History, Society, and the Industrialization of Restaurants
Global Dynamics of Dining Out
Eating out is a fundamental part of modern global life, with significant economic and social impact.
In the United States, more than of the food budget is spent on food prepared outside the home.
In Canada, the figure is lower than the US. Approximately half () of all Canadians eat out once a week, while another typically get takeout.
In Singapore, almost of the population eats out daily, frequently utilizing the numerous hawker stalls found across the island.
The global restaurant industry generates annual sales of approximately .
Theoretical and Study Framework
The study of dining out aims to understand the distribution of food through several key questions:
Who invented the restaurant and how has the institution facilitated social inequality?
What are the technological components and social consequences of the phenomenon known as McDonaldization?
Can restaurants serve as vehicles to promote sustainability and food justice?
The lecture is structured into three main sections:
Restaurants and social distinction.
McDonaldization and mass production.
Reforming the restaurant.
Deep History of Eating Out
While legend often attributes the restaurant's invention to the French, eating out predates the modern era by thousands of years, originating in the earliest cities around years ago.
Mesopotamia: Archaeologists have discovered millions of bevel rim bowls, which served as the original mass-produced takeout containers.
Ancient Rome: Restaurants, taverns, and takeout shops were located on nearly every block. Occupants of tenement houses often lacked private kitchens and relied on street-level establishments.
Ancient Mexico: In the Aztec capital, the great market of Cletoloco was filled with tamale vendors.
Cambodia: The Angkor Wat Temple walls feature carvings of cooking cauldrons and skewers, illustrating historical food preparation.
Social Drivers: Urbanization attracted immigrants from the countryside. Women, in particular, found economic opportunities by selling food to neighbors. Economies of scale made cooking for groups more cost-effective than individual or family cooking.
The Chinese Restaurant Tradition (12th Century)
China possessed a dynamic restaurant culture as early as the twelfth century, particularly in the capital of Kaifeng.
Regionalism: Kaifeng imported foods from across the empire, emphasizing regional culinary distinctions, such as fresh seafood and specialized regional dishes.
Social Hierarchy in Chinese Dining:
Xinyan (Wine Restaurants): These were elite entertainment palaces for the wealthy, featuring food, drink, gambling, theater, and both male and female prostitutes.
Jiaoyang (In-between Shops): These specialized in specific dish types, such as noodles and buns.
Fenglong (Share the Wealth): These establishments specialized in leftovers.
Lower Class Eateries: Street vendors served what was known as rough food.
Early Mass Production: Long before modern fast food, two large dumpling restaurants in Kaifeng operated with over ovens and employed or workers per preparation table to mix dough, shape buns, and bake.
Japanese Dining Culture (18th Century Edo)
Elite Dining: The highest echelon of restaurants served sashimi. Because of the cost associated with the freshest seafood, it was said that eating sashimi was like eating money.
Budget-Friendly Options: Salted tuna was cheap and affordable at the time (unlike today). Other budget items included sardines, shellfish, snails, squid, and fish balls.
Migrant Workforce: Male migrant workers without families relied on noodle shops. These were the first Izakaya, where workers could pair dinner with a shot of cheap sake.
Popular Foods: Grilled eel and tempura were widely consumed.
Sushi Evolution:
Makkasushi: Rolled sushi appeared in the late eighteenth century as a popular street food. Vendors wore hand towels on their heads and outlandish striped kimonos or jackets to identify their trade.
Nigiri Sushi: This style followed in the early nineteenth century.
The French Restaurant and the Concept of Distinction
The Legend of 1789: The French restaurant is traditionally said to have been born during the French Revolution when chefs, formerly employed by aristocrats sent to the guillotine, had to find a new clientele. They opened shops to sell aristocratic-style cuisine to the middle class.
Origin of the Term: The word restaurant originally referred to a thing to eat, not a place. It meant restorative, specifically referring to bone broths intended to restore health.
Individualization: Portions were individualized to match the specific dietary needs of the customer, which was an innovation over the old system of serving a fixed meal to all visitors at once.
The Innovation of the Menu: The menu was a primary innovation that allowed for individual choice but also served as a tool for social exclusion.
Social Exclusivity and Barriers:
Restaurants were theoretically democratic (open to anyone with money) but designed to make only certain social statuses feel welcome.
Maitre d': Staff would observe customers to decide if they were the right sort of person to be seen in the establishment.
Seating: Stylish patrons were seated in windows; those deemed less fashionable were sent to Siberia, a section in the back near the washrooms.
The Etiquette Barrier: One story describes a country couple arriving in Paris who, not understanding a menu, ordered the first four soups listed and became full before reaching the main course, markings them as bumpkins.
Privacy: Private party rooms allowed businessmen to meet with young ladies who were not welcome in their homes.
The Evolution of Dining in North America
Diversity of Venues: By the late nineteenth century, fancy restaurants served capitalist rubber barons, while workers ate at taverns offering free lunches with the purchase of a beer.
Street Food Stigma: Hot dogs and hamburgers were initially considered suspect and low-class.
White Castle (1921): This chain gentrified street food for the middle class. Its Disney fantasy exterior attracted customers, while the gleaming tile interior signaled sanitation and safety compared to street vendors.
California Car Culture (1940s): Carhop restaurants utilized waitresses on roller skates who took orders at the car. Trays hung on the side of the vehicle, allowing customers to eat without exiting.
McDonaldization and the Industrialization of Fast Food
The McDonald Brothers: Richard and Maurice McDonald originally owned a carhop restaurant in San Bernardino, California. They grew frustrated with teenage boys who loitered, flirted, and drove away other customers while generating no profit.
