Slop The Hogs
If he was alone that would be bad enough, that he wasn’t- well The Secretary of Defense and all his troops will be needed. His malignant condition, actually malady/disease is more appropriate, had terribly degenerated to chronic dimensions. No one was really sure if it started with him, that he begat others, or all the thanks and blame was owed him. It mattered and it didn’t. A certain cold calculation would say the genesis was not his and other’s actions but his and other’s reactions to businesses trying to get their business. Who was the first chicken and original egg? That perhaps is the elemental question of origin.
Ed Coe liked to eat and he liked to save money. He knew every blue plate and early bird special, and while they saved him money, they didn’t completely satisfy his appetite. He had a wholesale hunger in retail restaurants. Not only could his big mouth take it in but could dish it out. When the poor waitresses ran for cover and the managers came out, he’d unload on them. Somehow one day some manager got past his past jabbering and considered what he was saying. Supply and demand and volume discount, that’s what the manager thought about and more importantly, acted upon.
It started slow in a wait and see approach. Twice a month, The Roast and Grill Restaurant offered a one price for as much as you wanted of five easy to prepare in bulk entrees, two vegetables, one potato and green lime Jell-O for desert, dinners. Ed Coe, his friends and the regular patrons came the first night. The second night more came and even more came the third night. A problem soon developed when supply didn’t keep up with demand. Apologies and a vow to never again run out of food was made. In four months half the menu was added to the one price for all events and before a year had passed the entire menu and a twice-weekly schedule was adopted. Soon other restaurants followed The Roast and Grill’s lead and began similar meals.
Before long most restaurants were having one price for all meals, all day, every day of the week. There was no degree of certainty on who came up with the “All you can eat.” term to describe the meals but all agreed that the label said it all. The definition of all is simple, the idea and what it meant kept growing in dynamic bursts. The one hundred item barrier was broken less than two years after Roast and Grill’s early days, and in the third year, Come And Get It, put out over one thousand items for consummation. They had 119 beef entrees and 91 deserts alone. We Have It All took it to another level by including surprise items like caviar, lobster tail and top chef prepared entrees. In one of the very few failures of the all you can eat business, they showed everyone that it was quantity and not quality that matters. Surprises didn’t last. What did last was cut throat competition for who could provide more for less or less for more. It worked either way depending on your viewpoint.
The case of Bob, “Field House” Smith illustrated how far things got with consumers. Something had to be done when he didn’t leave Come And Get It for a week and a half. With one price, he had eaten that entire time. When he wasn’t eating or relieving himself, he’d sleep in the booth. Come And Get It was forced to introduce a house rule requiring all eaters to leave after six hours. Other rules followed. A strict, all you can eat on the premises, began to be enforced. This required all eaters to go through food detectors as they left. And after several high profile inside jobs, extensive background checks and security procedures were instituted to prevent theft by the wait staff of servers, cooks, guards and dishwashers.
Matters became serious when the impact of high volume food consumption started showing up in unwanted places. People had gotten used to the restaurant heart attacks and diabetic episodes, what was beyond all getting used to was a precipitous drop off in life expectancy. This threatened the balance of the supply and demand seesaw. Bottom lines began to fall, as fewer eaters weren’t able to eat as much. Further disrupting things was demand side problems. The intensive agricultural activities needed to feed the demand had created a bio-chemical residue that was badly fouling the air and water. A dangerous feedback (Please excuse this unwanted pun. Unfortunately the term feedback was really the best way to describe how overfeeding had caused underfeeding.) loop had begun to spin like a top. Crop yields and animal weights were returning to ancient levels.
For a number of years doctors and pill makers had said it would be possible to live without eating and what used to be theory had become practice. John Buck, a former convict serving life, agreed to undergo the first digestive system removal operation. After installations of three different, and progressively more improved nutrient/mineral exchangers, he no longer was a test case but had become a shining example of what was possible. At the last Olympics, he won the decathlon at age 75. Long waiting lists formed for digestive system removals and around the clock manufacture of exchangers and training of surgeons started under government order.
In response to all this, food free living groups sprang up everywhere and they found one of the toughest issues to deal with was what to do with all the time that no longer was dedicated to finding, eating and getting rid of food. There was even clambering for longer workdays to occupy the extra time. Not only did life expectancies increase but also the hours in a day seemed to expand. The concept of demand on time, took on new meaning.
As for Ed Coe, he stopped when his heart burned up from overwork. At the time of his death, he weighted 911 pounds, had become an all you can eat home delivery patron and could not get out of bed. They had to take the roof off his house to bury him. Field House Smith fared much better. He took the cure and became a time entrepreneur. The Roast and Grill went out of business before Ed died. The Higher Power Church took over their building and every Tuesday night a meeting of Eaters Anonymous is held in the sanctuary basement. They really are anonymous. You can’t tell who they were.
Critical note: This story about greed at least in one area can be called good writing. It shows greed by trying to take on a large subject with a small effort.