# Marketing a fast food item **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 23, 2018, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marketing-a-fast-food-item/807267 "2018-01-23T02:15:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![harmonicamoon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/65b543/32.png) [@harmonicamoon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/harmonicamoon)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2018, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marketing-a-fast-food-item/807267/1 "2018-01-23T02:15:31Z")
A friend of mine has assembled common ingredients to make a fast food item. We believe the idea has potential. How to market it? The fast food chains would be interested. But how do you contact them? And how do you keep them from stealing your idea? What to do? And thanks, as always. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2018, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marketing-a-fast-food-item/807267/2 "2018-01-23T03:24:09Z")
Disclaimer: I’ve worked in market research, and advertising, for a number of clients, including fast-food restaurants, and I’ve also worked in product development for restaurants. It’s very, _very_ difficult for an individual to submit an idea for a product to any large company, be it a fast-food restaurant, or any other sort of manufacturer. Most of them have policies to refuse to even **look** at unsolicited ideas that have been sent to them, because they don’t want to open themselves up to lawsuits from frustrated inventors / chefs / entrepreneurs, claiming that the company has commercialized the idea that they had submitted, when what was more likely the case was that the company’s in-house R&D department had developed something similar, independently. And, frankly, if your friend has come up with an idea for a food item using “common ingredients”, then the odds are probably very high that one or more fast-food restaurants has examined and tested something very similar in the past. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2018, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marketing-a-fast-food-item/807267/3 "2018-01-23T03:31:12Z")
It is possible, at least in principle, to patent a recipe. Step 1, therefore, is to check whether someone has already patented the recipe which your friend considers novel. If not, then step 2 is to consider whether it is worth patenting the recipe now. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2018, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marketing-a-fast-food-item/807267/4 "2018-01-23T05:42:58Z")
Publish the recipe with your legal name on it. Then it belongs to you. Unless of course someone else has already done this. Some things are public domain. Like PB&J or rotel queso dip or rice crispy treats. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2018, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marketing-a-fast-food-item/807267/5 "2018-01-23T05:52:46Z")
> [@Beckdawrek](#): > > Publish the recipe with your legal name on it. Then it belongs to you. That’s possibly handle the issue of “it’s my recipe, don’t steal it”…but unless the recipe is so amazing and original that a restaurant chain would see it, and agree to buy it from you\*, it won’t help with the idea of trying to get a chain to commercialize the recipe. - - which is always possible, but, based on my experience, **extremely** unlikely. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2018, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marketing-a-fast-food-item/807267/6 "2018-01-23T06:08:26Z")
Yes, I agree. There’s not much new in the area of fast food items, imo. So it would have to be extremely unusual and unique. I don’t see it. But I never would of thought of curley fries either. ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2018, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marketing-a-fast-food-item/807267/7 "2018-01-23T06:36:11Z")
If you’re looking to turn a profit, you’d have much better luck starting a YouTube channel. Get enough viewers and advertisers will want to advertise on your channel. Even THAT is way difficult to achieve. But it’s way more doable than selling your idea to a FF company. And hell, let’s face it, even if they think your idea is awesome, all they have to do is make a few minor changes to the recipe and they don’t have to pay you shit. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2018, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marketing-a-fast-food-item/807267/8 "2018-01-23T07:09:02Z")
I wonder what gives this particular idea potential. Fast food companies tend to see potential as any way to dress up the same shitty stuff they sold before enough to convince people that it might be different. It’s about photography and snappy names. They aren’t especially interested in selling anything that is actually new. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2018, 8:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marketing-a-fast-food-item/807267/9 "2018-01-23T08:14:33Z")
^^Or tasty, for that matter. ---
**Author:** ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2018, 9:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marketing-a-fast-food-item/807267/10 "2018-01-23T09:24:11Z")
> [@Beckdawrek](#): > > ^^Or tasty, for that matter. Actually, for the chains there’s something even more important than taste and snappy names: packaging and ease of production. The OP may have a good idea…but can it be cooked,assembled, and put into a standard wrapping within 45 seconds? ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2018, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marketing-a-fast-food-item/807267/11 "2018-01-23T14:02:38Z")
UDS and Beckdawrek: recipes are not patentable. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2018, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marketing-a-fast-food-item/807267/12 "2018-01-23T15:18:47Z")
I’d say step number one is to open a fast food restaurant and try it out. If it’s as good as they say, Mickey D’s will be knocking down your door in short order asking to buy you out. In the meantime, your friend is making good money off of hungry customers. If they just want to make a lot of money by selling a recipe, yeah that ain’t going to happen. But if they’ve demonstrated that they have a streamlined process, cheap suppliers, and can sell a lot of them with minimal tools and employees, not to mention a nice gimmick that gets customers in the door, the big fast food players will be all over it. Recipes are a dime a dozen (actually they’re even cheaper than that). Proven processes, workflows, tools, training, marketing and a customer base are what companies value. ---
