The Gonzo

People who believe that great legislators understand how to persuade and compromise with their opponents, even concerning the most fraught questions of their day, are a little put out that there isn't more widespread celebration of Henry Clay's birthday today.

Let me explain exactly why In-N-Out refusing mobile ordering is the smartest fast food decision in a decade, because everyone's calling it backwards. Every major chain added mobile ordering to increase throughput. It worked. McDonald's, Starbucks, Chipotle all saw digital orders hit 30-40% of sales. Then something happened that nobody talks about: average visit frequency went up but brand loyalty went down. Mobile ordering turned food into a logistics transaction. You're not choosing Chipotle because you love Chipotle. You're choosing whichever app loads fastest while you're walking to your car. In-N-Out does $4.5 million per store. McDonald's does $2.7 million. In-N-Out does it with 15 menu items, zero franchises, no freezers, no microwaves, and now no mobile ordering. McDonald's needs 13,000+ locations to be McDonald's. In-N-Out needs 400. The line IS the product. That 20-minute wait with the smell of fresh-cut fries is doing more marketing work than any app notification ever could. Lynsi Snyder figured out something the entire QSR industry keeps forgetting: scarcity and inconvenience are features when your product is good enough. Chick-fil-A gets this too. Closed on Sundays. Everyone said it was leaving money on the table. They now do $7.5 million per store, more than any fast food chain in America, open 6 days a week. The companies winning in fast food right now are the ones saying no to things. No to franchising. No to 50-item menus. No to mobile ordering. The rest are optimizing themselves into commodities.

How is it living in this part of the United States?

Hellooooooo Pensacola!

Unfortunately, I do think the left is largely to blame for lack of walkability in the states. They think it’s racist/classist to arrest criminals and clean up the homeless. They literally think it’s bad pick up and move the homeless people. They, according to the left, have a “HUMAN RIGHT” to be vagrants and take up public space and disrupt the peace. We, the taxpayers, do not have a “human right” to clean streets tho. That’s classist and racist.

My only complaint about Dallas currently is no HEB! 😔

I don’t care that it has five stars, there’s no way the New York Times pimento cheese recipe is going to be good.

Being able to carry a gun at the State Fair.

The right mix of American nationalism and respect for history would be to revert to the Gulf of Florida, which was the original Spanish name, but DJT would not have liked that because presumably it would have irritated the rest of the country. And Texas.

Austin's urban planning is a masterclass in psychological torture Look at this map, it looks like the blood vessels of a chain-smoker right before a massive cardiac arrest 💨 they keep adding lanes to I-35 thinking it will fix the traffic, which is like loosening your belt to cure morbid obesity ; JUST BUILD A DAMN TRAIN 🚆

Why don’t Black NBA players complain about Salt Lake City like they do Memphis?

Some of you will be mildly joyful to hear that I have written the next episode, the second part of the Pueblo Revolt entailing the siege of Santa Fe and the long flight of the refugees to El Paso.