Your Brand’s Last Meal Says …?

I was at a state fair, Washington State to be precise, and during my journey there with my friend David, we, of course, sampled much of the fair’s culinary offerings. Now, I like food; David likes food. Neither of us would have what some would call an educated palate. I operate with a limited palate, not limited or restricted on purpose like Sargent used, but limited in its scope. I like fried; it should be on my tombstone. Anyway, there we were eating our way through the fair, facing massive sandwiches and cheese-dripping burgers, and David said, “I need a corndog.” Not, I want, or I’d like, he said, I need a corndog. It was a quest and one that can be oh so easily satisfied at a state fair. After a brief search, we came upon a corndog stand. Now, we passed a few stands that served corndogs, which David passed up because “They weren’t focused on the corndog; it was an also-ran, not a main contender.” So, when we turned a tented corner and saw Hommer’s Corn Dogs, David stopped, smiled, and rubbed his hands together. We had found the spot.

I freely admit, I’m not a fan of the corndog. I like my dogs grilled on a bun with pickles, onions, and mustard. The corn breading is too much for me, but not for David. He ordered a jumbo dog with a variety of dipping sauces, and we found someplace to sit. Now, it may seem counterintuitive to sit and eat a corndog; the stick shoved into the thing makes it infinitely more mobile, and that, I thought, was the point. But even though I have known him for years, I had no idea the extent to which David liked, nay, loved a corndog. There was no roaming, no sightseeing, no let’s go watch the … NO! We sit, and we savor the splendor of the corndog.

I wasn’t eating one, so I had the chance to watch someone eat this state fair staple and ask him about it as he did. First off, he informed me, all food should come on a stick; not sure why, but food on a stick just tastes better. He also waxed culinary on the ratio of dog to cornmeal batter. Too much batter and you’re just eating corn pone on a stick. I glossed over the ease with which he said corn pone, like it was just part of his vocabulary, like he grew up saying corn pone, and listened while he moved on to the dog. “Gotta have a good, all beef dog. Those don’t get weak and mushy in the hot oil; they also have a good flavor that can cut through the sweetness of the batter.” I was in awe of the way he broke down the treat and explained how something deceptively simple could easily go off the rails and come out icky. He dipped his corndog in hot mustard, English mustard, and hot sauce. Listen, he said to me before he took a bite, listen for the crunch. I leaned forward; he solemnly took his first bite and, yup, there it was: a crunch as he bit through the batter. He sat back and chewed. “Perfect,” was his adjudication of the fair fave, and then he showed me: “See, I got batter, and I got dog; you want that in each bite. You don’t want just batter, and you need batter on every bite of the dog.” He ate that corndog with reverence; a calm passed over his face with each bite. When he was done, or when a normal person would have been done, he went back and nipped every bit of batter and dog off the stick until it was clean and bare. “Now that,” he exclaimed, and he did exclaim; he said it loud enough for anyone in the seating tent, by the Tilt-a-Whirl, to hear his review, “That was a corndog.” The review didn’t include an adjective like good, tasty, or well-made; the review simply bestowed the name corndog on the experience. As if it had to be right, perfect, with great balance, even batter distribution in order to earn the moniker corndog. This one had achieved that. He tossed the stick into a trash barrel, said thank you as it flipped from his fingers to the can, smiled, and patted his stomach. “Now we can ramble, “ he said, and ramble we did.

I was thinking about that today because I saw an article, an interview where the interviewer asked the interviewee what they would choose as a last meal. I laughed and thought of David, if he ever ended up in that position, which he never would, but he’d probably order a half dozen corndogs and give the specifics of the meal to ensure the dogs were perfect. But it made me think.

What the Last Meal Says

Because nothing happens in this life without someone putting it under a microscope and analyzing it to death, I wondered about last meal choices and if they have any deeper psychological meanings. Turns out, they do. Someone- many someones actually- have done studies on what the last meal choice means. They make sense. One study says that inmates can show the deeper side of themselves with a last meal request, and the requests come down to three categories: Comfort, nostalgia, or defiance.

In the comfort category, we find inmates who have accepted their guilt and want something comforting before they face their final moment. These are high-calorie foods, often fried foods and usual comfort staples, like burgers or fried chicken. Lots of meats and something huge and sweet for dessert. Guilt accepted, punishment accepted now, a good hug in a plate, a reward for coming to grips with and admitting what you did was wrong.

For nostalgia, inmates often chose a hometown favorite, a burger place or a breakfast dish from a much-loved diner. The nostalgic choice comes from inmates who long for home, happier times, or a connection to a specific memory; usually that memory is positive, and it’s where the inmate still had a choice but made the wrong one.

Rejecting the meal altogether is a last act of defiance. This was most notably shown when Lawrence Russell Brewer, in Huntsville, Texas, ordered for his last meal: an enormous, expensive, seven-course feast that included two chicken fried steaks, a triple-patty bacon cheeseburger, a pound of barbecue, three fajitas, a meat lover’s pizza, and ice cream. The defiance? He didn’t eat a bite of it. He certainly showed his true colors to the end with that request, and he also ruined it for everyone else. After the expensive meal was ignored, Texas decided the whole last meal thing was over, and now an inmate on death row gets a regular meal served to everyone in gen-pop.

