute guarantee. The
company never outright said these car accidents were because delivery
drivers were rushing to beat the thirty minute deadline. What
the owner did say was he hoped that dropping the
policy would fight quote public perception of reckless driving and
(15:58):
ear responsibility. The current you got thirty minutes slogan is
meant to be interpreted as the customers thirty minutes to
prepare themselves for a pizza in their face, but it
could take longer. It'll take thirty minutes or longer or
long but that's how long you have to prepare yourself.
I went on such a Domino's tangent Um. We could
(16:20):
do a whole episode on on that particular company. I
think maybe in the future. Yeah, it's very fascinating. Yes,
oh definitely. UM online ordering had popped up by about
The New York Times again at the bleeding edge of
all of this, UM published an article about a blooming
online service out of Westchester, New York that hosted menus
(16:42):
for forty restaurants and had a checkout system and UH
used a third party delivery service to get stuff from
the restaurants to the customers. They reported that at the time,
more than five hundred people had visited the website five
gloren my eating Hot. The New York Times also added
(17:04):
there is no charge to visit to the website, but
the customer pays the delivery fee, varying from four to
six dollars depending on the service used. Oh Man fives
of chair year great UM. That was near the beginning
of the whole dot com boom. That was from about
(17:25):
it say one. Over the next few years, just tons
of development and investment brought online services to the forefront,
including online grocery shopping. Yeah, and of course, grocery delivery
is not like an Internet age idea. Before the spread
of refrigeration technology to homes, families would have perishables like eggs, milk,
(17:47):
and ice delivered regularly in small quantities for their small
ice boxes. The huge fridges and the personal vehicles of
later decades squashed that industry and created the market for supermarkets.
But but the Internet has brought grocery delivery back. Well,
it did for like a couple of years sort of.
At first there um and it's heyday. In the late
(18:09):
nineteen nineties, a site called home grocer dot com was
doing over one million dollars a day in online grocery sales,
but it would crash along with much of the digital
market in the early two thousand's, and attempts by existing
chains like safe Way over the next few years would
ultimately collapse, lacking profitability. That reminds me of pre Harry
(18:31):
Potter tangent Um how her first Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone are Philosopher's Stone, where depending away from Um
was turned down by not more than one publisher because
she had the milk the milkman delivery in the beginning,
and they were like, this is so great. No one
will understand. We can't connect with this. And then I'm
(18:54):
sure today they're like well, They're like, well, I guess
people can connect to the milk little bit to their
homes and we will return to grocery delivering a minute.
But first another Dominoes fact in two thousan eight Dominoes
makes yet one more appearance. Actually no, there's another on
our delivery food timeline. When it rolls out, it's online
(19:18):
pizza tracker. With this thing you can track as your
pizzas being made. The little pizza icon is goes into
the oven and then after a predetermined six to seven minutes,
there is no one updating the tracker. Sorry to break
anyone's heart about that. Um, it's boxed and then it
goes out for delivery. I spent a lot of time
(19:39):
in college watching this thing hungry like a lion washing
its prey being delivered straight to its mouth. I know
that feeling. Um, And here's something that I might cut
out later, but I'm gonna I'm gonna record it now perfect.
There is as of I think a last week a
(19:59):
sex to ay that will order Domino's pizza after you orgasm.
So technology abound. You know that there really is an
Internet answer for everything I I'm curious about. I guess
you have to push the button. It doesn't like sense
you orgasms. We shouldn't be talking about orgasms as much
(20:21):
in the delivery food episode. Who knew it would come
up at all? Um? Meanwhile, UH, the the iPhone debut
in two thousand seven, ushering in the era of food
delivery apps. UH, and the popularity of delivery has really
oldly increased as access to the Internet and smartphones has increased.
This plays out in data that looks at delivery trends
(20:43):
across countries with high online access like Sweden versus say,
areas of Latin America that are currently adopting these technologies. Right,
and the capacity that these apps provide some restaurants to
take orders is causing a bit of US like supply
demand breakdown on UM. This one sandwich chain in southern
California reported having to turn off door dash during surge
(21:05):
hours and thus has turned away over five hundred thousand
dollars in sales from just three restaurants doing during less
than a year period UH due to their inability to
keep up with orders. UH. Restaurants that are able to
keep up with the demand, even ones like the above
UM which have had to make changes to accommodate the
(21:26):
influx restaurants are reporting significant increases in sales like up
to Folks in the industry are even suggesting that new
restaurant tours might start opening kitchens with no dine in space,
only drive through windows, but instead of engaging with individual customers,
they would be largely for delivery drivers. Such a weird
(21:47):
twist on the on the drive through UM. And the
spread of online technologies has even brought grocery delivery back again.
