For our weekly “In It for the Money” feature, we’ll be introducing you to the kick-ass Knock Knockers who make everything go, from creative to sales to logistics to . . . everything! Note—everybody answers the first five questions. After that, they have about fifteen wild-card questions from which to choose.

Relaxing at my desk. I didn’t wear my argyle socks today.

1. Name and title? Shane, Production Manager.

2. Originally from? Southern California.

3. What the hell do you do all day? It’s a mystery.

4. Favorite thing about working at KK? 1. Its proximity to Gjelina Take Away (GTA). I recommend their awesomely seasoned half-chicken, which they place in a cast-iron pan and roast to perfection in a wood-fired brick oven; 2. Its proximity to my home (i.e., a twelve-minute walk); 3. The people and products are pretty cool.

5. Favorite hobbies outside work? I like to make stuff. Pants, furniture, and a painting now and again.

6. Did your professional life exist before Knock Knock? Yes. I was a print production artist in the advertising world for several years, and did a little photo retouching for a few years before that.

7. Pet peeves? Earthquakes. Do we need them? I don’t think so.

8. If you were a superhero, what would your name and superpowers be? My name would be Atom Smasher and my power would be the ability to learn all there is to know about quantum physics (and understand it).

9. Any hidden talents? I made a mean soufflé. Once.

My thumbs.

10. Interesting factoid no one would know about you from first glance? I have a mutant thumb (see picture).

11. Except for bills, what do you spend the most money on? Traveling, mostly. But I also have a weakness for food and rent.

12. If you were granted one wish, what would it be? To live only four minutes from Knock Knock.

13. What advice would you give your past self? 1994: Buy a ton of Microsoft stock. 1998: Sell a ton of Microsoft stock. 2001: Buy a ton of Apple stock. 2007: Sell a ton of Apple stock. 2008: Move to private island.

So, usually the “WTF” feature will profile things to which we have mentally or verbally responded “WTF,” i.e., things that we just cannot believe people do, things we just cannot believe exist, etc. It’s an infinite topic, right?

For the record, we love Jennifer Aniston. Here she graces the cover of People much as our WTF Stamp graced her abs.

But for this debut “WTF,” we feel the need to share with you a WTF anecdote—about Jennifer Aniston.

On or about February 21, 2011, we were happily reading our People magazine (and by we, I mean me, because I am indeed a longtime subscriber—like, twenty years, when my Grandma sent me a gift subscription year after year in college and beyond; not sure when she stopped, or why, and I started footing the bill). The cover story was all about Jennifer (I refuse to call her Jen—that’s my name). She had to defend herself, you know, from all those “Poor Jennifer, she’s so pathetic and unmarried and childless” whiners and haters and talk about how much she loves her life and her age and her body (who wouldn’t, for god’s sake, at any age?) at forty-two.

All of a sudden, we came across this tidbit, in response to the question “Do you notice your body responding differently to diet and exercise as you get older?”:

Look, my girlfriends gave this to me [she lifts up her shirt to show a stamp on her (perfectly toned and taut—I added that part) stomach that reads “WTF”]. Because I’m always going, “What the f—” (FYI, that means “fuck,” because it’s not like you wouldn’t have thought the word in your head upon seeing the blank spaces), which I know is terrible. I just keep feeling like I’m premenstrual, so I just stamped it. I love my premenstrual “pillow!”

Made my day. Maybe my week. I mean, to have one of our Self-Inking Stamps on Jennifer’s golden, glowing, taut, toned abs? It’s almost as good as having our logo tattooed on her ankle. Or something like that.

Our WTF Stamp, ready for your abs. Or elsewhere.

Our publicists followed up with a call to her assistant, who confirmed that indeed Jennifer loves our WTF Stamp and further indeed wanted to buy twenty for her closest BFFs and offered a credit card number. But because she’s rich and famous, and “To them that hath shall be given,” we of course gave them to her, because the more money you have, the more you should get for free. (And BTW, that’s just me being snarky. Jennifer offered to pay, and her peeps couldn’t have been lovelier. All snark in this piece reflects nonesoever on Jennifer Aniston, whom we happen to think is most certainly not pathetic—instead, we think that people who think a woman who’s unmarried and childless is pathetic are pathetic. Did you follow that?).

Now we’re just waiting for someone to get the WTF Stamp as a permanent tattoo. And they don’t have to be a celebrity, either. Any volunteers? If you do, we’ll give you a $100 Knock Knock gift certificate. Promise.