The System Change (1948): They closed the carhop, fired the waitresses, and remodeled the kitchen for mass production. They focused on a limited menu: hamburgers, fries, and shakes.
Economic Strategy: By selling items at each, they achieved high volume and low prices, resulting in significant wealth.
Ray Kroc: A Chicago kitchen supply salesman who sold multi-mixers (capable of making shakes at once). After McDonald's ordered machines, Kroc visited and eventually licensed the system for franchising.
Expansion and Mentality: Kroc's approach was highly gendered and aggressive; his autobiography was titled Grinding It Out. He expanded the brand to Canada in 1967, followed by Europe, Australia, and eventually Latin America, Asia, and former communist blocs in the 1990s.
The Japanese Launch (1971): The first Japanese McDonald's opened in the upscale Ginza district. The manager famously claimed that eating hamburgers and potatoes for years would make the Japanese taller, white-skinned, and blonde-haired.
Imitation/Viral Spread: The model was copied globally. The founder of Burger Queen in Louisville stated he would copy McDonald's even if they turned burgers while hanging by their feet. This led to chains like KFC and Taco Bell.
Global Chains: The model birthed international brands such as Jollibee (Philippines, serving spaghetti and pineapple quincers) and Nando's (Mozambican Peri Peri Chicken), as well as fast-food versions of Lanzhou beef noodles and Taiwanese bubble tea.
Technical and Social Components of the McDonald's System
Industrial Systems: Production was designed for maximum efficiency. Detailed manuals dictated every action, such as applying ketchup in an even, circular spiral motion starting near the pickles.
Hamburger University: A training facility outside of Chicago used to ensure managers maintained standardization.
Science-Based Tools: Laboratory-designed french fryers circulated oil to optimize frying.
De-skilling: The technology aimed to simplify jobs so anyone could perform them (McJobs), making workers easy to hire and fire.
Customer Socialization: Social interactions were scripted. The system downloaded the tasks of waiting and bussing tables to the customers. The goal was for customers to eat quickly and leave.
Market Positioning: Originally, McDonald's was a white, suburban, middle-class brand. It was a real estate business focusing on desirable locations and intentionally excluding minorities and those not fitting the middle-class image. In Rio De Janeiro, it even served hamburgers with champagne to maintain an upscale image.
Sustainability and Labor Issues
Economic Instability: Half () of all restaurants fail in their first year.
Labor Challenges: High employee turnover, low pay, lack of benefits, and poor conditions are standard. Long hours (early setup to late cleanup) and widespread reports of sexual harassment by both celebrity chefs and managers affect sustainability.
Exploitation: The industry often relies on immigrants who lack other options. Some owners exploit themselves and their families, working long hours to fund the restaurant while hoping their children will eventually leave the industry for professional careers via university.
Environmental Costs:
High-end exotic ingredients (truffles, sea cucumbers) can be harvested unsustainably.
Thirsty crops like almonds, pistachios, artichokes, figs, cherries, apples, and tomatoes deplete aquifers.
Mass production of beef for hamburgers drives the growth of industrial livestock.
McLibel Case (1994): McDonald's sued British activists Dave Morris and Helen Steele for libel after they protested the company's ecological damage. While the company won the legal battle due to UK burden of proof laws, it lost the public relations battle as many of the activists' claims were revealed to be true.
Reforming the Restaurant Model
Social Justice and Fair Wages:
European models treat waiting and cooking as professions supported by living wages, where tips are merely pocket change.
Zazi (San Francisco): This restaurant uses a no-tipping policy where menu prices include a living wage, revenue share, paid family leave, health and dental insurance, paid time off, and a retirement plan with an employer match.
Pasta Supply Company (San Francisco): Combing takeout with limited in-person service to reduce staff hours and improve social sustainability.
Democratization and Fast Food Inclusion:
Operation PUSH, led by Reverend Jesse Jackson, campaigned for minority ownership of McDonald's franchises, transforming the brand's demographics.
Karan Suri (A&W test kitchen, North Vancouver) uses global knowledge from India, Kenya, and the UAE to track TikTok trends and create inclusive items like spicy piri piri potato dishes.
Chains are adapting to global trends, such as Tim Hortons offering use of drink to compete with bubble tea.
Chefs and Stewardship:
Poppy Tutor: Advocated the philosophy of Eat it to save it to encourage stewardship of heirloom plants and endangered species.
Market Influence: Chefs made kale, radicchio, quinoa, and arugula popular, prompting farmers to grow drought-resistant crops.
Indigenous Chefs: Crystal Wapapaepa of the Kickapoo nation uses tapiri beans, black walnuts, and chokecherries.
Indigenous Ingredients (Australia): Use of native water seed, bush tomato, warongo greens, finger lime, and pakadu plum.
Marcus Samuelsson: At his restaurant Red Rooster in Harlem, he uses homeland grains like fonio and teff.
Questions & Discussion
Q: How does the history of dining out inform our current understanding of social class?
A: Class distinction has been a common theme across history, from the elite wine palaces of Kaifeng and the expensive sashimi of Edo to the maitre d' systems of Paris. Libraries of etiquette and high prices served as filters. McDonald's represented a temporary democratization of high-status foods (beef) but eventually created new types of inequalities through de-skilled labor and environmental degradation.
Q: Is the restaurant a viable tool for social change?
A: Yes, the restaurant can be a lever for promoting sustainability and social justice. Through shifting consumption habits toward drought-resistant plants, offering fair labor contracts like those at Zazi, and advocating for minority ownership and representation, the industry can be reformed one meal at a time.