Amazon had been offering dry goods and then added fresh
foods for delivery in select areas, online ordering for in
store pickup, debut at chains grocery chains like Publics in
the early twenty teens, and then last year Amazon purchased
(22:11):
Whole Foods for thirteen point seven billion dollars. You know
as you do, yeah, um. Sam's Club just announced that
they're going to start partnering with instat Cart for same
day delivery, and Instatcart already has partnerships with Alberton's, Kroger
and Costco, prompted by Amazon's move I. Um. The other day,
I was in public and there was a woman in
(22:33):
front of me and check out and she worked for
I think they had their public says, their own specific
one or maybe these instant cart Either way, she worked
for grocery delivery service. And it was just funny to
hear conversing with the checkout people like, oh, how many
more do you have to day? Like she's just going
through the checkout over and over again. Um. And she
was talking about coupons and how people are losing out
(22:55):
on money because you can't use coupons grocery delivery services.
It was just an interesting seeing seeing that in action.
What a fascinating job. We still have some science for you, yes,
but first we have one last quick break for a
word from our sponsor. And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes,
(23:24):
thank you, And we're back with science technology, the future
future perhaps, um. But first we're going to start with
the pizza saver, the best technology ever. It's sometimes called
the pizza nipple, and it is that white thing with
spears placed at the center of the pizza that well
(23:46):
I thought it was to hold it together, but now
I think it holds the box exactly. Yeah. A patent
for this thing was filed by Camela Vatale and three
and she was not um like an inventor necessary early.
She just enjoyed a lot of pizza, had a big
family and was like, this is a problem, um. And
the problem she was trying to solve was pizza's arriving
(24:09):
with stripped cheese or smushed because of the steam coming
off of a hot pizza, the top center of the
box would sag and stick to the center of the
pizza because there was no pizza saver there and when
you open it, in all of your excitement, you ripped
the cheese off. Yeah, and the pizza saver solved this problem.
The patent says it can quote resist temperatures as high
(24:33):
as about five hundred degrees fahrenheit or two hundred and
sixty degrees celsius. And it has been slightly improved upon,
but pretty much it's the same same pizza saving. Yeah exactly.
I think it costs one cent to make. And they're
trying to figure out, like how to make it better.
There's no better. Yeah, They're like, I always assumed when
(24:54):
I was a child that these were um like like
dollhouse toys. Yeah, I think read that an article. Yeah,
somebody said they used it for polly pocket. Yeah, I
mean waste not to want not. The pizza box has
also gone through a lot of shifts technology wise. In
order to keep the pizzas shape, to be stackable, and
(25:17):
to retain heat, Pizza used to rely on corrugated cardboard
boxes to keep the pizza warm, but Dominos again is
credited with coming up with our current stackable, sturdier shape.
But this advancement wasn't so great at delivering a warm,
crispy product. Enter Ingrid Cossar in Ur she was determined
(25:38):
to solve this problem and she went around to pizzerias
with a probe to test pizza temperatures. I love that
Domino's standard was degrees faheit or sixty degrees celsius for
forty five minutes. That's what they were trying to achieve.
And from the data she gathered and she ate a
lot of pizza m she patented the insulated livery bag.
(26:01):
It reduced temperature loss to five degrease fare and heighten
our This meant that the steam would escape the box
into the bag, allowing the pizza to state both warm
and crispy. After a contract with the US government to
keep pizza's warm for soldiers and a revamp and part
revamp that was in partnership with Domino's, Costar filed for bankruptcy,
(26:23):
but it was discharged and from what I understood is
maybe not making a comeback, but you know, still moving along.
She had a lot of competition from foreign competitors pizza technology.
So much of delivery technology is pizza technology. I found.
Oh yeah, yeah, it's it's just so big, it's so
such a large portion of the market. So what about
(26:46):
the incredible future food delivery? Will it involve drones? As currently?
Signs point to maybe a few drine delivery stunts started
making headline around the world around or so A Pizza
and Mumbai Coca Cola and Singapore sparkling wine within this
one resort hotel in Saslito, and let us never forget
(27:09):
Silicon Valley's tacocopter. Never forget tacocopter. Amazon even floated off
floated the idea of drone delivery um, but the whole
concept seemed relegated to mere stunt status due to a
couple of things of flight regulations from bodies like the
Federal Aviation Administration or f a A here in the
States and elsewhere. Um. Also, the tech was still clumsy.