Michal Broomfield (beautifully pronounced “mcHAIL”) is one of our customer service specialists. In fact, you just might be lucky enough to talk to her if you have questions about your order! She’d like to show-and-tell about her recent trip to NYC. Go Michal!

Me in front of the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park. Beautiful!

I just returned from my trip to the New York International Gift Fair, which was filled with many firsts for me. It was my first tradeshow, my first trip to New York, and my first business trip ever—the word exciting doesn’t even begin to describe this wonderful experience! Between the mafia stories, the amazing selection of knockoff bags, and the overall go-getter mentality that the city puts you in, my trip was everything I could have hoped for and then some!

I started my experience with a full day of sightseeing, which took me to the top spots in the city: Central Park, New York University, Ground Zero, Chinatown, Battery Park, Wall Street, Bowling Green Park, Malcolm X Boulevard in Harlem, and the Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle. I quickly realized that the parks are where I would want to spend a lot of my free time. They are truly amazing, and the green from the trees mixed with the backdrop of the New York skyline is almost poetic! It’s pretty overwhelming once you realize how much there is to see. However, I found that the best way to find things would be to ask the locals. Cab drivers, bellmen, store clerks, and street performers became my tour guides throughout the great city.

You could say I was in an “Empire state of mind.”

It was fun to play on my first day, but let’s not forget the reason why I was there—the show! Two days were dedicated to show setup, which went by pretty quickly. It’s amazing to see a huge convention center like the Javits Center go from boxes and forklifts to lights . . . catalogs . . . and action! When the show opened, we were ready to sell, sell, sell! This tradeshow was a very important one for me, as it was my first opportunity to reach out to our retailers and speak to them face-to-face instead of via phone or email—something that added a personal touch to the outreach that we are able to do from the office. I also had the opportunity to meet and work with the hardworking sales reps that help distribute the Knock Knock line every day, which was a great experience, especially since some of them live on the East Coast and were able to give me advice on making my way through New York’s main attractions.

It took us all of Friday and half of Saturday to set up the booth. It was a hit, though, and the show attendees kept us busy!

The show lasted for five days and I feel we all did a wonderful job of promoting to new and existing customers. Many laughs were had in our corner booth by customers who found our products not just funny, but hilarious! Finally, we wrapped up the show on the last day, but not before being questioned multiple times by other exhibitors who were longing to gain some free Knock Knock “swag,” as Randy, our national sales manager, called it.

The end of my trip landed me in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and in North Philly, where a good friend of mine and her extended family live. It was very interesting to see what a huge difference there is between Manhattan—the bustling city—and New Brunswick, a very green, almost countrylike town.

The Knock Knock team, minus Trish Abbot, VP of brand development. We may Photoshop her in later. (Left to right: Michal Broomfield, customer service specialist and post author; Randy Erlandson, national sales manager; Craig Hetzer, chief creative officer; Jim Papscoe, chief operating officer; Dave Sokolove, NYC pinch hitter and charisma king; Carolyn Andrews, VP of sales.) Jen totally got out of this one and stayed home with the dogs; we won't be Photoshopping her in later.

I felt like a real New Yorker by the end of my stay—from riding the subway and hailing my very own cab to hustling to get the best deals on my knockoff bags. I hate to toot my own horn, but I could be considered a professional at this point! Ultimately I had a great time and hope to visit again in the near future.

A staged Knock Knock brainstorming session. We’re no longer sure why we did this.

Without chance, the world would just be boring. And without Google Roulette Mondays, in which we put a chosen word into Google Images to see what comes up first, frivolity would have no meaning.

Over the past nine years, we’ve become brainstormers extraordinaires. On any given day, we sit our bums down, throw back a margarita (or two . . . or three—or, really, none) and put on our thinking caps not only for product ideas and sales strategies but also (at least the other day) for additional creative brainstorming methods. Yes, you could say we are addicted to the storm.

Google option number 19, the German metal band Brainstorm.

Appropriately, the first image involves a light bulb (original right?). The second image is a bubble or mind map of “human expression and communication” (the latter seems almost prehistoric; it dates to 1999—before “human communication” evolved into texting, Facebooking, and Tweeting.)

One group picture caught our eye (it was the blood spatters): the German metal band Brainstorm (yes, they actually still showcase themselves on MySpace). According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the original meaning of “brainstorm” was “a violent transient fit of insanity.” So the name seems fitting. It’s all in the capitalization, though. While Brainstorm is an American band, BrainStorm is Latvian, and despite our patriotism, we found the latter’s songs to be much more meeting appropriate and, dare we say, catchy.

