On Drive-Thrus & Social Isolation
Happy Thanksgiving from The Crunchwrap!
Dear Friends,
It’s been a bit since I’ve dropped in to say hello. Last we caught up, I was in Milwaukee talking to folks about green initiatives and spending time in the city’s neighborhood taverns, which are filled with $3 beers and an enviable amount of good-spirited intergenerational hangs. (Thank you for all your recs.)
I wish I could say life has been all cheese curds, civic monuments to beer barons, and Frank Lloyd Wright-designed affordable housing, but sadly, I’ve mostly spent much of the past several weeks:
Setting up complex systems to reduce screen time on my phone and then ignoring or dismantling them
Observing people I generally admire reduce a deeply complex international conflict into a very clumsy exercise in personal brand building
Watching my fatally flawed but universally beloved Houston Astros make a deep and ill-fated playoff run
Trying to wrap up in my next book in an attic, alone with my feelings
It’s been a weird time! Naturally, when the secular saint and food culturist Kim Severson reached out to me for a story about fast food and social isolation, I guess I was ready to talk???
Her piece (gift link here) was about the abiding popularity of the drive-thru window, which not only enjoyed a renaissance during the pandemic (for obvious reasons!) but continues to flourish after the pandemic (for not-so-obvious reasons!). One of the insights that really stood out to me about the drive-thru window’s enduring dominance:1
…the most striking explanation may be a societal sea change: People emerged from the pandemic with less tolerance for interacting with strangers.
“These are all sorts of ways people are prioritizing safety. The drive-through mentality keeps people both physically and psychologically safe,” said Shelley Balanko, a social scientist and senior vice president with the Hartman Group, a research company that studies American eating patterns.
This idea struck me for a few reasons…beyond the fact that I’ve been spending way too much time in my attic in a bathrobe. A big theme of my book Drive-Thru Dreams hit on the unsaid importance of fast food’s mass appeal. The book’s first excerpt “What McDonald’s Does Right” was all about how the ubiquity and democratic accessibility of places like McDonald’s give it a unique power in a country that’s work obsessed and deeply polarized and has fewer places for low-stakes mingling than ever.
In this context, the thought that fast-food dining rooms are quite literally being designed out of existence in the name of tech, efficiency, and consumer demand is a huge bummer. Growing up in Texas and traveling around the country gave me access to the experience of fast food joints as places to hold court and form improvised communities. What’s more, the Surgeon General declared loneliness to be a national epidemic earlier this year.
Severson’s story obviously hit a nerve because (among others) The Today Show did a little segment about it and featured my blurry talking head via Zoom for about 10 seconds. I also spoke to Keiran Southern at the Sunday Times of London for a nice imitation of the original.
To play us out on a lighter note, please enjoy the funniest piece of holiday content ever written. (If you disagree, send yours along.)
May the next Crunchwrap and the world it circulates through be much less depressing. Thanks as always for reading.
Love,
Adam/Eeyore
In the holiday spirit, The Crunchwrap HQ is also granting a pardon to The New York Times for their house style, which renders drive-thru as drive-through like fast-food places serve Beef Wellington and not chicken fries.