In a world where we didn’t get a Ron Desantis campaign video featuring a Black Sun I would be like “listen maybe that’s a stretch” but nowadays literally anything is possible lmao
I don’t know if this is explicitly a thing, as propaganda involves coercion and is rather one sided, while PR optimally should be a two sided relationship with minimal coercion, with intent to satisfy both parties. Nothing is perfect, but PR is not propaganda. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Lee
yep! public relations was *literally* made up by this dude, Sigmund Freud's nephew, to replace the word propaganda because it had ugly war-time connotations and needed a rebrand because it was too effective to give up
I did think it rather odd when they rolled out Luftwaffle Fries earlier this year but chalked it up to just an unfortunate oversight on the part of the marketing department.
I mean it's actually because Steak & Shake is fully MAGA and they announced the switch by saying they were "RFK Jr.-ing" their fries and now they're marketing them with Nazi typography.
There is not a single answer to this. Duck fat fries are great, but tallow has a lot of fans. In this specific case they are going after McDonald’s because their fries were done in tallow until the early 80s and some feel they haven’t been as good since the switch
Yeah, both are really good but in different ways. Duck fat fries are more bitter-savory. Their flavor is strong, which makes me think they're better snacks / appetizers while beef tallow are better side dishes.
Yeah I loved them when I was a kid. We'd stop there on the way back from Chicago and other random assorted times. Last time I had it was in '22 and it was terrible. The burgers were just burnt meat and the fries were pure grease. Good riddance.
It makes me sad because I have fond memories (from 20 years ago), but I've heard nothing good recently, even before this. And apparently it's all touch-screen ordering now too.
Right, my complaints are not even food-based (other than them phasing out the jarred pepper condiment). Ordering at a kiosk, picking up the food at a counter, and then eating your food in a bland white room. It feels like a sad cafeteria.
No one tipped for shit back when they had servers, and it made it incredibly difficult to keep them on staff. I'm talking whole families all ordering combo meals and milkshakes and then tipping $1-$2 total.
Is that recent? Circa 2000 and again in 2004-05, I waitressed at two different locations and made decent money. I definitely had jerks and the church people dropping pamphlets instead of cash (glargh) but I know $2 would have felt unusual for a table with a check much over $10.
I remember going to them as a kid and it was always such fond memories. Now it's like the whole idea is just..ick. it's bad enough it's overpriced and not the same 50s style diner vibe anymore, now they're just full on Nazi-promoting. Can't come back from that.
Oh…they started going for cheaper food when it was brought out in 2008. And started to do leaner staff. It was weird when I started in 2010 cause some of my co workers were pre buy out and told me a lot of this. Really bummed they phased out servers.
It's wild how you can consistently trace the decline of a once decent brand to the time they got purchased by a private equity firm. But I'm sure the mutual owners of Steak n Shake and ::checks notes:: Maxim magazine know what they're doing.
Someone mentioned the other day the chain got bought out several years ago and it was part of the new owner's "vision" to go in a more fastfood direction rather than casual dining
Allowing your white pride customers to torture your primarily black cooks and servers in an open kitchen environment is gonna create terrible service and substandard cooking.
Wow. That is crazy.
We don’t have any Steak and Shakes around here. I hope other restaurants don’t follow suit, although we don’t eat French fries often, because they’re not good for you! 😂
You’re absolutely right. My grandfather smoked like a chimney and was always drunk.
He lived to be 93.
We always said that he was pickled and smoked, that’s why he lived so long. 😂
Not that it really matters, because it's not like Steak'n'Shake aren't little-f heartland fascists anyway (& always have been), but that typeface is a modern revival of an old English blackletter design. German blackletter tends to be a lot more angular (and illegible to modern English readers).
If you want to be really pedantic about it, the Nazis didn't like the Gothic blackletter font common in Germany before the war, they thought it was old fashioned and they are the ones who phased it's usage out. But of course, during the thirties you would still have a lot of it everywhere.
i was done with them after the last time i dined in. they are designed for take out only now and you get one refil, using those stickers that prevent you from getting just a lil more
I actually don't understand this one. I can usually pick up on nazi symbolism and dogwhistles, but I must be missing something here. could someone explain it?
The context matters, they've spent the past month or so desperately trying to rebrand as a MAGA restaurant chain with a lot of "notice me senpai!" posts to Elon and RFK.