The outcome of a real Knock Knock brainstorming session—considerably messier than the staged one.

But we know you’re wondering what an actual Knock Knock brainstorm looks like. For some reason, on our server we seem to have a picture of a fake Knock Knock brainstorming session (shown at top), and only stumbled upon it when searching for the whiteboard chaos at left. (There are probably people in the office who know why it was taken, but it’s less fascinating if we ask them.) Isn’t the reenactment neat, meaning orderly? Real creativity is messy, however,  like our genuine whiteboard spew sessions. And yes, some of it is inappropriate. It wouldn’t be a Knock Knock brainstorm—in both senses of the word—otherwise.

The freaky sheep that started it all, captioned "The last thing you will ever see."

On the web, everyone’s a curator. How much fun are collections like this and this? Or in the editorial realm, compendia such as this? How did we collect things before the internet? Or, more importantly, whom did we show them to, and how?

Tumblr and Pinterest seem to be leading the charge in the visual curation genre, along with all the humor aggregator sites like Pleated Jeans or All My Faves. I don’t know how individuals keep up with their own feeds—I signed up for Pinterest at a friend’s behest a year or so ago, and I haven’t posted one thing, though I get notification of people following me every week or so.

Penguin Parody, captioned “Another piece for the house.”

My deepest pleasure lies in the kookier personal collections in which you get a sense of the collector’s (sometimes offbeat) personality. My new favorite in this category is http://nickholmes.tumblr.com/, which I wandered into for about three hours when my friend Dan posted a picture of this freaky sheep on his Facebook. Apparently this Nick Holmes is an aspiring actor, which must give him plenty of time to scour the internet for (mostly) smartly funny or curious imagery as well as, I think, make some of his own (the Penguin book cover parodies appear to be of his creation, because I can’t find them anywhere else).

Example of animal image, captioned “Adapt.”

Some of the pictures and GIFs will be offensive to delicate sensibilities, but moving through them to find the gems is well worth it. With respect to psychoanalyzing Mr. Holmes, I’ll tell you that he loves cute yet bizarre photos of animals; captioning pictures of strange-looking people in sometimes compromised positions; interesting sexual configurations and double entendres; and unclassifiable oddities.

Example of human oddities, captioned “No.”

He’s frequently very witty in his captioning of the images and is definitely a cultural commentator (if of very few words). Because the images are completely without context, you find yourself filling in the blanks about how the pictured situations came to be. I find this very satisfying. And the sequencing of the images tells a story too, just like I read about in college in John Berger’s Ways of Seeing.

Almost daily I thank the gods for the internet’s ability to allow people to showcase their interests and passions for the benefit of others, from the decorous to the truly strange. Have you come across any collections that you find really worthwhile?

Hello. Does this not say instant party for two?

Fete-a-Tete—a play on “tête-a-tête,” meaning “head to head” en français. Fancy and a little bit confusing, right? It actually couldn’t be easier: it’s everything you need for an impromptu party for two—just add wine.

We’ve got Happy Birthday. We’ve got Congratulations. We’ve got Apology. Stock up on a few of these, and if you get that last-minute call or insert your foot in your mouth yet again, all you need is a quick stop at the liquor store and it’ll make you look like you really worked hard to plan the celebration.

Each Fete-a-Tete contains a banner, a multiple-choice wine label that sits quite nicely over the wine bottle’s existing label, two coasters, and a multiple-choice greeting card with envelope.

We’ve got your birthday.We’ve got your congratulations.

Happy Birthday is great for the “I’d like to treat you for dinner” friend get-together, or for a birthday with a significant other that falls on a weekday, with the real celebration to follow on a weekend.

Say somebody calls you to announce they’ve just gotten an exciting promotion. All you need is the Congratulations Fete-a-Tete (which, horrifyingly, acronyms to “FAT”) and, yes, the bottle of wine (which, if abused, might just make you fat, but we digress).

After a big fight in which you were (even just a little bit) in the wrong, the Apology Fete-a-Tete will put you back in anybody’s good graces. And if it doesn’t, either you’ve done something truly unforgivable or the person to whom you’re apologizing is an uncompassionate hard ass.

And for some of you (you know who you are!) we’ve got your apology.

We’d love to see this in wine and liquor stores at checkout. In fact, we’re working on that. We’ve always grooved on the phrase “Just add water,” so why not evolve into “Just add wine”? It’s so much more satisfying.

