Before Pizza Took Over, These 7 Fast Foods Were American Favorites
Pizza may be one of America’s most familiar takeout meals today, but the country’s appetite for quick, ready-to-eat food goes back much further. Long before pizza delivery became an everyday option, Americans could pick up hamburgers, hot dogs, sandwiches, and even oysters from businesses that specialized in convenient meals.
Pizza already had a place in American food culture around the turn of the 20th century. However, its wider expansion accelerated after World War II, particularly as pizzerias spread during the late 1940s and 1950s.
From five-cent burgers in Kansas to self-service restaurants in New York, these seven foods show how Americans satisfied their appetites before pizza became a mainstream favorite.
Hamburgers
In 1921, White Castle opened in Wichita, Kansas, building a business around small, inexpensive hamburgers. According to White Castle’s history, its early square hamburgers sold for just five cents, and customers could purchase them by the sack.
The idea was simple but effective. Rather than ordering a lengthy restaurant meal, customers could buy several small burgers in one order.
White Castle eventually expanded beyond Wichita, helping establish the hamburger as a recognizable fast-food offering. Its early success showed that a modest, convenient meal could become the foundation of a restaurant chain.
Those little square burgers helped shape a business model that would become familiar to generations of American diners.
Hot dogs
Hot dogs were already part of America’s quick-service food history decades before pizza chains became widespread.
In 1916, Nathan Handwerker opened a hot dog stand in Coney Island, Brooklyn. Nathan’s Famous records that the original business sold hot dogs for five cents each.
The stand offered a straightforward way to purchase ready-to-eat food. Customers could buy a hot dog without settling into a conventional sit-down restaurant.
The Coney Island setting also gave Nathan’s a distinctive identity. Over time, the business grew into a recognizable hot dog brand.
Nathan’s didn’t invent the hot dog, but its early history offers a memorable example of how a simple food stand could become part of American dining culture.
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Chili con carne
Not every convenient meal came tucked inside a bun. In San Antonio, Texas, chili con carne belonged to a distinctive outdoor food tradition.
From the 1860s into the late 1930s, women known as the Chili Queens served food in the city’s public plazas. Their offerings included chili con carne and other Mexican American dishes.
A historical account published by the University of the Incarnate Word describes vendors preparing or reheating food over mesquite fires and providing tables and benches for customers.
This was a different kind of convenience: a prepared meal outside the home, without a conventional restaurant.
The Chili Queens’ story belongs specifically to San Antonio, illustrating how local traditions helped shape America’s broader ready-to-eat food culture.
Tamales
Tamales have Mexican roots and a long history in American street-food traditions. Before modern takeout became commonplace, vendors sold them in communities across parts of the United States.
The National Park Service’s history of Latino food traditions documents tamale pushcarts in Los Angeles and describes how Black vendors carried tamales from San Antonio into the Mississippi Delta.
Men and women from different ethnic backgrounds participated in this trade, helping the food reach new customers.
Pushcarts gave vendors a mobile alternative to a fixed restaurant. Prepared food could travel to the places where people bought it, making tamales part of a street-food tradition that extended beyond any single neighborhood.
Po’boys
In New Orleans, the po’boy offered a distinctly local answer to the substantial sandwich.
A widely repeated account connects its name to the city’s 1929 streetcar strike. Restaurant owners Bennie and Clovis Martin, who had previously worked as streetcar conductors, reportedly provided sandwiches to striking transit workers.
Smithsonian Magazine’s account of po’boys and the strike explores that connection. It is best presented as a familiar origin account rather than an uncontested explanation of the first po’boy.
The sandwiches became known for crusty, soft-centered bread and fillings such as roast beef, shrimp, and oysters.
Unlike White Castle’s small burgers, po’boys offered a larger sandwich format while retaining a strong connection to their home city’s culinary identity.
Related: 7 Foods That Contain More Calcium Than a Glass of Milk
Pot pies
Imagine choosing a prepared meal from behind a glass door and collecting it without conventional table service. That was part of the Automat’s appeal.
Horn & Hardart opened an Automat in Philadelphia in 1902, followed by a Times Square location in New York in 1912. Customers selected foods displayed inside glass-fronted compartments.
History Associates’ account lists affordable pot pies among the Automat’s Depression-era offerings.
A pot pie might require more preparation than a basic sandwich, but the restaurant handled that work before the customer arrived.
The result was an efficient way to serve a familiar comfort dish, demonstrating that convenient restaurant food did not have to mean something eaten from a bun.
Oysters
Oysters may suggest seafood restaurants and special occasions today. In 19th-century New York, however, they also belonged to everyday urban dining.
Historical accounts describe oysters sold at market stands, curbside stalls, and oyster cellars, as well as more elaborate restaurants.
Ephemeral New York, drawing on food historian William Grimes’ book Appetite City, describes inexpensive oyster sales and customers from different economic backgrounds. A Smithsonian-sponsored historical feature also identifies a 19th-century oyster stall at Fulton Fish Market.
Keep this example rooted in New York rather than treating it as a nationwide habit. Its surprise lies in the contrast: a food now associated with a special order was also available from ordinary urban sellers.
