Much of the food was preassembled; the slack time between the rush hours was used to prepare for the next onslaught. Here was the perfect restaurant for a new America, and it was a smashing success. There were long lines at rush hour, and by 1951, the gross annual receipts were $277,000, some 40 percent higher than in the old premechanized days. By the mid-fifties, the brothers were sharing profits of $100,000 a year, a dazzling figure for men selling items that cost fifteen cents apiece.