Fete someone’s tete today. We guarantee that your very own tete (or other French body part) will be the better for it.

Taking a short break from work—just enough time for a picture.

For our weekly “In It for the Money” feature, we’ll be introducing you to the kick-ass Knock Knockers who make everything go, from creative to sales to logistics to . . . everything! Note—everybody answers the first five questions. After that, they have about fifteen wild-card questions from which to choose.

1. Name and title? Kelly Araujo, customer service manager.

2. Originally from? Boyle Heights—just east of downtown Los Angeles.

3. What the hell do you do all day? I oversee the customer service department to ensure that orders ship on time and that all of our customers are happy to do business with us. I also work closely with our sales department to handle most of our key accounts.

My favorite part of my desk is my son Jacob’s handprint (he just turned five years old!). It helps me start my day.

4. Favorite thing about working at KK? I love that everyone is so laid-back but efficient. The Summer Fridays aren’t bad, either.

5. Favorite hobbies outside work? Playing with my little boys, Jacob and Jason (even though I’m usually the villain).

6. Did your professional life exist before Knock Knock? Although it feels like a lifetime ago, I was a customer service representative at Closerie Publishing for a little over six years. It was my first job out of high school, so I learned a lot about responsibility and all that adult stuff! After that, I was in purchasing at Pacific Coast Feather Cushion Co. for about a year before I was scooped up by Knock Knock seven and a half years ago.

7. Interesting factoid no one would know about you from first glance? I have a slight obsession with Angelina Jolie. I have a collection of her movies and magazines with her on the covers, and I also have two autographed photos that are framed in my home office. Once, I even slept out all night to see her at a movie premiere. Oh, and I have a personalized license plate in her honor.

8. If you were granted one wish, what would it be? I would wish for more hours in the day. I always feel like I’m rushing around, so it would be nice to have extra time to slow down.

Here's my Angelina Jolie personalized license plate. I first got it ten years ago, and have been renewing it ever since.

9. Favorite place to sit back and relax? In my living room with my husband—before the kids wake up.

10. Hero in life  you look up to? Without a doubt, my mother. She is the strongest, most generous person I know, and I look to her for guidance on everything in my life.

11. Song you would pick as your theme song? “Just Breathe” by Pearl Jam. It’s an incredibly beautiful song about appreciating your loved ones, which is what I try to do every day.

Note from the blog folks: We’re devastated that Kelly will be leaving us at the end of the year to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming an elementary school teacher. In fact, when she started at Knock Knock in February 2004, she was in graduate school. After a break to get married and have one of the most gorgeous children you’ve ever seen, Kelly realized that the dream had never left her system. She’s been in school this year as well as having a baby (the other most gorgeous child you’ve ever seen) as well as working full time. Did we mention that Kelly is the most efficient, hard-working person we’ve ever met? Kelly’s now our longest-standing team member and one of our favorite people in the world. Many tears of sadness will be shed at her departure—though they’ll be followed by tears of happiness that she’s doing something (else!) she loves. May your children be lucky enough to have her as their teacher!

In our eyes, you are what you buy—judging solely on Knock Knock purchases, of course. In our “What Does Who Buy Where?” column, we determine the top five Knock Knock products in a selected city and compare them with the top five items in the United States overall.

The “Live Music Capital of the World’s” top purchases are almost in line with the rest of the nation’s. Almost.

Our All Out Of Pad (Red).

For a city that coined the phrase Keep Austin Weird, their Knock Knock purchasing record doesn’t seem to be all that out of the ordinary. The only shocking find is that they’re purchasing the All Out Of Pad in red rather than blue, since Austin is known as one of the most politically liberal cities in the state.

It’s a no-brainer that the What To Eat Pad is second on Austin’s list (compared to the country’s High Five Nifty Note). What with their food trucks lining the streets, it’s safe to assume they have some hefty gastronomic culture under their Tejas belt buckles. Or maybe the University of Texas Longhorns need some help in scheduling their meals?

We wish we were at Stubbs BBQ, one of the best places to see live music EVER, right now. Our head honcho took in a Lyle Lovett show while she was in Austin—not to mention appearing on "Good Day Austin"!

It’s notable that the Rate That Wine Pad came in fifth, as it’s not even in the nation’s top ten. We learned that there were some thirty-five wine bars scattered across Austin—sounds like a fun time! Perhaps people are taking the wine tasting into their homes and backyards (we’ve heard that Austinites throw great parties), the best use for the Rate That Wine Pad.