So them posting the fashy font with "throwback" is almost certainly an attempt to court their new chosen neo-Nazi demographic
that makes sense. I don't exactly keep up with steak and shake. I can't remember the last time I saw an open one, so I assumed they got private equity'd a long time ago.
that said, I don't necessarily buy that a nazi in todays america is capable of this level of plausible deniability.
genuinely cant think of another nation where its a super regular thing to overhear like "yeah i have to find a new wholefoods market, no the produce is pretty good but they went overtly fascist"
I've had tallow fries. It's like eating a candle. The inside of your mouth gets coated with a film of semi-solid fat. The inside of your mouth isn't warm enough to keep it liquid. Same goes for lard.
If you absolutely need to use animal fat for some reason, duck fat is the way to go.
German public institutions still used gothic fonts. While the nazis tried to ban them - to a degree because they are more difficult to read and less functional - the effort was too big during the war, so they stayed associated with the Third Reich.
I’m sorry, a font that was in widespread use across Europe for centuries is not “associated with the third reich”. That would be like saying “paper is associated with the Third Reich” or “firm bread is associated with the Third Reich”.
And Hitler didn’t even try to ban paper or bread. Hitler did bring the concept of superhighways to the world but we don’t look at superhighways as “associated with the Third Reich”.
The autobahn is actually a good comparison - the concept existed before Hitler, he just used it excessively for his purposes and the term is forever connected to the Third Reich, although many nations saw the need for a street for motor vehicles in the 1920s.
The way courses are served one after another is associated with French cuisine. However, "service a la francaise" would traditionally be about bringing all at once, whereas the tradition of courses comes from Russia, which we associate rather with empty plates. I guess it is how culture works.
Germany still had functional text in gothic fonts when the fashion in most other nations already made them a decorative fonts to emphasize tradition. So it really is just about Germany using them for half a century after everybody else had dropped them.
Don't forget the color scheme, which is . . . just the same black, white, and red color scheme that they and every other burger restaurant has always used.
This is exactly what happens in post Totalitarianism. Václav Havel in his essay The Power of the Powerlessness uses an example of a shop keeper who puts in his window a sign saying 'Workers of the world, unite!' as a form of signalling to the regime...
The font was favored by Nazis for their propaganda, and the logo was altered to resemble icons of the third Reich. The adoption of beef tallow also falls in line with modern right-wing influencers who push for as much meat as possible for masculinity" while pretending seed oils are unhealthy.
Working for this company I can tell you senior leadership is bigoted and cruel even with a majority of minorities working there. This doesn’t shock me and they won’t learn their lesson. This is who runs the company bigots.
did not finish this book + tbh this argument reads as silly to me, but 'hitler's american model' cites fraktur font as evidence that texts were not intended for outsiders
WE LITERALLY LOST TO AN ELDERLY WOMAN WHO SPILLED COFFEE ON HER PUSSY SO BAD IT RIPPED HER LEGS UP LIKE TISSUE PAPER.
WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? ARE YOU INSANE? DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE HINDU (ME INCLUDED) AND ARE IN INDIA?
I mean, you’re just misinformed. They changed it earlier in the 90s because of a rich dude spending millions on an ad campaign. They were sued later because they added beef flavoring and didn’t label it. They settled and still use the beef flavoring to this day. https://www.thedailymeal.com/1020277/the-mcdonalds-fries-scandal-youve-forgotten-about/
Too bad I can confirm this brands leadership has always been insane it’s why a lot closed down and why a good majority of employees either sued them and/or don’t have anything good to say. The senior management all supported Trump I was the only progressive a few years ago:
It is times like these I can be grateful I have celiac and will never eat fast food again, and yes, I've had steak n shake and all the rest before I was diagnosed.
In all fairness, this faiiing burger franchise's color scheme has been this way for a decade. The food is so bad that it makes Whataburger look like a Michelin fiver star steakhouse.
But #SteakandShake could call them KKKuhfett Fries.