**Author:** ![Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a87d85/32.png) [@Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tired_and_Cranky)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2018, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marketing-a-fast-food-item/807267/13 "2018-01-23T15:20:06Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > UDS and Beckdawrek: recipes are not patentable. This is not quite true but it may as well be. The US Patent and Trade Office acknowledges that recipes are theoretically patentable. [QUOTE=U.S. Patent and Trademark Office] A food product or recipe typically has three components: a list of ingredients, instructions on how to combine and cook them, and the final product resulting from the first two components. In terms of patentable subject matter, a list of ingredients can fall under the headings of a composition of matter and/or manufacture, and the way the food product is produced can fall under a process. So the short answer is yes, recipes are eligible for patent protection because they potentially contain patentable subject matter. [/QUOTE] [https://www.uspto.gov/custom-page/inventors-eye-advice-1](https://www.uspto.gov/custom-page/inventors-eye-advice-1) But, the same source notes that home cooks generally won’t be eligible for a patent because: > [@](#): > > A final food product typically is nothing more than the expected sum total of individual components. For example, the more sugar one adds to a cake batter, the sweeter the finished cake is expected to be. Similarly, adding tarragon to a dish that doesn’t usually include tarragon may result in an unexpected taste for that particular dish, but not an unexpected result. When considering processes for food preparation, the ways different materials behave are well-understood, and making changes to the order or method of adding ingredients often results in something you’ve expected. For example, if a pancake recipe calls for adding an egg while the pancake is cooking on the griddle, while that may differ from what is commonly thought of as a pancake, it will produce a result that can be considered obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the culinary arts. > > There are exceptions in which the combination of ingredients used, or the way they are processed, results in a food product totally unexpected. That’s something that may be patentable. Numerous patents on food products are issued each year. However, if you take a look at most of these patents, you’ll find that the recipe was more likely to have been created in a laboratory than on a kitchen counter. If your friend wants to try to sell the idea to fast food companies, he could try to maintain his recipe as a trade secret. This would mean telling the fast food company about the recipe only after the company had agreed to buy it (fat chance) or getting them to enter a non-disclosure agreement before sharing it with them. Fast food companies have dozens or hundreds of people working on formulating new recipes. They don’t need stupid ideas from a million cranks on the street that probably taste bad or which can’t be affordably and reliably produced and sold. So they aren’t going to negotiate and sign a non-disclosure agreement with your friend to hear his brilliant idea. The last idea is that your friend can open his own restaurant and try to sell it himself. He can keep his recipe a secret. If he is the only one in the world who knows how to make it, and if seeing or tasting the item doesn’t give away the secret, he can sell as many as people will buy. If the idea is so obvious from looking at it can duplicate it (“I’m going to put the cheese inside the burger!”), others will just copy the idea. Chances are, someone has already tried whatever your friend’s idea is in any event. If it’s so easy to copy, no company would have paid him any real money for the idea anyway. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2018, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marketing-a-fast-food-item/807267/14 "2018-01-23T15:39:42Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > I’d say step number one is to open a fast food restaurant and try it out. If it’s as good as they say, Mickey D’s will be knocking down your door in short order asking to buy you out. In the meantime, your friend is making good money off of hungry customers. Ninja’d. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2018, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marketing-a-fast-food-item/807267/15 "2018-01-23T15:40:11Z")
> [@Tired\_and\_Cranky](#): > > This is not quite true but it may as well be. > > The US Patent and Trade Office acknowledges that recipes are theoretically patentable. I think it’s a bit of an equivocation on the USPTO’s part. A recipe as we commonly think of it like in a cookbook or online is not patentable. A completely new food product (digestable cellulose) would be patentable along with the “recipe” to create it. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2018, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marketing-a-fast-food-item/807267/16 "2018-01-23T16:42:56Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > I think it’s a bit of an equivocation on the USPTO’s part. A recipe as we commonly think of it like in a cookbook or online is not patentable. A completely new food product (digestable cellulose) would be patentable along with the “recipe” to create it. Look at patent [US6004596 A](https://www.google.com/patents/US6004596). It’s not a recipe, but could certainly be a fast food item, and they patented that. Could the OP’s item be patented in this manner? ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2018, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marketing-a-fast-food-item/807267/17 "2018-01-23T16:52:12Z")
> [@Bill\_Door](#): > > Look at patent [US6004596 A](https://www.google.com/patents/US6004596). It’s not a recipe, but could certainly be a fast food item, and they patented that. Could the OP’s item be patented in this manner? Looks like it’s the patent behind Smucker’s “[Uncrustable](https://www.smuckersuncrustables.com/products?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=UNC%5EGGL%5ETXT%5EUS%5EEN%5EB%5EPROD%5EOTH%5EEQ%5EEXT%5ENCA&utm_term=uncrustable&utm_kxconfid=rx6ckt72g&gclid=COnc2drE7tgCFVSSxQIddN0FWA&gclsrc=ds&dclid=CPn45drE7tgCFY99AQodm6sKdQ)” PBJ sandwiches. If you look at the illustrations in that patent, it looks like it may be as much about the process for making the sandwich as it is the sandwich itself. While it’s not food, a similar example would be the patent that Procter & Gamble had for Pert Plus two-in-one shampoo & conditioner in the 1990s. At that time, I was working for one of P&G’s major competitors, and P&G had a significant market advantage due to that patent – companies had tried to make two-in-ones for years, but shampoo and conditioner don’t want to get along (chemically) in the same bottle, and those products tended to be very inferior. P&G’s patent had nothing to do with the formula itself (there was nothing in Pert Plus that wasn’t in traditional shampoos or conditioners), and everything to do with the manufacturing process for getting the product to be stable in the bottle. We (and every other competitor) struggled for several years to come up with an effective two-in-one product that didn’t violate P&G’s patent. ---
**Author:** ![dstarfire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dstarfire/32/5762_2.png) [@dstarfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dstarfire)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2018, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marketing-a-fast-food-item/807267/18 "2018-01-23T20:11:34Z")
Try setting up a booth at a fair or festival. Not only will this give you an idea how well it works (in practice and how appealing), and may catch the attention of somebody in the food industry. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2018, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marketing-a-fast-food-item/807267/19 "2018-01-23T21:06:03Z")
Moved to Cafe Society. Colibri General Questions Moderator ---
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2018, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marketing-a-fast-food-item/807267/20 "2018-01-23T22:58:42Z")
Is it putting bacon on a cheeseburger? Because that may have already been done. mmm [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marketing-a-fast-food-item/807267.md?page=2)