There is something we collectively get wrong about Krispy Kreme. We remember the many locations and the hot, delicious donuts that were like nothing a competitor could match. Then, helped along by typical internet narratives, we remember Krispy Kreme as an unstoppable cultural juggernaut powered by glowing neon “Hot Now” signs and hypnotic glaze waterfalls. … Read more

If you search for the invention of toast today, popular trivia sites and AI search snippets will confidently tell you that ancient Egyptians invented toast to preserve bread in the desert heat, or that the Romans “popularized” it because the word comes from Latin. It’s clear that this is not a satisfactory answer. It ignores … Read more

In June 2018, the marketing team behind IHOP made an announcement that sent the internet into a collective tailspin. After sixty years as the International House of Pancakes, the chain was legally abandoning the letter P and rebranding to IHOb. For days, the company played coy about what the mysterious lowercase b stood for. Guesses … Read more

We can count cows and pigs. We can certainly count sheep. But we don’t eat a beef, we eat some beef, and we would never say “three porks.” Yet if you open old volume of the Oxford English Dictionary, you’ll find a strange historical artifact: the official plural of beef was once beeves and the … Read more

We have a number of familiar and iconic peanut butter brands. There is Jif, Skippy, and Peter Pan, flanked by store brands and upscale organic jars. But, isn’t something missing? Where in the world is Planters Peanut Butter? It’s one of the most persistent curiosity gaps on the food internet. Planters is the undisputed, century-old … Read more