*watch on youtube*
part 1 of a 75-part series on hot n now hamburgers, today's episode focuses on the impressive rise and precipitous fall of burger chain hot n now. alternate title: stuffed, honored, and sweaty. learn about the history of the chain through kirk's perspective along with support from president joe biden and npr's ira glass.
show links
*watch on youtube*
part 1 of a 75-part series on hot n now hamburgers, today's episode focuses on the impressive rise and precipitous fall of burger chain hot n now. alternate title: stuffed, honored, and sweaty. learn about the history of the chain through kirk's perspective along with support from president joe biden and npr's ira glass.
show links
What’s up, everybody?
Today is Tuesday, August 10th, 2021.
This is A TALK IN THE ATTIC, and I’m your host Kirk Ross.
And if I had to describe myself in three adjectives right now, they’d go as follows:
1) Stuffed; 2) Honored; and 3) Sweaty
Perhaps the first time in history that this specific combination of descriptors have been levied upon any one subject, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.
Once again, for posterity: I’m feeling STUFFED HONORED & SWEATY.
And if you’ve been following the show on social media, maybe you already know what has me feeling so stuffed, honored, and sweaty. For the rest of you, the words I’m about to utter may slam you so deep into the nostalgia of yesteryear that you’ll start saying things like “that’s decent” and “no homo”.
And just like those outdated phrases, the source of my feeling stuffed honored & sweaty has also fallen out of favor in modern times.
Folks, I’m feeling so stuffed, honored, and sweaty because THIS WEEKEND, my friends and I traveled the more-than-2-hours necessary to visit the last vestige of Clinton-era prosperity: that’s right, I’m of course speaking of HOT n NOW.
You know, HOT n NOW: the once massive fast-food burger chain founded in 1984 that by 1990 had exploded to over 100 locations in and around Michigan.
You know, HOT n NOW: the joint that rose to prominence through their staple 39-cent hamburger. For real: 39 cents, for a whole hamburger. At least into the 2000’s.
So for you youngsters out there who think I’m talking like some old geezer as if to say “When I was your age, Hot N Now served hamburgers for under 40 cents.”, just know, that the 39-cent pricetag co-existed with a post-NSYNC Justin Timberlake. So this isn’t exactly ancient history.
Quick sidebar, did anyone else get strong Joe Biden vibes from old guy impression? Let me amp up my Biden and do it again, with a little extra Grampa Joe mixed in.
“I remember when I was just little boy, back in Pennsylvaniaaaa…and I had a little girlfriend a named Judy who I used to take on dates to Hot N Now. Hot N Now was a little lightning-bolt-shaped building with a red roof. And they sold hamburgers for 39 cents. My friends and I would ride our horses there and buy a whole bag of burgers for under 5 bucks. And one time I tried to feed one of the horses a hamburger, but he wasn’t interested. And they’d only put one pickle on their burgers, man. Judy and I always laughed about that. It was always a lotta malarkey, that Hot N Now.”
Biden rambles about old-timey things sometimes, that’s the joke.
PepsiCo purchased Hot N Now in 1990, nearing its peak of profitability and proceeded to fuck everything up for everybody. I mean, it’s PepsiCo, the same imbeciles who in an attempt to compete with Coca-Cola created….Pepsi.
They’re a huge imperialistic corporation, so it shouldn’t surprise us that they behaved as huge imperialistic corporations do. They buried Hot N Now underneath their Taco Bell division. They forced out the founder. They expanded too aggressively. They began moving away from the value-model that made Hot n Now so special: a limited menu at really cheap prices.
By 1992, the dozens of franchisee’s around the nation were already growing frustrated with the new direction. PepsiCo began treating Hot N Now as a test kitchen for new items and pricing strategies to be applied to their more important food businesses like Taco Bell and KFC.
By 1995, these same frustrated franchisee’s stopped receiving support from HQ. That same year, PepsiCo shuttered 80 corporate locations before offloading the bastardized remains to some Connecticut-based company in 1996.
Only 53 locations remained at this point, and over the next several years, even more stores closed.
By 2004, yet another sale of the company had occurred before the company finally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with just 23 corporate locations and 21 franchisee-owned outlets remaining.
Fast-forward to 2016, when all but two - count em, two Hot N Now locations remained:
One on Wilder Road in Bay City - which just so happens to be the outlet that I drove through most in my life - and the other in the understandably oft-overlooked Sturgis, MI.
A major fire put the official kibosh on the Bay City location - how convenient - before re-opening as Burger 81, which still offers the famous Hot N Now olive burger, albeit branded as the Burger 81 Burger.
And with that unbelievably suspiciously-timed structure fire taking out the Bay City store, Hot n Now had been reduced from the smallest chain possible: two…. down to a single, standalone entity.
A single entity.
A single Hot N Now.
Only one.
And just like that, after decades of delivering cheap food from their signature buildings and straight into the packed cars and clogged arteries of the Upper Midwest, what had been Hot N Now was now
Hot, Now, n Alone.
Sounds like A This American Laugh episode, doesn’t it?
You’re listening to This American Life, by NPR, presenting this week’s story: “Hot Now, n Alone: Damsel in Distress or Drive Thru Demise?”
Tune in next episode to hear about Kirk, Adam, & Vito’s pilgrimage to the last Hot N Now in the known universe. And find out just why Kirk is feeling is so STUFFED, HONORED, AND SWEATY.
I’m Ira Glass, back next episode with more stories of This American Life.
Peace out everybody.