At the very least, it's debatable whether Schlosser's portrayal of Carl Karcher is more sympathetic than that of any of the other the fast-food entrepreneurs he describes in Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Most of these small-business people were very hard-working folks from modest backgrounds, whose lives, generally, seem no less sympathetic than Karcher's.
I would conjecture that the reason that Schlosser opened his book with Karcher's story is that Karcher was the most typical beneficiary of the changes that affected the fast-food industry, both in his ability to follow its trends and in his original location in the Anaheim, California area.
Schlosser's theme is the way in which the fast-food industry has completely permeated and transformed American food consumption, agriculture, and the economy in the past half-century, with much of that process engineered by corporate-government cooperation.
Returning to Carl Karcher in southern California, although he was shrewd enough to realize how the growth of the national highway system and burgeoning auto sales could make locating franchises near exits a profitable move, he was also benefiting not only from massive public investment in highway construction, but by a conspiracy of General Motors, Mack Truck, Firestone, and Standard Oil to buy up trolley lines in many U.S. cities, effectively dismantling public transportation in those areas to sell more cars, tires, and gas for the only remaining source of transportation. Nowhere was this executed with more thoroughness than California.
Karcher also benefited from the proximity of many of his franchise locations to the nascent Disneyland, located in Anaheim. From the Disney organization's innovative techniques for marketing to young, often very young, children, Karcher gained useful insights for reaching one of his industry's largest demographics.
And we may well wonder why this food can be marketed to children at all, since, as he points out, beginning in the 1970s, lobbyists have savaged fast-food safety regulations through allies in Congress.
The corporations who pay these lobbyists now control the "fast-food industrial complex," as Schlosser calls it, as well as a substantial part of American agriculture as a by-product. Through their use of flavor-enhancing chemicals, foods that look completely familiar have become completely reformulated in their incarnation as "fast-food."
In the concluding pages of his chapter on Karcher, as the former farm-boy engineers a takeover of the multi-billion-dollar corporation he's built, we see how completely he represents what the fast-food industry has become. When Schlosser asks him whether he misses the orange and lemon groves that have been replaced by fast-food places and strip malls in his beloved Anaheim, he replies, "No, I believe in progress."
https://www.thedailybeast.com/still-a-fast-food-nation-eric-schlosser-reflects-on-10-years-later
In the first chapter of his book Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser details the lives and careers of the fast food industry's founding fathers. Carl Karcher, unlike the McDonald brothers, Karcher was able to take his business from a small upstart all the way to a multi-million dollar corporation with locations nationwide.
Karcher's story is quintessentially American. He and his wife started their restaurant business with a single hot dog stand. Karcher quickly realized that he could take advantage of the booming car culture and cater to the increasing flexibility and transience of American drivers. Simply put, Americans had fallen in love with their cars. The automobile had, for many Americans, become their second space—a place away from home where they could relax, explore new ideas and places, and try new experiences.
Schlosser uses Karcher as an example of the American dream, told by the dreamer himself (Karcher). Schlosser knows that the thesis of Fast Food Nation is loaded. Many Americans cannot imagine life without fast food restaurants. The chains provide quick, low-cost food and also employ millions of Americans. By using Karcher's story as a jumping-off point, Schlosser paints a picture of American success. He then moves on in chapter two to illuminate the less-than-honest practices of many fast food chains. This comparison creates a juxtaposition that is raised repeatedly throughout the book. Schlosser knows that the history of fast food in America isn't a simply a tale of evil corporations taking advantage of a captive audience. Rather, the story is much more nuanced. By relying on facts and interjections of personal narratives, Schlosser allows the reader to come to their own conclusions about the nature, intent, and future of fast food in America.
While Schlosser includes the story of rags-to-riches fast food entrepreneur Carl Karcher, the founder of Carl's Drive-in Barbeque and later Carl's Jr. restaurants, he makes it clear that Karcher's successful beginning did not last. Karcher's story is in many ways symbolic of the hopeful rise and inevitable fall of the fast food industry that Schlosser writes about in his book.
Karcher was a hard-working, poor entrepreneur who capitalized on the meteoric growth of southern California and its car culture to build a fast food empire at the end of World War II. In the 1980s, however, Karcher and other members of his family were accused of insider trading, and he came to an agreement with the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) in which he paid more than half a million dollars. He was eventually also pushed out as head of the company, though he was later able to return to lead it. While he recovered his position and fortune, his company had become a huge business that was missing a great deal of the personal touch and hopeful dreams of his early enterprise. Therefore, Schlosser's inclusion of Karcher's story does not negate his argument that the fast food industry has declined over the years.
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