The funny thing is it wouldn’t take much. Sardar Biglari has had a tough time with the brand and has been indebted due to multiple class action lawsuits or selling property to become rentals and lower sales
“An offer you can’t refuse” is a murder threat, Steak n Shake. This is one billion times more cringe than posting “mommy pwease step on me uwu” to the group chat instead of your ex.
okay but Wienerschnitzel
A: is clearly trying to theme itself as a medieval olde-timey Bavarian sort of deal
B: is not sucking up to RFK Jr 24/7 like Steak N' Shake is currently doing
there's no need to give Sn'S the benefit of the doubt here, they absolutely know what they're doing
There's "the owners suck" and then there's "the official social media account of the brand spends all day actually nazi posting and specifically attempting to rebrand itself as a restaurant for nazis"
The way this was like a nostalgia fast food of mine from when I lived in the Midwest and I suddenly discover they went completely insane in my absence 🥲
I grew up in the Midwest and frequented many hamburger chains. Wendy’s, McED’s BK, Hardee’s, and Arby’s which isn’t even a burger chain but it counts. Worst burger I ever had was from the Stake n Shake in Coralville Iowa. It wasn’t just bad, it was disgusting. Zero surprise they are Nazis.
Throw Up Fries. My mother and grandmother rendered beef tallow for making lye soap. Considered it unhealthy for cooking. I don’t understand the fascination with or obsession for frying with beef tallow.
The logo was changed in 2011 to make stylized wings from the previous design elements. Not the best choice though. The text looks more like the New York Times logo than Fraktur. Anyone have a particular thing they’re thinking this looks like? I’m not finding one specifically.
I didn't know that Steak and Shake took a hard right turn into hyper conservative politics. I try to keep myself out of stuff like this and I just thought people were making shit up. I apologize
They are using a red background with a black and white circular logo, and they are marketing directly to a particular subculture that makes a big deal about not eating soy or seed oils. The "seed oils" thing is especially popular in far right circles.
I've seen it around for awhile but I couldn't say exactly where. I just know it exists in that niche of far right types who are really into raw milk, high meat diets, and not vaccinating their kids. I want to say it got started in the paleo diet stuff?
I definitely saw it often back when I was dealing with body image/food type issues and spending a lot of time in diet and fitness forums. And if I ever looked at anyone's post history outside the diet subreddits it was always the most ugly, mean stuff. Glad I didn't get sucked into that world.
Someone shared a video on FB a month or two ago about reducing processed food intake (fine) but it ended with eating raw milk, raw eggs, avoiding seed oils, etc. The video was done by a supposed "functional doctor" of some sort; don't remember the speciality.
The context matters. Using the font for "throwback" comes across different when the official social media for Steak N' Shake has spent the past month or so openly kissing the toes of RFK and Elon. They're attempting to rebrand as a nazi restaurant chain, guess they think it'll drum up business.
I did some further research and apparently the blackletter/gothic font, specifically Fraktur, was used during the Nazi period. It seems it was promoted as being "true German script"
I guess that claiming they’d “RFK’d” the fries a couple days ago didn’t get the reaction they wanted. Definitely a choice when their branding is 50s Americana, not 30s Germany.
Genuinely don't get how beef tallow is supposed to be healthy.
In my city we have a restaurant called "Heart Attack Grill" where everything is purposely cooked as unhealthy as possible. How are the fries prepared? In lard.
So basically, if you're talking about steak 'n Shake & eating healthy, they are about as polar opposite as humanly possible. If you eat this garbage food it's gonna catch up to you that simple. There's plenty of calories, but there's no nutrition whatsoever.
While I agree that this company is really really shitty and bigoted, I dont think that font is Fraktur as many people are stating. Looks to be just a basic gothic font. The capital F would look real loopy and weird if it was Fraktur.
Still, sucking up to elon and orangy's lackeys is cringe.
Yeah it's just a blackletter style font, and I suspect they chose it because of the whole "throwback fries" thing and blackletter is medieval. An unfortunate design decision given other recent tweets though, for sure.
They used Fraktur heavily before they banned it. It featured on most of their propaganda for most of the time they were in power and the decade before they came to power. The decree banning Fraktur even had Fraktur in the letterhead. In contrast, many of the books they burned were in Anitqua.
Just over four years later they were out of power, and the ban on Fraktur wasn't like a book burning, it was a gradual replacement of the movable type on printing presses, so it took time for the ban to cause Fraktur to disappear from daily life.
So even though it was their ban that ushered in the end of Fraktur in Germany, its near-total disappearance from daily life ironically ended up being roughly contemporaneous with the end of Nazi rule.
Well I figured someone could maybe do this by accident, given that's their regular logo - and blackletter typefaces aren't uncommon.