To top it off, there are plenty of movers and shakers in Austin, which may be why our This Week Paper Mousepad has been so popular with Longhorns. According to a 2009 CNN Money article, Austin was ranked as one of the top places in the nation to launch a small business. We’re going to assume that they scheduled their way to success—all thanks to us. (We aren’t actually assuming this, of course, but it would be nice to take the credit over here in California, wouldn’t it?)

Where are they buying all this great Knock Knock stuff? Could be at a Congress Avenue store called Monkey See, Monkey Do, one of our favorite Austin accounts!

Congress Street in Austin, Texas

Without chance, the world would just be boring. And without Google Roulette Mondays, in which we put a chosen word into Google Images to see what comes up first, frivolity would have no meaning.

This isn’t the type of pep talk we hoped for.

Whether or not your weekend went wrong, you have a “case of the Mondays,” or just really regret having taken that last shot of Jägermeister on Sunday night, we could all use a good pep talk—or know someone who’s in need of one.

While our Pep Talk Nifty Note and Pep Talks & Picker-Uppers for All Occasions are quick fixes for much-needed uplift, we look to today’s Google Roulette Monday for virtual good vibrations.

Did you know that Stuart is Al Franken’s middle name? We didn't either.

The very first image is a hand-drawn cartoon from what seems to be an on-hiatus blog focused on drawing mathematics-related cartoons “inspired by Sharpie fumes.” While we appreciate the drawing’s simplicity, doing math and sniffing Sharpies does not sound appealing for any time of day (actually, we take that back; apparently Jen likes math and particularly loves sniffing Sharpies).

The best amusement we found (scrolling past gems like this and this), however, was a picture of Saturday Night Live character Stuart Smalley—ah, the rejuvenation and nostalgia! Just reflecting back on “Daily Affirmations with Stuart Smalley” made us instantly feel good enough, smart enough, and well liked by actual people. Frail though he may be under that awful blond wig, we sometimes wish that we had Stuart’s positive mindset—at least to take us as far as hump day.

It’s our “Something for Nothing” feature, in which we give you something we wrote or otherwise made (other than the blog post itself, of course)—for free!

The original Menu Organizer was contained a translucent polypropylene binder. For a bit of wit, “Menus” was printed in mirror writing on the back of the binder. This version included more items than a company could possibly be profitable with: a pencil pouch, ratings sticky notes, a truly crappy pen or four (including two dry-erase so you could mark orders on the plastic sleeves holding the menus), and a life-sized (small) order-taking pad. And . . . the essay!

Back in the day, before Knock Knock was jaded (or sensible, depending on how you look at it), we put tons o’ editorial content in everything. Even in products for which you wouldn’t necessarily expect it. As a lapsed academic, I believed in research and footnotes (and still do, to a certain extent, though when time gets away from you and something isn’t perceived as “value-added,” one tends to stop doing it quite so much; remind me to tell you about the time I spent 18.7 hours researching and writing one greeting card).

I have long been fascinated with the evolution toward outsourcing our food preparation, akin to outsourcing the sewing of our clothing and the building of our homes—things we just don’t do ourselves anymore. So what better “Easter egg” to include in the first Menu Organizer than a history of takeout? I figured that those who would appreciate it would really appreciate it while others would simply ignore it. Remember—this baby was published in 2004, so it was before the Whole Foods superstore revolution. It’s amazing that in just seven years, so much has happened in this arena!

We actually gave permission to the Cornell University School of Hotel (and Hospitality) Administration to reproduce it in one of their journals, though we never saw the finished product, so perhaps it didn’t go forward. We were so honored that a university recognized how meticulous our research was! The ultimate realization of this concept was The Takeout Cookbook, which completely tanked, in part because it’s not really a cookbook, but a history of outsourcing our food. The content in that is great, though, so maybe one day we’ll figure out how to use it in something else, like cooking with leftovers!

The Definitive History of Takeout
First Published in the Original Menu Organizer, Spring 2004

Let’s face it—we don’t cook so much anymore. “Our society is transitioning to a point where preparing food in this country will have the same status as building our own furniture or sewing our own clothes,” says Scott Allmendinger, publisher of Takeout Business. “It won’t be too many more generations before that happens. People are already beginning to look at preparing food as an avocation or a hobby, like woodworking.”¹

The first refresh of the Menu Organizer, coincided with a refresh of all our organizers (Medical, Greeting Card, Pet, etc.). This paper-over-board binder held ingredients streamlined from the previous version—a larger order-taking pad, another crappy pen, and paper pockets instead of plastic sleeves.