What’s the deal with the last meal anyway? Well, turns out, the idea of a last meal comes to us from the Greeks, same folks we got Democracy, philosophy, and science from. Their thinking was, if you feed a condemned person, then their hungry ghost won’t come back to haunt us. Makes sense for back then, I guess, but does it still hold up now? I have no idea. It seems strange that we can hold people in cells for years on end before we execute them, and then they have to make some hard choices: how do you want to die, lethal injection, gas chamber, electric chair, hanging, or firing squad? Then, they have to choose what the last thing on this mortal coil they’ll eat. Imagine the abject pain of ordering your last meal and taking one bite and realizing, this isn’t what I wanted at all. On top of everything else, you made the wrong last meal choice. That’s not a good way to go out.

Side note: if you order an elaborate last meal or a simple one, it shows who you are: a calm, grounded person or one prone to flights of fancy. It’s not just a last meal; it’s a psychological barometer.

Now Your Brand Must Die

This isn’t a very upbeat topic, but it can be an enlightening one. If brands are people, then what would your brand’s last meal be? Not an easy question, is it? What does this final meal say about your brand? Who would think, yes, that meal is on brand? Let’s look at our three categories: comfort, nostalgia, and defiance, and imagine some last meals for a few brands. This in no way means the brands mentioned are dead, dying, or criminals; we’re just having some last meal fun. We all know that deodorant isn’t going to kill someone, and it certainly cannot eat a last meal. So stow your outrage, put on the fun cap, and let’s tie this thing up, shall we?

We’ll start with comfort. Take a brand like Applebee’s. If it’s on death row for using a salad fork while eating dessert,  comfort is the whole order. Nothing bold, nothing that reminds you of a specific memory, no last stand. Just the same reliable, unbothered version of itself it’s been serving up under fluorescent lights since day one. “Eatin’ Good in the Neighborhood” isn’t a last meal; it’s every meal. That’s the thing about comfort: it doesn’t have a final form, because it never had an ambition to begin with. The last plate looks exactly like the first one. That’s comfort. And a little lack of imagination, but hey, who are we to judge. Applbee’s last meal would be: Chicken Wonton Tacos as a starter, followed by the whiskey bacon burger, and for the last dessert, a triple chocolate meltdown. Familiar, fatty, comfort food to send you off this mortal coil with a lump in your guts and a lot of farts released when they send you on your way.

Now we move on to the nostalgic brand’s last meal. Nostalgia belongs to Blockbuster. There’s one location left, in Bend, Oregon, running almost entirely as a museum piece for people who want to feel something about 1998. Blockbuster’s last meal wouldn’t be about who it is now — there is no who-it-is-now — it’d be entirely about who it used to be. The rental late fee, the walk down the New Releases aisle, the smell of the carpet. A brand ordering nostalgia for its last meal is a brand admitting the best version of itself is already in the past tense. This last meal would take some doing. Like they would have to get the guy who did the old Dunkin’ Donuts commercials, “Time to make the donuts,” drag him out of retirement, and have him hand the inmate a bag of burgers from Minnie and Ted’s, a mom and pop diner on the corner of You Grew Up Here Street and Remember that One time boulevard. The place where the food was fine,  but the memories are chocolate-dipped and as tall as a tree. Sending your brand off to the sweet by and by with a head full of delightful thoughts.

Now we come to defiance. The brand that says I can eat fifty hard-boiled eggs. The brand that had the warden saying What we have here is a failure to communicate. Defiance is Quibi. Nearly two billion dollars, a launch built for a moment that had already passed, and it folded in about six months, having never really been eaten by anyone. It’s Brewer’s seven-course spread, almost exactly expensive, enormous, built entirely around what the company wanted to say about itself rather than what anyone actually asked for, and just like Brewer’s meal, it soured the whole category behind it. Short-form streaming took years to recover the credibility Quibi spent on a meal nobody touched. So, what would this defiant brand order? With all its pride and self-belief, it would stay true to its name. Quibi was short for quick bites, so their last meal would be White Castle burgers. Tiny, one-bite burgers that don’t taste all that good, unless you’re stoned or hung over. To stay in character, the last meal would be eight dozen White Castle burgers, because nothing says lack of success like excess.

The Takeaway

Which brings me back to David and his corndog. His review wasn’t “good” or “tasty”; it was that the thing in front of him had finally earned the right to be called what it claimed to be. All that fuss over batter ratio and beef versus not-beef wasn’t fussiness for its own sake. It was him checking whether the thing matched its own name.

Most brands don’t get that kind of review. Applebee’s, Blockbuster, Quibi none of them are bad at being what they are. They’re just each, in their own way, an also-ran wearing a name they never quite grew into, the way those other corndog stands were technically selling corndogs without ever being about the corndog.

So ask it about your own brand, the way David asked it about his dinner: if this were the last meal, the one order left before the lights go out, would it be the thing your brand actually is or the thing your brand has just been getting away with calling itself?

That’s the whole test. Not whether the last meal is elaborate or simple, comforting or defiant. Whether it’s honest. Whether, when it’s done, somebody could look at what’s left on the plate and say, without hesitating, “Now that was a corndog.”