Here I am at the Wendy’s Restaurant at 1705 Monterey Road in San
Jose. You know the one. The famous finger-in-the-chili Wendy’s.
Yeah. That one.
And what do I have in front of me as I sit by the window
watching traffic go by? That’s right.
Here I am at the Wendy’s Restaurant at 1705 Monterey Road in San Jose. You know the one. The famous finger-in-the-chili Wendy’s. Yeah. That one.
And what do I have in front of me as I sit by the window watching traffic go by? That’s right. A small bowl of Wendy’s chili. It’s part of a combo meal deal – along with a spicy chicken sandwich and a medium-sized Sprite.
And as I sit here, contemplating whether or not to dip my spoon into the chili, considering what happened to poor Anna Ayala “finding” the cut-off human finger in her chili, and her suing Wendy’s for “emotional distress,” and cops accusing her of some weird Wendy’s scam … well, I really kinda wanna think of other things right now.
So, considering how South Valley has so many fast food restaurants, let’s consider the history of these “quick service” joints. Our local McDonald’s, KFC, Carl’s Jr, In-N-Out Burger, Jack In The Box, Taco Bell, A&W, Foster Freeze and Burger King all owe their existence to an Englishman named Fred Harvey.
Fast food history goes back to May 10, 1869, at Promontory, Utah, when California Governor Leland Stanford symbolically drove a gold spike into the “last” rail of the Transcontinental Railroad. (The spike’s on display at the Cantor Art Museum at Stanford University, by the way.) After the completion of this engineering marvel, folks could travel from coast to coast by passenger train in only a few days.
And of course, during their way out West, all these passengers obviously needed to eat occasionally. So at railroad station stops, the passengers would rush out of the train to buy soggy sandwiches and lukewarm coffee – hopefully before the conductor bawled “All aboard!” and everyone had to dash back to their train seats. Transcontinental trains did have dining cars, but they generally served meals to wealthy patrons.
Then along came Frederick Henry Harvey. At age 15, he’d sailed from his native England to New York City where he worked for a few years at a restaurant. Later during the Civil War, he switched careers. Railroads were to the 19th century what the Internet boom is to our time. The hard-working Harvey quickly rose in the railroad industry.
In 1870, he met Charlie Morse, the president of the start-up Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. Harvey realized railroads needed a better food service system – one that might encourage more passengers to travel by train. He recalled his experience in the New York City restaurant business and decided Morse’s fledgling railroad needed a chain of depot eateries to feed the thousands of passengers passing through the Santa Fe line.
Harvey’s idea was to serve good food quickly at moderate prices in clean and pleasantly decorated restaurants. He also had the brilliant notion to hire “young women of good character” to serve the food. These waitresses wore clean and standardized uniforms. He believed rowdy male passengers might better behave themselves if lovely ladies were present.
The “Harvey Girls” were paid $17.50 a month, plus room and board in a chaperoned dormitory. Many of these women found romance with their patrons. They married and started families in small towns along the railroad lines.
The “Harvey Houses” – the world’s first restaurant chain catering to the traveling customer – helped significantly in civilizing the Wild West. As towns grew around the depot, many locals also patronized Harvey’s popular restaurants. History assures us that in that innocent era, to request their meal deals, Harvey House customers sitting in their horse-drawn carriages never needed to speak into a drive-thru clown’s head. No, they never received the wrong order due to garbled intercom communications.
The Harvey House chain was the prototype for today’s fast food restaurant business. One of the first successful chains inspired by Fred Harvey was the White Castle restaurants of the Midwest. The company’s white medieval castle-like buildings essentially served as an eye-catching architectural advertisement. White Castle sold small burgers for a nickel. Profits came from volume sales.
McDonald’s also helped evolved Harvey’s restaurant chain idea. The “Golden Arches” was born on Dec. 12, 1948, in San Bernardino. Maurice and Richard McDonald ran a drive-in restaurant focused on high customer turnover. The brothers hired no waiters. Instead, customers waited in line for quickly cooked burgers, fries and milkshakes. “Fast food” soon became a huge hit with working people and travelers rolling along America’s newly constructed interstate highways.
Inspired by McDonald’s success, other chains took off in the 1950s and 1960s. The concept for Kentucky Fried Chicken (now called “KFC”) was conceived when founder Harland Sanders – “the Colonel” – received his first Social Security check. Realizing he couldn’t live off such a meager sum, he hatched his own fast-food biz using a “secret” chicken recipe he’d developed.
Ohio native David Thomas owned several Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises. In 1969, he established his own fast food chain serving “old-fashioned, made-to-order hamburgers” using fresh meat. He named his restaurants “Wendy’s Old Fashion Hamburgers” after his daughter Melinda Wendy Thomas.
Which brings us back to the San Jose Wendy’s and my chili. It might look like just your ordinary fast food joint. But this particular establishment on Monterey Road lately received a lot of world-wide media attention – thanks to Anna Ayala.
And looking inside my cardboard cup of chili now, I’ve found something I definitely did not desire. See, the cashier at the counter asked if I wanted cheese with my order. I thought she meant cheese on my sandwich – not the chili. So I told her “yes,” and she charged me an extra 30 cents.
And now there’s a disgusting glob of melting cheddar in my chili. Not that I’m gonna complain. I won’t hire some lawyer and bring a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Wendy’s or anything. It’s not exactly human body parts, you know.
I’ll take a bite now and see how it tastes … Hmmmm. Soupy. A bit bland. But overall not bad.
Wonder what kind of chili Fred Harvey served at his restaurants.
