Running Head: BEHIND THE SCENES

Behind the Scenes: Applebees Edition Madison J Minor University of Northern Iowa

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Abstract This paper explores Tracie McMillan behind the scene at Applebees. After reading McMillans book, I want to learn more about the quality of food served in restaurants. McMillan wanted to know about food quality at Applebees. Applebees serves expired food. Americans are unaware of what they put into their bodies. The cooks at Applebees are considered assemblers, not actual cooks. Most food at Applebees is from a frozen package, sauces included. McMillan was asked to change expiration dates for two days longer so they would not have to waste money by throwing them away.

BEHIND THE SCENES Behind the Scenes: Applebees Edition Does the expired food in the fridge get eaten? In the book The American Way of Eating it does. The author, Tracie McMillan, goes undercover into the life of an Applebees

employee. She soon discovers her previous idea of restaurant food conditions are not what she expected. McMillan is faced with the harsh realities of restaurant food quality. After reading this book I refuse to eat at Applebees, and question the elements of other restaurants food too. I am writing about the aspects of Applebees food to get an idea of what is being served on Americas dinner plates, in order to understand what restaurants are truly paid for. Foremost, McMillan goes undercover for the sake of a variety of people. She has a personal interest, because she grew up in a middle-class home like many, and when going out, ate at restaurants such as Applebees. At the beginning she says, The kitchen Im in now resembles the one I grew up in: writ large. Just like the meals my family lived on throughout my childhood, much of whats served at Applebees actually wouldnt be that difficult, expensive, or time-consuming for a competent cook to make from scratch (211). Also, she wants to open the eyes of all Americans. McMillan chooses to go undercover at Applebees because of their enticing 2 for $20 meal deals and half-price appetizers after nine that draw customers in. When looking back on her experience, McMillan mentions, When I get to the parts about sixteen-dollar days and two hundred pounds of rotten asparagus and plastic melting into restaurant food, I almost invariably receive in response some permutation of the following: Are you nuts? (233). This proves that Americans are blind to what restaurants are serving. The outrageous thought of being served food with

BEHIND THE SCENES plastic pieces within would make anyone sick to their stomach. The sad part, nobody expects that situation going into a restaurant, or they would not go there. Applebees

affordable deals draw in customers who may be on the go or live a busy lifestyle. They have affordable prices, and what appears to be quality food. But gagging, McMillan notes, While Im at it, one of the lunch cooks hands me a half-full tray of expired bags of rice and asks me to change their use-by date from yesterday to tomorrow (205). This is what stopped me from eating at Applebees. Just like many other Applebees customers, the food looked perfectly delicious to me. After reading about the food being kept in plastic Baggies, and also finding out the Baggies melt onto the food, my mind was made. Another influence was reading the majority of food comes frozen; never freshly made in the restaurant. My mom and I used to celebrate my coming home from college on weekends by ordering half-price appetizers after nine: not anymore. The idea of eating expired food unknowingly is sickening. It is the image of chewing a bite of a strawberry and feeling the mold on your teeth. McMillan uses experiences the audience can relate to and uses words like assemblers to describe the cooks of Applebees because they assemble the food after it is defrosted. Never having to follow a recipe and prepare it. Many customers, like my mom and I, would be appalled to read what McMillan experienced behind closed doors. Next, McMillan uses many strategies to make her message clear to the audience. Her idea that, if a few extra steps were taken to prepare a home cooked meal more often, Americans would know exactly what ingredients they eat and the quality in which the meal was made. She proves this by saying, Certainly, it would be different than fast-food joints.

