Even as the Depression deepens, the number of full-fledged restaurants continues to increase, from 134,293 in 1929 to 169,792 in 1939. Immigration slows in response to restrictive legislation of the late 1920s, reducing the supply of professional waiters and cooks. Female servers make up more than half of waitstaffs. The economical fixed-price meal, which had virtually been replaced by a la carte service, returns to popularity. Promotions such as “all you can eat” and “free coffee refills” are featured. After the repeal of Prohibition nightlife revives. Many diners, accustomed to speakeasies, show a preference for small, intimate restaurants. All-white interiors give way to imaginative decor which mimics ships or European courtyards. Federal financing facilitates modernization, encouraging restaurants to add streamlined fronts and air-conditioning. Deprived of bootlegging revenues, racketeers infiltrate unions and extort restaurants, dispatching picketers and stench bombs to those that don’t play along.
Highlights
1931 Restaurants drop prices and see patronage rise. In Chicago prices go down by 10% to 12%.
1932 Stores install lunch counters to lure shoppers and capture a piece of the flourishing lunch trade. Architect Ely Jacques Kahn designs a sleek tea room with vermilion-topped tables and green and black terrazzo floors for the Broadmoor Pharmacy on NYC’s Madison Ave. – Chains such as Schrafft’s, Childs, Horn & Hardart, Lofts’, and Bickford’s expand as they take advantage of reduced rents and absorb failed competitors.
1933 Expecting all alcoholic beverages to be legal by the end of the year, liquor suppliers court restaurateurs. In Amherst MA a small lunchroom operator receives complimentary wine and champagne from the S. S. Pierce Company. – The Afro-American proprietor of the Launch Tea Room in Sheepshead Bay decides to cancel plans for wintering in Palm Beach and turn her Long Island tea room into a free dining room for the poor.
1934 In post-Repeal California Ernest Raymond Baumont-Gantt opens Don the Beachcomber, while Victor Bergeron starts Hinky Dinks, forerunner to Trader Vics. In accordance with state law both must include food service with their bar operations. – In NYC, the president of the Downtown Restaurants association acknowledges, “We know now that repeal of prohibition has saved the restaurant business from utter annihilation and saved it just in time.”
1935 The pro-America mood of the 1920s continues, exemplified by a column in a restaurant trade magazine which asserts preposterously that Delmonico’s got its recipes from Southern plantations while in the 1880s French chefs “flocked to this country” to learn American cooking.
1936 An investigation reveals that Jack Dempsey’s, Lindy’s, The Brass Rail, and numerous cafeterias are among the NYC eating places that have capitulated to shake-downs by mobsters.
1937 The nationwide Childs chain reports that 47% of all alcoholic drinks served in their dining rooms are cocktails, 22% are highballs, 8% are wines (mostly sherry and port), and 
the remainder are cordials. Beer is the most popular drink in summer.
1938 The president of the National Restaurant Association warns members that the number of places serving meals has quadrupled in the past 15 years and only the ingenious will survive.
1939 A book on how to run a tea room notes that 30,000 restaurants are managed by women and advises prospective proprietors to make inquiries such as, “Do the racketeers expect you to pay for protection?”
Read about other decades: 1800 to 1810; 1810 to 1820; 1860 to 1870; 1890 to 1900; 1920 to 1930; 1940 to 1950; 1950 to 1960; 1960 to 1970
© Jan Whitaker, 2008
We eat in restaurants several times a week and yet know very little about their history. I plan to dip into my archive of research and images every so often to present a little tidbit that highlights aspects of our American restaurant culture. Let me know your thoughts.
6 Comments
November 8, 2008 at 4:41 pm
I find this all so fascinating. I just can’t get enough. I hope you don’t mind if I add you to my blog roll, I know many of my visitors will find it tastefully satisfying.
Thanks so much for sharing…
November 12, 2008 at 12:57 am
[...] is Restaurant-ing Through History, the blog for people who love to eat out, or used to. Lately, Jan Whitaker has been writing about the 1930’s, and it soothes the tips of my anxious tastebuds to know that numbers of restaurants actually grew [...]
July 30, 2009 at 6:14 pm
What did you find on the cafeteria chain, Albiani’s of Cambridge and Boston? I have scant information. My Dad worked there while a student at BU.
July 30, 2009 at 6:57 pm
The only thing I can tell you about the Albiani Lunch Company, as it was known, is that I have found it in Boston directories beginning in 1892 (when there were 6 locations) and ending in 1973. In 1962 there were 4 locations. Some of the company executives were Alf and Dominic Albiani. There was also an Albiani’s market, which may have been a butcher shop, but I don’t know if it was related. It was a type of eating place known as a dairy lunch. Dairy lunches were usually small self-service establishments. They had limited menus of sandwiches, maybe oysters and baked beans, doughnuts, and pie, with coffee and milk to drink. They were inexpensive, fast, and plain, and there were small local chains of these eateries in cities and towns all over the country before the fast food hamburger chains came along.
September 15, 2009 at 12:26 am
I am currently working on a novel, a historical romance set in the 30’s of a banker’s daughter and a hobo/tramp (it’s an adaptation, per se, of “Lady and the Tramp”.) I wanted a scene where the hero takes the heroine for a “free” meal, ala the spaghetti scene at Tony’s in the film. Would a restaurant in the 30’s possibly give “hand outs” or the such or should he take her to a soup kitchen?
Thanks!
September 15, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Alexandra, The traditional way that restaurants gave away food in the Depression (and before — and maybe now at times) was at the back door. They didn’t want poorly dressed folks who needed a bath coming into their dining rooms. For that reason, I would say it makes more sense for you to have your characters stand in a bread/soup line. If you’ve seen photos of bread lines in the 1930s, you know it was usually men who did this (all wearing newsboy-style caps) so a well-dressed woman in their midst would make a striking scene. — JW