Public dining is itself relatively recent in human history. The first known restaurant, opened in Paris in 1765, served soups and broths. While earlier establishments (mostly inns and hostelries) charged a fixed price for one meal, consisting of whatever the host cooked that day, the soup outfit displayed a varied menu from which the customer chose. In French, the word “restaurant” means “restorative,” and this pioneering soup vendor believed his fare to have salubrious properties. Irrespective of health benefits, the word on the soup sign stuck. The first full-service, luxury restaurant opened in Paris in 1782, and by 1804 Paris boasted some 500 restaurants, owing in part to the French Revolution, which, by displacing the aristocracy, put many private chefs out of a job.

The first restaurant in the United States, Delmonico’s, opened in 1830 in New York City. Subsequent American contributions to the dining genre primarily entailed the incorporation of speed and mobility. The United States is responsible for the first cafeterias (which arose during the Gold Rush to feed miners); restaurant chains (the first, Harvey House, opened in 1876, and operated in train stations across the country to feed passengers during stops); the railroad dining car; the lunch counter; fast food (White Castle opened its doors in 1921, 34 years before the establishment of the first McDonalds, in 1955); the specialty restaurant (e.g., seafood or steak); and the drive-in or drive-through. It’s no surprise that the United States has also led the way in food takeout and delivery.

The most recent refresh of the Menu Organizer is a classy ziparound case to contain even the most klutzy of menus—plus all the perks of its predecessor. Buy ten now!

While restaurants have flourished in the U.S. for almost 200 years, early eateries were oriented primarily to the wealthy and to travelers or laborers. Over the last fifty years, however, the practice of eating food prepared outside the home—whether in a restaurant or takeout—has risen dramatically. The restaurant industry’s share of the overall food dollar grew from 25 percent in 1955 to 45.8 percent in 2000,² a proportion expected to reach 53 percent by 2010.³

Of those dollars, a skyrocketing percentage goes to takeout and delivery orders—home-meal replacements, or HMRs in industry jargon. Dinnertime takeout has doubled since 1984.⁴ In 1996, takeout overtook on-site dining as the majority of all food-service occasions (54 percent), and continues to rise at three times the pace of on-site meal growth. Diners now choose to eat takeout dinner at home 61 percent more often than they did ten years ago.⁵ In 1998, 21 percent of all U.S. households used some form of takeout or delivery on a daily basis.⁶

Experts attribute this shift largely to the busyness, speed, and increasing specialization of contemporary life. In a 2001 survey, one third of respondents said they believe “using restaurants allows them to be more productive individuals” and that takeout meals are “essential to their lifestyles.”⁷ Industry researcher Hudson Riehle asserts that “Carry-out will only continue to grow in importance to the industry. . . . It seems unlikely that this trend will ever reverse itself.”⁸ When asked how big the takeout and delivery revolution would become for restaurants, consultant David Pursglove replied, “As big as you can imagine. Takeout/delivery meets every need that is developing—lack of time, need for more quality time with family, hassle over dressing and parking, etc.”⁹

The book that this essay, “The Definitive History of Takeout,” inspired. Yes, it tanked. Yes, we still have hopes to do something with the amazing content. And no, it’s not really a cookbook (perhaps part of its downfall).

These statistics show that we’re not alone, and we’re not necessarily lazy or extravagant. We simply don’t have the time or inclination to cook. Given this transformation of our eating practices, does it make sense that we store our precious menus in a chaotic jumble? Order your takeout food with pride and organization—you are part of the Takeout Revolution.

_{1.   “All Signs Point to Takeout Taking Off,” Donna Oetzel, Restaurants USA, June–July 1999.}

_{2.   National Restaurant Association, Restaurant Trends and Statistics, Frequently Asked Questions.}

_{3.   “A Guide to Success in 2010,” Susan Mills, Restaurants USA, September 1999.}

_{4.   Ibid.}

_{5.   See note 1 above.}

_{6.   Industry Statistics, National Restaurant Association.}

_{7.   “Quickservice Business on the Rise,” Robert Ebbin, Restaurants USA, August 2002.}

_{8.   “Forecasting the Restaurant Industry’s Future,” Moderated Discussion with National Restaurant Association, January 2002.}

_{9.   “What’s Hot in the Restaurant Industry,” Moderated Discussion with National Restaurant Association, June 2002.}