So I actually scrolled their twitter feed to see what kind of posts they were making generally, and it was FULL of Elon worship, libertarian crypto, stuff like this:
I can let the logo go since that’s how it usually looks. But with the nazi font and the rest of their posts AND the fact that they actually haggled in the comments about taking down the post…of
That has been their color scheme since 1934. However the Fraktur font is brand new. They never used that until right now... when they wanted to start appealing to Nazis.
Ours crumbled and went under and was bought by a POC who turned it into his own restaurant that sells the same type of food without the side of bigotry.
Not at all the same thing. Like there is a huge fucking difference between a media outlet that's used that as their font for decades, vs a fast-food chain that picked up the new font around the same time they started openly supporting Elon, RFK Jr, and MAGA.
Comments
So this is 100% intentional
someone knew what they were doing
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Lee
No doubt one of them runs their social media site.
https://bsky.app/profile/celescapra.bsky.social/post/3ljsjnlosik2o
Full on, Bending the Knee, and Kissing the Ring.
Also Old English isn't a Nazi Font just because Musk used it once for a shit hat.
Are they courting Nazis? Yes
Is EVERYTHING About the Nazis? No
you couldn’t pay be to eat there now tho
last time I went I felt sorry for the cows that died to make such a flavorless burger
🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️
We don’t have any Steak and Shakes around here. I hope other restaurants don’t follow suit, although we don’t eat French fries often, because they’re not good for you! 😂
Which is almost good news because self-hating queer JD Vance is next up. That dude is awful in about every way.
He lived to be 93.
We always said that he was pickled and smoked, that’s why he lived so long. 😂
So them posting the fashy font with "throwback" is almost certainly an attempt to court their new chosen neo-Nazi demographic
that said, I don't necessarily buy that a nazi in todays america is capable of this level of plausible deniability.
If you absolutely need to use animal fat for some reason, duck fat is the way to go.
Carl's/Hardees
White Castle
Those you stop at.... not this one. :)
😳
….. 🤢🤢🤮
Ain't a dogwhistle, it's a foghorn.
This goes waaay back. Years ago, McDonald’s revealed they used beef tallow to make the fries flavorful.
Vegetarians objected, and McDonald’s supposedly stopped doing it.
America is the only country where McDonald's fries aren't vegetarian.
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
next up:
WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? ARE YOU INSANE? DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE HINDU (ME INCLUDED) AND ARE IN INDIA?
I’m glad I’m not the only one.
almost.
The name bothers me, I'm not sure why.
Maybe the mental image of a steak covered in milkshake.
Or a milkshake made of steak.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2831265
But #SteakandShake could call them KKKuhfett Fries.
That's German for cow fat.
Overall, the design is still very weird and screams 1930. yikes.
"Demolition Man part 2... out with taco bell and woke, in with Steak 'n Shake, freedom and tallow fries!"
is this some sort of pathetic attempt to be Wendy's, but like, the nazi version of it?
Cooking with non-vegetable oils in a commercial setting in Anno Domini 2025 is... a choice. A very expensive and labor-intensive one.
It's vice-signaling all the way down.
Here’s what US fast food chain Wienerschnitzel used to look like.
A: is clearly trying to theme itself as a medieval olde-timey Bavarian sort of deal
B: is not sucking up to RFK Jr 24/7 like Steak N' Shake is currently doing
there's no need to give Sn'S the benefit of the doubt here, they absolutely know what they're doing
They’re from Indiana so I just assume the people behind them are awful 😂
These folks have a screw loose
"Yeah boss, I made it real Nazi just like you asked"
I'd boycott them if I ever went there to begin with.
😂
😂
😂
☠️... 👻
I did some further research and apparently the blackletter/gothic font, specifically Fraktur, was used during the Nazi period. It seems it was promoted as being "true German script"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiqua%E2%80%93Fraktur_dispute
In my city we have a restaurant called "Heart Attack Grill" where everything is purposely cooked as unhealthy as possible. How are the fries prepared? In lard.
Steak N Shake doesn't even compete in Arizona.
Didn't they from My Pillow Guy?
Hey what happened to him? Trump didn't give him jack shit right?
Duffman did this, and he's Jewish.
Still, sucking up to elon and orangy's lackeys is cringe.
So I actually scrolled their twitter feed to see what kind of posts they were making generally, and it was FULL of Elon worship, libertarian crypto, stuff like this:
Have y'all seriously never seen a gothic typeface before? Jesus christ.