A KFC Innovation?
I saw a puzzling billboard on the expressway today. It was an advertisement for a Kentucky Fried Chicken, located at the next exit, with two banners of text.
The top banner (next to the picture of the Colonel) said: “All You Can Eat Buffet”.
The banner immediately below it read: “Drive Thru”.
I spent the next half hour on the expressway trying to imagine what a drive through all-you-can-eat buffet would look like. I also wondered if I want to live in a world in which people want to eat a buffet meal without ever leaving their car.
Buffet lines, during prime time eating hours, can be excruciatingly long and slow. I’ve been known to get in line before I was hungry and reach the buffet table starving. Perhaps the only thing worse, than waiting in a buffet line, is being stuck in traffic. To be in a traffic jam, while waiting to reach the buffet table, is to combine two of life’s worst experiences.
Buffet tables are a bit more efficient when designed symmetrically – with the same array of foods on both sides of the table. With this ingenious method, the line can move on both sides of the table, without missing an opportunity to partake in any of the food offerings.
I wondered if this could be duplicated at a drive-through. It might be possible for some cars to drive on the left side of the buffet table, and other cars on the right side. Of course, if you were dining alone, you would be required to drive on the right of the buffet table, so you could reach the food on the driver’s side of the car (unless, of course, you were driving a British car with the steering while on the wrong side).
I suppose another way to speed up the line would be to use a narrow lane – a single car width – with buffet tables on both sides. This method would permit the folks on the passenger side to scoop out their food while the folks on the driver’s side doing the same.
Even though we all know that we can, technically, come back for more, we all have the tendency to pile a mountain of food on our plates. Most people, leaving a buffet table look like they have enough for their last meal, before winter hibernation. This must be human nature. (I wonder if anyone has ever done a study on this.)
I would think that it would be terribly cumbersome to have that much food, on a single plate, resting on your lap, while sitting in a car.
Since “all you can eat” does mean that you can come back for more, the buffet line must be some sort of circular drive. This would permit you to drive through the buffet line to fill up your plate, then drive to the parking lot (or would it be more accurate to call it the “eating lot”?), and then circle around to get seconds. One would presume that this KFC employs a pretty good traffic cop.
Croochers
With a modest search, I found a very funny blog entry entitled “Buffet Line Lingerers”. The author describes all of the worst sort of buffet line characters, referred to as “Middle Starters”, “Lettuce Pickers”, “Backtrackers”, “Mr. Big Eyes”, “The Person Who Doesn’t Understand That Potato Salad Sticks To The Spoon”, “Croochers” and, the author’s least favorite, “Buffet Line Lingerers”. [I had a link to this blog entry in my 2005 Wolverine Café, but I cannot find the entry now, in 2019.]
My least favorite, though, are “croochers”, who the author describes as: someone who encroaches and crowds. The guy who just has to have that macaroni salad now even though you are the one standing in front of it. He pushes up until you are sure he’s going to wet your back with fruit cup so that you move forward and crow the person in front of you, then reaches a hairy arm in front of your face, just reaches the macaroni spoon, scoops up the heap that the guy with the potato salad should have, and precariously balances it all the way back to his plate, sometimes managing not to drop half the spoonful in the salad dressing. Then when he’s done, he moves even closer to you, just to let you know that he can’t reach the meatballs, but wants to.”
As annoying as these characters are in a pedestrian buffet line, can you imagine how crazy they would make you in a drive-through buffet?
And check this out: There is a photograph of a buffet line at a Central Ohio American Society of Mechanical Engineers at this website. How would you like to be behind these people in a drive-through buffet? [This is another link included in 2005, but not found in 2019.]
By the way, if you think I made this up, the billboard is on southbound U.S. 27 in the stretch between Alma and Clare, Michigan. [This was posted in 2005 and I dunno if it is still there.]
I would have posted the KFC sign, but I was driving 70 miles per hour and didn’t have my digital camera ready. The photos on this page, though, do show that KFC does have drive-thru all you can eat buffets, and that KFC is not alone!
KFC: I referred to this restaurant as “Kentucky Fried Chicken” even though we all “know” that the company changed its name to “KFC”. We all “know” that the company can no longer legally use the word “chicken” since it serves some sort of synthetic stuff – not real chicken. Well, it turns out this is yet another urban legend, thoroughly debunked.
”THRU” vs. “THROUGH”: I’ve always assumed that “thru” was not a real word, but rather the creation of the drive-thru restaurants. However, it is now listed as a work in the dictionary, as the informal version of “through”. The dictionary suggests that it can be used as an adverb, adjective, or preposition. Here is my question to you. In the “drive-thru” context, is “thru” used as an adverb or adjective?
GREAT ROAD SIGNS: If you want to see some hilarious road signs, visit signlanguage.com. [This is yet another old link – to funny road signs in 2005, but in 2019 this is a site for signing interpreters.]