And who created it? In general, the restaurants im thinking of are chains, have a generally family-friendly atmosphere, and in the immortal words of Moe Szylack, have lots of crazy crap on the walls. Offhand, I can think of Applebee’s, TGI Friday’s, Ruby Tuesdays, etc. So who came up with this type of restaurant? Is it actually patented? Many of them seem to use the same general marketing approach, and they tend to have the same kids of food (American fare such as burgers, steaks, and ribs). Anyone have any ideas?
You can’t patent a sales technique. It’s not an invention. The best thing you could do would be to trademark your restaurant’s name, logo, and other distinctive stuff.
As for who was first, it all depends upon your definition. There have been chain restaurants around since the early 20th century. Annoying cutesy ones probably didn’t spring up until the 1950s.
You can probably blame McDonald’s for some of this.
To my mind at least, The Harvey House chain of restaurants had to be the first true restaurant chain, at least in America. They were begun in the 1880s or '90s and ran through the 1930s.
Every major city in the U.S. and some not so major had its Harvey House.
They followed the railroad tracks rather than the freeways but the concept was much the same as your chain restaurants of today. Wholesome waitresses dressed the same in each location (they became world famous as the “Harvey Girls” - Hollywodd even made a movie about them in the '40s starring Judy Garland). There was also a standard menu and even a standard floor plan for each place.
TV
Hey, TV. I’m sure you’re right about the Harvey House restaurants being the first. But don’t get carried away. The were a Western chain. Not all over the US. From here. If you can name major cities East of Texas that had them, I’m sure the author of my link would love to hear about it. They were confined to seven Southwestern States.
Again, I support your opinion that they were the first chain restaurant.
And, it being the case that vast stretches of Western America were dry during the “Harvey Years”, no alcohol was served, which might have contributed to the family-friendly image. For an amusing, rather cynical description of a Harvey restaurant, see the novel Masterson, by Richard Wheeler, which describes a fictional trip across the country undertaken by the famed Bat Masterson in 1919, just before the onset of national Prohibition.
According to my father there was a Harvey restaurant at Union Station in Los Angeles.
Slight hijack: Where do theme restaurants get all the crazy crap for their walls? Do they have people scouring flea markets across the country? Are there factories churning out reproduction junk?
How about Trader Vic’s? Perhaps the first “modern” theme restaurant.
Jet Jaguar wrote:
Call me sentimental, but I’ve always liked to think that somewhere, an entrepreneur has gotten rich off of turning a network of junk shops into Instant Ambiance Incorporated. For all we know, the entire marketing concept could have been invented by one guy who was trying to find a way to unload a lot of junk. I like this idea, and I’m sticking to it. I also like the idea that his mother had a really great recipe for spinach cheese dip.
I heard that [url=http://www.kahiki.com/kahikistory.cfm]The Kahiki{/url] was the first themed restaurant. It sucks that the cool old building is gone.