Results: Fast Food, Fun Facts Part 2

For some, visiting a familiar fast food chain while in a foreign country is a little slice of home, but in Austria, the familiar golden arches is a lot more. As of 2019, McDonald's in Austria serves as mini embassies for American tourists. American citizens traveling in Austria who find themselves in distress and without a way to contact the U.S. Embassy can enter any McDonald's in Austria, and staff will assist them in making contact with the U.S. Embassy for consular services. Consular services include reporting a lost or stolen passport or seeking travel assistance. However, if you want fries with that service, you'd have to pay extra. Did you know this interesting bit of trivia?

In 1958, two brothers and Wichita State University students, Dan and Frank Carney, borrowed $600 from their mom to open a pizza place near their school campus. With room for only eight letters on the sign, they chose to name it Pizza Hut (if they had more letters maybe it would have been Pizza House?) Did you know that this is the story behind the pizza chain's name?

We are all familiar with KFC, but did you know that after perfecting his fried chicken recipe, Colonel Sanders saw KFC grow to be a billion-dollar company and this company changed their chicken and gravy recipes to something that didn't meet the Colonel's standards. Since the KFC founder hated the new food so much, he opened a new fried chicken restaurant to compete with the chain he started, called Claudia Sanders Dinner House, opened in 1968, in Shelbyville, Kentucky. In this restaurant you can still eat the original fried chicken recipe. Have you ever eaten at this restaurant?

American chain White Castle, which started in 1916 as a collection of food stands in Wichita, Kansas, and was formally established in 1921, was the first fast food restaurant. The interesting thing is that White Castle has never been franchised, but is owned by the parent company. With only 350 locations, in 15 states and territories --the most locations being in Illinois with 56 -- the owners have always been against franchising. Strangely enough, although they are almost exclusively located in the States, they do have two locations in Shanghai, China. Are you a fan of White Castle?