Happy Friday!

Temperature lows are finally dipping below 60 degrees this weekend, which means one thing: I’m making chili. (For my money, this recipe remains the GOAT.)

3 Numbers

$103 million

Price paid for meal-kit service Blue Apron by Marc Lore’s rapidly growing startup Wonder, which — according to Lore — moves his food delivery company one step closer to becoming the meal-time “super app.” Blue Apron is expected to continue its own operations and keep its branding, but “new synergies” are expected between the two companies’ mobile apps and delivery logistics.

$18

New pre-tip minimum wage for New York’s third-party delivery workers, up from the current $7/hour (or $11 on average after tips). DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber were able to temporarily halt the city’s legislation in July (when it was first set to go into effect), but a judge last week allowed the bill to move forward.

29 seconds

Drop this year in average total time spent in a drive-thru, according to an annual study from Intouch Insight. In a sign that drive-thru demand is waning as more guests opt for mobile ordering, the average number of cars in line to place orders fell from 2.76 to 1.27. (In a possible sign of things to come, the study’s data collectors visited Taco Bell’s Defy model store — which features four ordering lanes — and found the wait time to be a minute shorter than the brand’s average.)

The strange importance of casual dining

Even if you account for her megastardom, Taylor Swift's decision to date Travis Kelce - and attend two of his games - has been a borderline-absurd media phenomenon.

In the WSJ on Monday, sports columnist Jason Gay – writing for the second week in a row about Swift – attempted to explain why the story has so effectively captured the nation's attention. In a time of increased atomization, when few cultural touchpoints have the capacity to unite all parts of America, "... The union of Swift and the NFL is a collision of massive entertainment behemoths — The Last Two Things Pretty Much Everyone Likes, partnering up to deliver a final, wheezing gasp of the mega-audience monoculture."

Perhaps, though, evidence is pointing to there being Three Things Pretty Much Everyone in America Likes. Perhaps Olive Garden is that third thing.

A recent paper released by researchers from Harvard and the Naval Postgraduate School used anonymized cell phone data to follow Americans’ movement around cities and towns. The study found that ostensibly public institutions like parks, churches, and schools actually tend to attract people of comparable backgrounds. Ditto grocery stores and shopping malls, which pull in customers from tight, socioeconomically-similar geographic areas.

Casual dining chains, though, were outliers in the study. Yes: restaurants like Applebee’s, Chili’s, and Olive Garden were shown to be the only American places that consistently put high- and low-income people in close proximity, and the case can be made that they now represent our most (small-”d”) democratic institutions – the sole places where Americans of all backgrounds still gather together, breaking Unlimited Breadsticks in peace.

How did casual diners reach this esteemed place in American civic society? Writing in the Messenger, Nick Gallagher gives a credible explanation: “Chili's, Applebee's, and other restaurants may … strike a balance between luxury and informality: They are just fancy enough to attract wealthy diners but also affordable enough to welcome lower-income families looking for a good meal.”

Casual dining has had a tumultuous decade. In the early 2010s, fast casuals began taking serious market share by offering speedy, high-quality meals to-go. Millennials reached adulthood, and rebelled against their childhoods by eschewing Chicken Crispers for more unique offerings. Many of the major players fought against their perceived irrelevance by trying to reinvent themselves: Applebee’s spent $75 million on wood-fired grills and began serving hand-cut steaks. Olive Garden added kale and polenta to its menu. It took Dollaritas and Never-Ending Pasta Bowls, respectively, to bring the concepts back on track.

Now Millennials are having kids and, well, there are worse places to take a 2-year-old than inviting places where you can be fairly confident a high-chair will be available. Casual dining concepts are also nostalgia-generating machines – and while nostalgia has gotten a bad rap, it’s also been shown to be a tool that promotes social connectedness. Wrote Helen Rosner in Eater, "I love that I can walk in the door of an Olive Garden in Michigan City, Indiana, and feel like I’m in the same room I enter when I step into an Olive Garden in Queens or Rhode Island or the middle of Los Angeles. There is only one Olive Garden, but it has a thousand doors."

