Fast_Food_Defination

There is little consensus about the definition of fast food in the literature. For example, the American Heritage Dictionary definies fast food as “Inexpensive food, such as hamburgers and fried chicken, prepared and served quickly.” While everyone agrees that prominent chains such as McDonald’s serve fast food, there is less agreement about whether smaller, independent restaurants are also “fast food.” The Census of Retail trade defines a fast food establishment as one that does not offer table service. Legislation recently passed in Los Angeles imposing a moratorium on new fast food restaurants in south central L.A. defined fast food establishments as those that have a limited menu, items prepared in advance or heated quickly, no table service, and disposable wrappings or containers (Abdollah, 2007). However, these definitions do not get at one aspect of concern about fast food restaurants, which is their heavy reliance on advertising, and easy brand recognition. We constructed several different measures of fast food. Our benchmark definition of fast-food restaurants focuses on the top 10 chains, which are McDonald’s, Subway, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Jack in the Box, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, Domino’s Pizza, Wendy’s, and Little Ceasar’s. We have also constructed a broader definition using Wikipedia’s list of national fast food chains (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_food). Wikipedia considers fast food to be “Food cooked in bulk and in advance and kept warm, or reheated to order.” Our broadest definition starts with this list, excludes ice cream, donut, and coffee shops, and adds in all independent restaurants from our Dun and Bradstreet list that have the words “pizza” or “burger” in their names. The definition of “other restaurant” depends on the definition of fast food. As discussed in the paper, we find a larger impact of the top 10 fast-food chains than for the broader definition of fast-foods. To conserve space, we show estimates for the broad definition excluding ice cream, donuts, and coffee shops, and for the top 10 chains.