Gambit: When did the hamburger become an American icon?
George Motz: 1921 to put a date on it. That’s when the burger began its meteoric rise. It had been around for 40 years before that. But it wasn’t seen as anything special. It was ethnic food. It was the taco of 120 years ago. The taco has great respect, but there was a time 20-30 years ago when the taco had zero respect.
With the hamburger, they saw it as immigrant food. It was German. We got both the hot dog and the hamburger from Germany.
The hamburger was seen as questionable. In 1921, White Castle cleaned up the burger’s image. That’s when everyone started eating hamburgers. It became a national phenomenon. Over the years, all sorts of things caused fast food companies to change or die. The Great Depression was one, World War II was one, and then modernization and expansion and frozen burger patties. Frozen patties killed a lot of places in the ’70s…