Ask HN: Longest Breadstick | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Longest Breadstick

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So I had this idea and I wanted to get feedback. What if you opened a novelty restaurant, like in Vegas, where the main attraction is “the wold’s longest breadstick”. And it’s just a long breadstick that is continuously being added to and baked on a conveyer belt. Then you could cut sections and serve it to customers.

Is this a good idea?

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No, but it is creative!

A few problems I see:

* Demand - how many/much breadsticks do people really want? Olive Garden is (in)famous for unlimited breadsticks but it is really just a gimmick to get people in the door to spend money on drinks and entrees.

* Quality - fresh warm buttery breadsticks are great but do you want to be near the end of the line getting lukewarm soggy breadsticks?

* Technology - is it even possible to bake bread in a continuous process. No commercial bakeries I know of do, so you'd likely have to develop and maintain that type of oven and baking techniques from whole cloth. There are probably some food safety and insurance issues around letting customers touch and cut your breadsticks.

* Margins - restaurants are notoriously low margin businesses. You'll need to invent and create the equipment that makes the endless breadstick possible and pay for rent and employees in a high enough traffic area that makes this even practical.

It's a fun idea, but I think something like a conveyor belt of plates[0] is a better, more practical idea. Nothing special on the food side of things, but go crazy on the technology side. Gamify the food selection options, add some games like pub trivia so only the winners can unlock the plates as they go by. Add alcohol items to the belt.

[0] https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/culture-co-nashville

I doubt it'll get much interest as an attraction, but thinking practically you could probably use a pizza conveyor oven, and just keep adding smallish strands to a bread braid to run it through on slow to bake. Not sure what you'd do with any extra bread though.

> Not sure what you'd do with any extra bread though

Eat it

If at one end you are cutting sections and serving them, and the other end is being assembled, your claim to be the world's longest breadstick would have to rest on the baked-but-not-cut segment. The longer that gets, the less fresh it is. The breadstick crowd can't be that picky but there are limits.

OTOH if you measure from the very first piece you cut, and count every additional foot of baked bread over time, it'll be disappointing to customers to advertise a thousand-mile breadstick and see a 5 foot stick inching out of the oven.

Here's what was done to make the world's longest baguette. [1] I'm sure the same method could be used for a breadstick.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLDrPWdOEic&ab_channel=FRANC...

This would fit well over at https://www.halfbakery.com/

It would be funny to track distance and have a photo wall for all the people who've had a piece of the breadstick indexed by which piece they got. Sanitation would be quite a trick.

in vegas? Yes probably. Rather important to keep it continuous and take that part serious.. Get some authority on ridiculousness to document it, like guinness book of world records for the breadstick which is both the longest breadstick and the longst continuously baked, and thus also the oldest, breadstick ?

But if you cut it up then you're just serving a normal sized breadstick.

What if you don't cut it, but instead people just take turns taking bites, see gif: https://i.imgur.com/AnTtoDR.gif

Make it a theme: longest bread stick, pizza, pasta. You could try sandwich, too

Weird attractions like that aren't really in Vegas, too much competition, eg. Celine Dion, etc. Largest ball of yarn and whatnot is generally off the Interstate in nowheres-ville.

why stop there? same setup, but make it an "infinite (rectangular) pizza". when's the kickstarter?

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