BEHIND THE SCENES But instead, I watch an endless assembly line, a large-scale mash-up that hits the sweet spot between McDonalds and Sandra Lees Semi-Homemade Cooking (210). McMillan implies this consistently throughout the section. The food in restaurants is not better

quality than cheap fast food. McMillan adds to her message by saying, I try, with occasional success, to lure the cooks into talking about food. One assessment is unanimous: We dont cook at Applebees. We assemble (220). She repeats this many times during her experience to emphasize her message. Clearly, it was an influential point to include because it had an impact on my own decision to stop eating Applebees and also to question the quality of other restaurant food. McMillan italicizes words for emphasis. When she says, Then we run out of soup, or rather, we run out of defrosted soup (223). McMillan puts defrosted in italicized writing to add shock value that Applebees serves defrosted soup. Many other times, McMillan makes comments about the food coming in frozen from the trucks: sauces, wings, burgers, everything. Another example of italicized words is The only difference was that meals cooked from scratch required about ten more minutes more active time- minutes spent chopping and sauting, for example- than box mixes (212). This adds to the message that spending the little extra time preparing a meal at home can make a huge difference in quality. McMillan makes her evidence believable because she not only writes her own observations undercover in the kitchen, but the observations of her unaware coworkers too. McMillan uses italic words and many examples to emphasize her message to the audience.

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Lastly, Tracie McMillan is a credible author. In the beginning of the book she writes, We ate a lot of Helper meals and Ortega Taco Dinners when I was growing up, and I liked them (2). She did not grow up in a high-class family; she grew up like many Americans: in an average middle-class family. She said, My dad sold lawn equipment for a living. My mom was gravely ill for nearly a decade. Most of my familys time and money went to medical bills (1-2). The fact that McMillan grew up in an average home added to her credibility and to her message that the statement, less well-off people do not want to eat healthy, is not true. McMillans goal was to answer the question: Why it is so expensive and difficult in such a plentiful country like America, for all Americans to eat nutritious food? She answers her question by literally stepping in the shoes of the people who transfer Americas food from the ground, to the store, to the dinner table, which also adds to her credibility. McMillan would not have been able to be nearly as accurate in her writing if she had just done research on the food processing in America. Not only did McMillan put herself in the shoes of these people, but she also did research of her own on top of it all. At the bottom of most pages, there are footnotes of research. Tracie McMillan published this book to open the eyes of Americans and also to answer some questions of her own. McMillan also wrote this book to get word out for people who do not have a voice in society; for example, immigrants working for less than minimum wage in California. The ones who can not complain that they are not being enough or tell anyone about being raped in the fields by the field owners, in fear of losing their job. McMillan shows Americans what life is like for immigrants who are just trying to give their families a decent life. In parts of the book McMillan is biased. She exaggerated certain parts because when she came to UNI

BEHIND THE SCENES to speak about the book she said she really did not struggle with money as much as she

claimed to in the book. She said she had more money than she knew what to do with. I do believe most of what McMillan wrote in her book. She lost credibility for lying at each job, not telling them that she was an undercover journalist. McMillan had good motives though. McMillan is right too; obesity and cost of health food is a problem in America. I experienced this first-hand working for Hy-vee. Health food can be several dollars more than another product and when you live on a small income, not everyone can afford it. Many people coming into the store were on food stamps. Even then, many families did not buy healthier food in the store because they needed to get as much as they could for their money. McMillan proves to be a credible author through her experiences in the food industry. In conclusion, Tracie McMillan opened my eyes and many others, to the behind-thescenes of restaurants. I refuse to eat Applebees anymore, and McMillan made that an easy decision with her use of italicized phrases and examples of her experiences. I could relate to McMillan and middle-class America because I grew up the same way on Hamburger Helper and TV dinners. I wanted to know what restaurants are really paid for and McMillans book gave me a good idea of it.

BEHIND THE SCENES References Joshua M. Paiz, Elizabeth Angeli, Jodi Wagner, Elena Lawrick, Kristen Moore, Michael Anderson, Lars Soderlund, Allen Brizee, Russell Keck. (2013-03-01 08:28:59) General APA Guidelines. Retrieved from https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/ McMillan, T. (2012). The American Way of Eating. New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc.