Vinceland

I just watched Sonic Youth play, arguably the best band to ever come out of this country. A perfect blend of melody, rock, good songs and noise. Also, this band has been able to successfully blend its members for over 20 years and a ton of albums and songs. They’ve worked together to run the business, write the songs, travel the world, record and play for people. The mission has remained the same, and people appreciate the consistency and apparent stability of the band. They just make great loud rock music and get it out there, year after year.

America is an idea that is not marketed or taught to people or reminded to the people of this country enough or well enough. It’s a dicey blend of people, languages, businesses, money, personalities, cultures, beliefs. The best place for people to learn about America is TV these days. I learned something from The West Wing. But someone should take it upon themselves to teach and remind people all over, all ages, why we’re here. Eighth grade was not enough for such a great place.

Let’s examine a product of this country that I view as a perfect example of what this country and it’s blended innovations are all about: The McGriddle.

A long time ago, someone decided to combine meat with bread, put the bread on the outside and eat it with their hands. This would not have worked with the meat on the outside. Eventually, people had the balls to try all kinds of stuff on sandwiches: different meats, added cheese, and even vegetables. Sandwiches soon became a staple, a perfect combination of items that go well together, and are super easy to eat without utensils.

But then, a stroke of genius. Some great human decided to make a sandwich before noon. The breakfast sandwich was born. Eggs and meat had been eaten with bread in the morning, but never had someone put the bread on the outside, the eggs and meat on the inside, and eventually, added cheese, that melted from the heat of the other ingredients. Amazing. A complete, tasty meal between your fingers, before noon. Nothing could top this. But of course, someone in America had to. Leave it to McDonald’s.

You would think the Egg McMuffin was good enough. They had sold millions of them. Formed egg, rounded bacon (stolen from Canada), yellow, melted cheese product, all “sandwiched” between toasted muffins (stolen from England). The Egg McMuffin made it possible to spend very little money and eat a complete, power breakfast, full of protein, carbs and even dairy, with just one hand while driving. Again, pretty friggin amazing. But Americans will always outdo even themselves. McDonald’s had to do better.

Enter McGriddle.

Pancakes and syrup are a breakfast in and of themselves. You don’t need anything else, people have been grilling sweet cakes and adding natural maple syrup and butter to them for years. It’s a warm, inviting and sweet way to begin the day. At some point, someone (a hungry lumberjack perhaps?) made some pancakes, fried some eggs, even grilled some meat and ate the whole thing in one sitting. A mammoth meal, but really the ultimate morning jumpstart.

Denny’s and other diners popularized and distributed large breakfast meals with pancakes, eggs, and meat throughout America. People accepted the idea of gorging themselves in the morning and combining ingredients normally kept separate. They let the syrup touch the eggs, a major development in the history of combination big breakfasts. What was once unheard of in the world of morning foods would be capitalized on soon, and in a major way.

Breakfast product developers at McDonald’s knew they needed something new. The venerable Egg McMuffin had performed admirably, and was still outselling it’s cousin globally, the young Sausage Biscuit with Egg. All the while, the Big Breakfast lagged in terms of sales, but with a fiercly loyal customer base, and some help from friends in high places, pancakes remained on the menu in the morning at McDonald’s. How could the company capitalize on the investment it had made in the mass production of pancakes, eggs, meats and hand-held sandwiches? They launched The McGriddle.

The ultimate blend of the best in breakfast, the Sausage McGriddle is a sandwich that includes two, small, syrup-infused pancakes (embossed with the company’s Golden Arches logo!) with a formed, folded scrambled egg, round sausage patty and melted, yellow cheese product in one, hand-held slamming device. Not only had the company figured out that this blend was something people wanted, but the R and D department solved the issue of infusing the syrup taste INTO the griddle cakes. To top it off, they branded the new sandwich with an embossed stamp of the rounded “M” on the outside of each cake, just to make sure we all remembered who built the McGriddle. The syrup had officially, globally touched the egg.
Taste. Distribution. Simplicity. Brand Marketing. Innovation. High Calorie. Low Health Value. Deep Desire.

Only in McMerica…