The Fleisher brothers (Dave Fleischer and Lou Fleischer) used Bluto in this short as the operator of a diner who is annoyed by Wimpy's hamburger mooching. This is loosely taken from E.C. Segar's Thimble Theatre comic where a recurring character named Rough House, a hard working chef who owns and operates the Rough House Cafe, is often seen serving meals to Popeye and his friends and trying to avoid the mooching ways of the hamburger loving Wimpy. Bluto is used in this cartoon to give Popeye someone to fight since Rough House is an ally to Popeye.
Hamburgers had become hugely popular in the Depression era and were standard fare at diners across America. The postwar drive in restaurant fad would continue their popularity, leading to the first fast food burger joints.
In this short, the audience learns why Wimpy loves his hamburgers so much, as he extols their merits while cooking.
The sign on Bluto's diner, which lists a ham sandwich but charges extra for both the ham and the bread, is reminiscent of an old British saying, if we had some ham, we could have some ham and eggs, but we haven't any eggs.
The safe incorporates one of the newest features on telephones, the rotary dial. At the time, most Americans who had a phone usually asked the operator to connect them to their desired number. And telephones generally were wall-mounted or the 'candlestick' model, though the days of the individual desktop phone were imminent.