{"id":12803,"date":"2015-06-07T18:00:41","date_gmt":"2015-06-07T22:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=12803"},"modified":"2015-06-06T17:59:59","modified_gmt":"2015-06-06T21:59:59","slug":"14-sizzling-facts-about-steak-n-shake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=12803","title":{"rendered":"14 Sizzling Facts About Steak ‘n Shake"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Jeff Wells <\/strong>and Mental_Floss<\/a> present 14 Sizzling Facts About Steak ‘n Shake<\/a>.\u00a0 Here are three of my favorites…<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

1.\u00a0<\/b>It started as a gas station serving fried chicken and beer.<\/b><\/p>\n

Founder Gus Belt and his wife, Edith, feeling squeezed by the Great Depression, began offering fried chicken, fries and coleslaw at their Normal, Illinois Shell station for $.45. Beer was just $.09. After the town council voted 2 to 1 to ban the sale of alcohol, the Belts decided to open a burger restaurant, and in 1934 Steak ‘n Shake was born.<\/p>\n

4. Gus<\/b>\u00a0wasn\u2019t afraid to get dirty.<\/b><\/p>\n

According to Robert Cronin, former Steak ‘n Shake CEO and author of Selling <\/em>Steakburgers<\/em>, Belt used to go through the restaurant\u2019s trash and returned plates to see what customers weren\u2019t eating. He used his disgusting findings to further hone the menu.<\/p>\n

8. Roger Ebert was a huge fan.<\/b><\/p>\n

The longtime Chicago Sun-Times<\/em> columnist had his first restaurant meal there as a kid (steakburger, fries and a Coke) and claimed unwavering devotion the rest of his life. He gushed about the chain in a 2009 blog post: “If I were to take President Obama and his family to dinner and the choice were up to me, it would be Steak ‘n Shake\u2014and they would be delighted.”<\/p>\n

\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeff Wells and Mental_Floss present 14 Sizzling Facts About Steak ‘n Shake.\u00a0 Here are three of my favorites… 1.\u00a0It started<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-trivia","comments-off"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12803"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12804,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12803\/revisions\/12804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}