(27:33):
Light white batteries don't last long enough, the carrying capacity
isn't great enough, stuff like that. But big companies like
like Bell Technologies and Boeing Big are working on the
tech end, possibly for contracting to the military first, and
their level of influence may sway organizations like the FAA
to open it up for commercial use. Wow. Um. There
(27:58):
is one service current available as far as I understand,
in a Rakovic iceland that's already using drones to circumvent
the city's bay, shaving some twenty minutes off of delivery
times to the two or between the two halves of
the city. UH. Couriers will drop deliveries off at one
drone hub for launching, and other couriers deliver the food
by bike or foot on the other end. Um. And
(28:20):
they're they're planning though, for for home deliveries sometime in
the future supposed I don't know about that. Uh. And
all of this could be a serious boon for the
environment if it takes off truck and um, personal gas
powered vehicle transportation create just a lot of greenhouse gas emissions,
(28:42):
and large electronic drones could really help due to their
energy efficiency. Personal electric vehicles and electric trucks would also
be good, but not as good as drones efficiency wise. Yeah. Um.
Oh and one more that I forgot to write down,
but I saw at C Yes, this here, which is
a a consumer it's it's it's a it's a media
(29:04):
place these days, but it's about electronics. Pizza Hut was
showing off their concept for a automated pizza delivery vehicle. Yeah,
like like a like a right, I remember the self
driving car just for pizzas. Oh my goodness. Which apparently
there's a Black Mirror episode that's kind of about I
(29:25):
haven't watched that one, but I don't know. I get
the articles delivery. The article that I read about it
was like it is the stuff of nightmare? Have they
not watched Black Mirror? And I was like, oh, I
haven't either, but okay, so yeah, I don't recall any
pizza delivery Nightmare episode, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Sure,
(29:47):
there is something kind of menacing about it to see
this truck and no nobody in there, but no pizza.
I don't know. It could be wonderful. I don't know. Yeah,
it sounds sort of beautiful to me. It has potential
for either I think yes, As with all technology, that's
how you use it. That is true. That is true, Lauren.
(30:10):
That brings us to the end of our delivery take
out episode. It does yes and means it's time listen
to me. That was nice. Dominique wrote, I just listened
to your ketchup episode and thought you should know of
the Canadian ketchup. Sagas Hines had a tomato plant in Leamington, Ontario,
(30:36):
and decided to shut it down after a change in ownership.
The plant had over seven hundred full time employees and
the manufacturing accounted for a huge portion of the Ontario
tomato crop, so Ontarians were pretty upset about the whole thing. Meanwhile,
french Is who made mustard, started producing Ketchup. Their Ketchup
(30:58):
sales were slow as they were lower on the shelf
than high but they used real sugar, so they appealed
to the anti high fruit toast corn sirup crowd and
use Canadian tomatoes. Although didn't push that through marketing. The
Frenches sales were so low. That are so low, so
slow that our major supermarket chain low blaws. Oh man,
(31:20):
I don't know how to pronounce that. I hope that
was closed. UM was about to pull it off their
shelves until one viral Facebook post by Brian Fernandez touting
the source of the tomatoes changed everything. People started calling
into their grocery store demanding French is catchup, and a
supply shortage meant it soon sold out. The sales have
gone through the roof due to people wanting to support
(31:41):
Canadian farmers, and even I have been buying Frenches ever since.
Frenches even moved a bottling plant from the USA to
Canada because of the niche sales here. And she sent
us a news article about it, and UM, I had
not heard about it. I've never seen Frenches catch up.
I don't know if I'm not sure, but it was very,
(32:04):
very enjoyable and fascinating read and thanks to Emily Um.
She also wrote in to us about this too. Yeah yeah, uh,
Jordan wrote, I recently recalled an embarrassing moment I had
as a child in elementary school when you were discussing
the papers or foils that line cupcakes. I accidentally ate one.
A classmate of mine had a birthday, and per elementary
(32:25):
school tradition, they brought in cupcakes to share with the class.
I had never had a cupcake before this day, and
I was probably in the second or third grade and
did not know about the paper that you're supposed to
peel off, so I ate the whole thing. After I
finished my cupcake, I was looking around and noticed every
other student had peeled and discarded that cup that cupcake
paper on their desk, and I didn't have one to
(32:46):
throw away. I think my teacher and a few students noticed.
I was embarrassed at the time, but looking back on
that day is hilarious. In my defense, the cupcake paper
does get oily from the batter and is the same
color and very similar in texture to an overbaked cupcake. Yeah.
I also recently told this to my mom and we
could not stop laughing. She apologized for not giving me
(33:08):
proper cupcake etiquette in my youth. Haven't we all been there,
embarrassing elementary school or adulthood. Yeah, you're right, I still
feel that way in some fancy restaurants. Oh my gosh,
me too. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm going
to blatantly stare at the person next to me to
(33:29):
try to figure out absolutely protocol. Thanks to both of
them for writing in and if you would like to
write to us, we would love to hear from you.
Our email is food stuff at has dot com. We're
also on social media. You can find us on Facebook
and Twitter at food stuff hs W or on Instagram
(33:50):
at food stuff. We hope to hear from you. Thank
you so much to our amazing producer, Dylan Fagan. Thanks
to y'all for listening, and we hope that love more
good things are coming your way. H
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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