The Restaurant by William Sitwell

Author:William Sitwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2020-04-09T00:00:00+00:00

He needed another idea. Having dined at a number of Mexican restaurants (in particular, a neighbouring establishment called Mitla Café), he reckoned that, if he could copy their tacos, but produce them in an assembly-line fashion, he might be on to something.

‘If you wanted a dozen [tacos] … you were in for a wait,’ he later recollected. ‘They stuffed them first, quickly fried them and stuck them together with a toothpick. I thought they were delicious, but something had to be done about the method of preparation.’

He explained his idea to Dorothy, who was still recovering from her discovery that he had opened a new burger stand. ‘Tacos could be the new thing,’ he told her over dinner at home, ‘they’ll make our place different from all the rest. I just need to figure out a way to make them quickly.’

She said something about their son, Rex, and how it wasn’t her idea of a life to spend the rest of their days struggling in a poor Hispanic neighbourhood while he kept on dreaming. But Glen didn’t hear her pleas. His mind was on the small wire form he had persuaded a man who made chicken coups to create. With this, he could dip the tacos into the oil and, as the shells crisped, they would hold their shape. The wires were made. Glen could then dip six at a time. Next, he invented a pre-fabricated taco shell that didn’t have to be fried, only filled to order. His tacos were less messy than burgers and every order was gloriously identical – no extra onions or cheese.

Sales were small to start, but people needed to cotton on to the idea. ‘Business is good,’ he told Dorothy, ‘slow but good. Tacos are the future.’

Maybe, thought Dorothy. But you aren’t.

In 1953, she filed for divorce. Glen conceded and gave her everything he had: his house, his bank account and his restaurant business. Then he moved 70 miles away and started all over again. He dropped burgers and focused only on tacos.

Today, Taco Bell displays the awesome power of the restaurant franchise model. There are over 7,000 such eateries, with almost $2 billion of global revenue in countries across the world, from Russia to the Middle East, South America to Finland.

The growth of Bell’s business was part of the postwar consumerism roller-coaster. In the US, between 1954 and 1967, sales of restaurant food doubled. This went alongside the growth in the food-processing industry. TV dinners became a national habit, and there was money to be made. Bell’s experiment became a huge success story – particularly as middle-class white America warmed to ethnic foods, especially those nicely bastardised to suit their palates – but among other experiments were numerous failures.

The trail of fast-food flops is as doleful as a litter of discarded wrappers, burger boxes and drinks containers. Some never made it beyond a first store; others fell by the wayside. Many – those occupying prime retail sites, for example – were bought up and swallowed by big brands.

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