A recent meal at Cracker Barrel confirmed this feeling for me – three generations of family happily dug into breakfast platters; only our ages (and a sign advertising the option to pay-by-phone) gave away the fact that the year wasn’t 1998. It was one of my favorite meals this year.

So let’s unite over casual dining chains, one of the last things that binds us all. And if Taylor Swift ever cuts a track over an Applebee’s commercial that plays during the Super Bowl, know that you are looking at America.

Name That Chain!

You get three hints to guess this week’s mystery chain:

• This chain sold its 1 billionth hamburger in 1961.

• Its store design was inspired by Chicago’s Water Tower.

• The Beastie Boys once name-dropped the chain in a song, helpfully advising that its fries only come in one size.

WHAT IS THIS MYSTERY CHAIN? (The answer lies at the bottom of the email.)

Quick Hits

• Newsom makes it official… As expected, California governor Gavin Newsom signed into law last week a bill that will increase the state’s minimum wage for fast-food workers to $20 an hour, while also ensuring that hourly workers and union representatives will have seats on a panel tasked with negotiating future wage increases. Because the bill affects over 500,000 restaurant workers, it’s expected to effectively raise the wage floor for independents and casual diners as well.

• Add “restauranteur” to Elon’s short list of responsibilities… Tesla broke ground last week on its ‘50s diner/drive-in movie theater/Supercharger station in West Hollywood. Details on the project — such as whether it will be replicated elsewhere in the country — are scant, but Elektrek created some 3D renderings based on the city construction plans. Elon Musk first announced the project on Twitter five years ago — well before he owned the platform.

• Wanna buy a cookie franchise? Insomnia Cookies is on the market. Its current owner, Krispy Kreme, said this week that it will consider an all-cash sale as the company looks to focus on its core doughnut business. Krispy Kreme bought Insomnia Cookies five years ago in a deal valued at around $500 million.

• A nation sighs in relief… To everyone’s surprise, the McRib will indeed be returning to select locations next month — one year after its “Farewell Tour.” Meanwhile on TikTok, former McDonald’s corporate chef Mike Haracz is semi-spilling the beans on McDonald’s inside info, including why we’ll probably never see onion rings on the McD’s permanent menu. (Margins. The answer is always margins.)

• An advertising update… Amid a minor resurgence in fast food lawsuits claiming deceptive advertising, McDonald’s and Wendy’s scored a win in Brooklyn this week after a judge found no proof that the companies delivered smaller burgers than advertised. (The Hamburglar, however, still faces multiple criminal indictments for racketeering.)

#Content Recs

• How chains are beginning to incorporate predictive AI into their service models: to take one example, Little Caesars’ machine-learning algorithm (called “CaesarVision”) is now analyzing five years of data to forecast the ingredients and finished pizzas each US location should have daily.

• And a look at Marco’s Pizza’s new autonomous delivery robots, which can travel on roads at up to 20 mph, bravely holding up traffic to deliver your Hawaiian Chicken pizza.

• You thought we were done covering robots? This week, Chipotle released a video of its new automated make line assembling burrito bowls and salads. (The technology is made by Hyphen, which Chipotle invested in last year.) Also, Mendocino Farms announced it will begin delivering meals in 2025 via Zipline, a drone service where employees will load orders into drones docked at the restaurant. Sweetgreen is also testing the tech out — here’s how it works.

• A short feature on Subway CEO John Chidsey — a chronic underachiever who earned JD, MBA, and CPA degrees by the age of 24 and freedives in his spare time.

• As wheel of time turns and the tapestry of the seasons changes its hues, it is my duty to inform you that Tomato Girl Summer is giving way to Pasta Girl Fall. (I don’t really understand this meme either.)

Finally — in an attempt to spur the imaginations of fast-food R&D departments across America — each week I’ll highlight an international LTO that should warrant at least some menu consideration in the States. This week: CRAZY PUFFS. Available in Little Caesars of Canada (among other international markets), these little beauties consist of four handheld pieces of dough, stuffed with either pepperoni or “Hula Hawaiian” flavors. What could be better for the pizza-craving, on-the-go consumer?

See ya next week.

Trivia answer: White Castle