Restaurants - The Chains Arrive: KFC on Garland Road in 1964

While restaurants historically have not been intended as monuments surviving for generations, they do acquire emotional and cultural significance as time goes on.

Phillip Langdon

Orange Root, Golden Archives

1986

We grew up in an era of few chain restaurants  We had several Kips, which was a franchisee of the Big Boy restaurant chain.  We had a few local chains - Youngblood's Restaurants, Luby's and Wyatt's Cafeterias.

Most of our growing up didn't include a McDonald's, Burger King or Wendy's.  It didn't include a Pizza Hut or Pizza Inn.

A few other restaurants had one or two other locations, which we never knew about.  But where we ate did indeed "acquire emotional and cultural experience" - because we ate there.  We ate with wide-eyed wonder and growing sophistication  Eating mattered and it mattered where we ate.

Even before the automobile was invented, Americans had already started eating in chain restaurants in major cities of the East Coast and long the Western rail route.  They needed elsewhere to eat - preferably a place known for reliability.

Fred Harvey opened a restaurant at the Santa Fe Depot in Topeka, Kansas in 1876.  Gradually his system of Harvey Houses spread into Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and other states.

His most notable designs appeared in the Indian country of New Mexico at Albuquerque, Lamy, Las Vegas, Vaughan and Gallup.  There the style incorporated elements with Indian and Spanish Colonial elements designed by artist Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter.

She is well known for her design of the La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe and the buildings on the south rim of the Grand Canyon.

The first cafeterias appeared in the 1890's usually operated by the YWCA.  By 1906 cafeterias were being run as profit-making enterprises in Los Angeles where Boos Brothers established a chain.

The first Automat opened in 1901 by two Philadelphia lunchroom operators, John Horn and Frank Hardart.

In the Automat, the food was cooked in advance, put behind glass cases, you made a selection and put coins in a slot.  Heated or refrigerated compartments could deliver everything from soup to ice cream.

The glass fronted compartments and shiny nickel-plated fittings created an impression of clean, sparkling conditions and also gave an illusion of effortlessness; all the labor went on behind the scenes.

By the 1920's, restaurants were investing in exhaust fans.  Restaurants suffered a decline in business every summer, in hot weather; people were less inclined to go into restaurants.

The solution lay in air conditioning, which became available in the 1920's and commonplace in the 1930's.

Walter Anderson, an itinerant fry cook, opened a restaurant in Wichita, Kansas becoming one of the first restaurant operators to aim at making hamburgers more appealing.

The secret, he discovered, lay in fattening the meat into thin patties with onions and then searing them on both sides to seal in the juices.

They also created a castle-like structure painted white and furnished in a white interior to symbolize cleanliness,.

A similar chain, Krystal, began in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1934.

Another competitor, Toddle House, a shortened version of Hall-Dobbs House, in 1938 in Memphis, Tennessee.

Howard Deering Johnson opened an ice cream stand along the beaches and roads featuring a superior tasting high butterfat ice cream in 1925.

He opened his first full-service restaurant in 1929.  Ultimately his franchised restaurants featured Georgian-style architecture with orange root, cupola and a distinctive weather vane.

J.G. Kirby, a Dallas candy and tobacco wholesaler, derived the idea of a restaurant that would serve people in their automobiles - thought to be a first.

The restaurant specialized in barbecued pork sandwiches.

In 1922, Roy W. Allen and Frank Wright opened three walk-up root beer stands in Houston featuring five-cent mugs of root beer.

The finest drive-ins were reserved for California where the State featured a mild climate, dispersed cities and suburbs, the widespread reliance on automobiles and the willingness to experiment.

One of the key elements in drive-ins sociability at a distance were "tray girls" known as car hops.  Car Hops often wore standardized uniforms, often appearing in bright uniforms that included military-style caps and pants with a stripe down the side.

Life Magazine in the 1940's featured a Car Hop from Sivil's Drive-In which featured satin majorette costumes with white boots and abbreviated skirts.

In June 1940 Sherb Noble opened the first Dairy Queen in Illinois featuring soft ice cream.

By the late 1950's, car hop drive-ins competed against another kind of restaurant - the self-serve "fast food" outlet, where customers got out of their cars and stood in line for food.

Fast food outlets featured hamburger-based menus and the turnover was twice as fast as the drive-ins with shorter number of employees.

The drive-in rapidly declined in major metroplex areas.  In 1967, Sivil's sold their land on Fort Worth Avenue which was converted to as mobile home lot.

In December 1948 Richard and Mac MacDonald opened a limited menu and standardized menu which featured fifteen-cent hamburgers, ten-cent French fries, and twenty-cent milkshakes.

George W. Church, Jr. retired from running a hatchery and started Church's Fried Chicken in 1952 in San Antonio.

Dunkin Donuts opened in 1950 in Quincy, Massachusetts.

In 1961, the Whataburger chain, founded by Harmon A. Dishon in 1950, began to erect a-frames with orange and white stripes.

References:

Orange Roots, Golden Archives - The Architecture of American Chain Restaurants.  Phillip Langdon Alfred A. Knopf.  New York 1986 725.71

Google - Fifties Coffee Shop Architecture.  Alan Hess, Chronicle Books, San Francisco 1985 725.71

Drive-In Deluxe, Michael Karl Witzel. Motorhood, International 1997