In 79 AD, the Mount Vesuvius eruption caused street-food counters to close mid-service.
When archaeologists discovered these thermopolia (literally, “warm shops”), they found them covered with paintings advertising the fare: chickens and mallard ducks upside down (with a naked Nereid riding a sea horse, presumably to liven things up). There was even a community reaction: Sinead Cackter (shameless shitter), one scroll said.
For centuries, we have tried to satisfy our cravings with minimal effort. Today’s food delivery apps are just the latest phase of a project as old as life: taking the friction out of eating out.
Comfort food began as a way to provide food to frequent traveling merchants, yes, but also to those who didn’t have the means or interest in running their own kitchens: the lonely, the lazy, or those simply out for fun. Think of the kebabs of Central Asia, the noodle shops of China, and the descriptions in Chanakya’s Arthashastra of spies who disguised themselves as food vendors. Even in the stories of Shiva’s divine pastimes in Thiruvilaiyadal or Madurai, he is seen bowing down to a poor woman selling puttu or rice cakes on the road and later loosening up.
Today there is an important difference. Ancient street foods celebrated seasonality and locality, and minimized wastage (the puttu vendor, for example, would offer leftover cakes to Shiva as wages). These are qualities that modern fast food does not yet prioritize.
Modern capitalism instead saw the potential for craving, a biochemical pull that may seem too strong to resist. The impact of the way the hamburger was transformed is clear.
The proto-hamburger was nothing but fast food. Food writer Josh Ozersky describes a recipe from 1763 in his book, The Hamburger: A History (2008): “Take a pound of beef, cut it very small, with half a pound of the best suet; then three quarters of a pound of suet cut into large pieces; then mix it with black pepper, cloves, nutmeg, a large amount of small chopped garlic, some wine vinegar, some bay salt, a glass of red wine and a rum, all these Mix them well together, then take the largest intestine you can find, fill it very tightly; then hang it over the chimney, and let it hang in the air for a week or ten days, and they will keep a year.
By the 20th century, the hamburger also had an image problem. Ozersky writes, “They were widely considered the final resting place of every kind of scrap and offal.”
American capitalism kept hamburgers cheap while giving them an image and reducing preparation time to a matter of seconds. The story begins with the White Castle chain, which in the 1920s sold burgers at spotless counters in pristine white buildings with clean kitchens, assuring hungry patrons that the product was trustworthy, while encouraging them to buy cheaper burgers. He also cited studies that claimed students could be healthy by eating nothing but (their) burgers.
McDonald’s took it to the next level. Brothers Richard and Maurice MacDonald ran a successful barbecue joint on Route 66 in California in the 1940s, serving slow-cooked meals. Then came World War II and the massive boom that followed. Amid increasing competition, the brothers decided to innovate. In 1948, he rebuilt his restaurant according to Henry Ford’s assembly line principles.
The new incarnation emphasized quick service, disposable packaging, and a small menu of fast-selling items: burgers, soft drinks, milk, coffee, potato chips, and pies. This format set the tone for future fast-food: cheap, quick, with bold flavors – rich in salt, sugar and fat – sold in large quantities, usually wrapped in single-use packaging (no dishwasher required) for people on the go.
In India, early fast-food icons predate McDonald’s. They catered to the newly emerging urban migrants who were short on time and cash and wanted something filling, cheap and quick. For example, in 1942, Ram Nayak opened Mumbai’s first Udupi restaurant, the Udupi Sri Krishna Boarding, in Matunga to cater to the needs of the growing South Indian community. They set specific quantities of coconut and spices for their chutneys and sambar, allowing for a high degree of standardization. Although the food suited the customer’s taste and pocketbook, it still required the customer to come to the restaurant.
By the 1960s, thousands of textile workers began passing through Dadar’s railway station to work in the mills. Ashok Vaidya set up a small stall there to sell them cheap, quick breakfast. It was one of the first places to offer the city’s iconic Vada Pav.
Convenience is all about when and where customers are served delicious affordable food, such as breakfast at Dadar station. At the same time, food choices were also changing: poha, pithala and jhunka were increasingly becoming less common than fried items. Bread is often included in the new alternatives, as wheat has gained prominence throughout the country due to cheap American imports and then the Green Revolution.
As India gradually became prosperous, a small middle class began to crave “foreign foods”. To meet this demand, Lakshmi Chand and Madan Gopal Nirula Bhai, longtime restaurateurs, opened an early American-style fast-food restaurant in Connaught Place, Delhi, which served pizza, burgers, ice cream and milkshakes. Long before the multinational invasion, Nirula was the place where joint families would go after movies, to celebrate birthdays and other feasts. Convenience became a way to make innovation accessible.
***
Then India opened to the world. Multinational brands came. America’s poor man’s fare has become aspirational here, evidenced by the snaking lines waiting to enter McDonald’s.
Meanwhile, our own poor man’s food, hard millet, was relegated even further to the background. Although it was gut and climate friendly, how could it compete with the taste of fried, sugary and salty flour?
Over the next few decades, refrigerators became widespread, more women entered the workforce, and young professionals saw their disposable income jump. India’s middle class became rich and time poor. As congestion on the roads increased, the facility converted to home delivery. (See even more disposable packaging.)
Fast forward to today and over 85% of households own at least one smartphone. Indians are moving to new cities to study and work, with no one to cook for them, and little time or interest in cooking for themselves. Thus, a new market was born.
In July 2008, Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddha launched FoodieBay, which lets users access restaurant menus from their computers. It grew, was renamed Zomato, and pivoted into food delivery in 2015. Today, Zomato controls about 55% of India’s online food delivery market, while Swiggy controls most of the other 45%. With this, and the recent addition of instant commerce, convenience now means whatever food you want, whenever and wherever you want.
***
With AI, “convenience” can even take away the veil of conscious thought, as algorithms tap directly into the fundamental emotional brain that resides within us.
Before you even get the faintest glimpse of biryani cravings, the phone pings with in-depth information about past orders and a notification trained on when your hunger starts rising. A screen shows “special” offers as well as things someone might like. A click or two and the deal is done. With every step of the delivery process logged in real-time, gamification only serves to reinforce the biochemical management that connects someone to the app.
Reviewed by thousands of people, food is made predictably delicious, wrapped securely in layers of packaging. (Even better, the price tag doesn’t reflect the full cost of the order.)
Someone eats with disposable cutlery; Throws away disposable accompaniments. No clarification. There is no compromise either; Because every adult in the house operates his own account. We faithfully store leftovers in the fridge, but really, how many of us return them?
Convenience has evolved from minimizing effort to eliminating the decision-making process. We have moved from conscious action to habit.
We have lost a lot in this long journey alone. Of course, the environmental cost is paid in packaging and grain and food choices, carbon and wasted food. There is also a hidden biochemical cost within our bodies, which is made less resilient.
Today, a few companies have tremendous power to decide what India eats. They can help drive innovation to reduce some of these social costs.
This is the power and promise of capitalism – if the customer demands it, and it makes sense for the company to do it. Tune in to hear some of the pitfalls revealed, and what can be done about them next time.
(Mridula Ramesh is a climate-tech investor and writer. She can be reached at tradeoffs@climateaction.net. Views expressed are personal)
