Growth of Restaurants over the years

Growth of Restaurants over the years

An outing has almost become synonymous with eating out in a
restaurant. Today's restaurants can be traced back to the
last part of the eighteenth century, when they made their
appearance in France. They existed even before this period
in the form of taverns and food shops.

The difference between a tavern and restaurant is that in
the latter there was a set menu served at a set hour for
a set price, while in a restaurant you chose individual,
and individually priced dishes from a menu, at anytime of
the day. Around 1783 Beauvilliers, once chef to the Comte
de Provence (who later became Louis XVIII), opened the
first restaurant in the Palais Royale. From 1789 onwards,
market was flooded with chefs and other personnel.
Beauvilliers' establishment closed down ten years later in
1793 because of the French Revolution. Beauvilliers left
quickly for an enforced sojourn in England. In fact, large
numbers fled to other European countries particularly
England, then the richest country in Europe.

This was a golden period for the restaurant industry. Many
chefs who had earlier fled France because of the Russian
revolution and now settled in England, shifted their
talents from preparing food for the nobility to providing
the illusion of nobility for the bourgeoisie. In the year
1789, the number of restaurants increased to more than five
hundred from a mere 100, in a matter of about 15 years.
Because of this revolution in restaurants number, dining
pattern changed.

From the glitter and glamour of the dining rooms, let's
talk about the boiler room of the kitchens. Count von
Rumford, an American, has the credit of introducing the
first commercially available ~modern~ kitchen ranges,
which began to appear about 1800. His invention
revolutionized the restaurant kitchen. It brought the
reduction in the number of dishes on the menu, thus roasts
virtually vanished from restaurant menus and a range of
dishes that could be prepared in a minute took over such as
pan-frying. Since then eating was never the same again. It
changed the eating-out as radically as the French
Revolution did politics.

The following summarizes the history of restaurants and the
restaurant chains:

The First Restaurant: The first restaurant proprietor is
believed to have been A Boulanger, a soup vendor, who
opened his business in Paris in 1765.

Cafeteria: The first cafeteria was opened by the YWCA of
Kansas City, Mo.

Drive-In Restaurants: The first drive-in restaurant opened
in Glendale, California in 1936. Here the patrons are
served food in their vehicles. The phenomenon reached its
height in the early 1950s.

The Happy Meal concept was introduced by the Mac Donald's
chain of restaurants. This chain emphasized on standardized
food products, which were produced under strict discipline.
Products like hamburgers, French fries and milk shakes.
First Happy Meal was served in 1777 McDonald's Happy Meals:
Ray Kroc was the pioneer of the fast-food industry with his
worldwide McDonald's enterprise (1954). He revolutionized
the American restaurant industry by imposing discipline on
the production of hamburgers, French fries, and milk
shakes. In 1977. The first McDonald's ~Happy Meal~ was
regionally tested in St. Louis and served in 1979

Lenny Reponas is the webmaster of
one of the leading information resources on restaurants
available on line. For more information, and
immediate access to his articles library, visit
http://www.restauranthwy.com
.