The Economist's Christmas double-issue is always a delightful read. This time, there is an excellent brief history of the evolution of restaurant industry in the west.
It appears to have had purely utilitarian roots and to serve the masses,
Archaeologists have counted 158 snack bars in Pompeii, a city destroyed by a volcano in 79 AD—one for every 60-100 people, a higher ratio than many global cities today. Ready-cooked meat, game and fish were available for Londoners to eat from at least the 1170s. Samuel Cole, an early settler, opened what is considered to be the first American tavern in 1634, in Boston. These were more like takeaways, though, or stands where food might be thrown in with a drink, than restaurants. The table d’hôte, which appeared in France around Cole’s time, most closely resembled a modern restaurant. Clients sat at a single table and ate what they were given (trends now making a comeback). Many of these proto-restaurants resembled community kitchens, or quasi-charities, which existed for the benefit of locals. Strangers were not always welcome... Before the use of coal became widespread in England in the 17th century, preparing food at home involved spending a lot on wood or peat. Professional kitchens, by contrast, benefited from economies of scale in energy consumption and so could provide meals at a lower cost than people could themselves. Today dining out is seen as an indulgence, but it was the cheapest way to eat for most of human history... most wealthy people preferred to eat at home, enjoying the luxury of having staff to cook and clean up.
Before it became acceptable to the rich,
Yet for restaurants to flourish, richer people had to demand what Pepys did not: eating in full view of others. Until the 18th century elites largely viewed public spaces as dirty and dangerous, or as an arena of spectacle. But as capitalism took off, public spaces became sites of rational dialogue which were (putatively) open to all. And, as Charles Baudelaire, a French poet, observed, 19th-century cities also became places where people indulged in conspicuous consumption. The restaurant was the natural habitat of the flâneur, Baudelaire’s wandering observer of city life. Where better than a restaurant to see and be seen? Out went the set menu of the table d'hôte; in came the à la carte kind. Shared tables gave way to private ones. Eating out became less of a communal activity focused on calorie intake and more of a cultural experience—and a place, as Baudelaire wrote, where people could show off their wealth by ordering more food than they could eat and drinking more than they needed.
The evolution of restaurant industry also had its share of overcoming regulatory restrictions,
Powerful guilds often made it hard for a business to sell two different products simultaneously. Butchers monopolised the sale of meat; vintners that of wine. The growth of the restaurant, which serves many different things, required breaking down these barriers to trade. A Monsieur Boulanger, a soup-maker in Paris, may have been the first to do so. He dared sell a dish of “sheep’s feet in white-wine sauce”. The city’s traiteurs (caterers) claimed the dish contained a ragout, a meat dish only they were allowed to prepare, and was therefore illegal. They took their case to court, but Boulanger triumphed... In Britain reformers worried about public drunkenness passed a law in 1860 allowing places serving food to serve wine as well (thus encouraging people to eat something to sop up the booze). Around the same time American states started passing food-safety laws, giving customers more confidence in the quality of the food.
The article finds puzzling the growth of restaurant business despite the increased convenience of home cooking and the widening differential between restaurant meal and home cooking (the restaurant meal was 25% costlier than an equivalent meal at home in 1930, and it rose to 280% by 2014). It points to three possible drivers for rising demand for restaurants despite the rising prices.
The first is immigration. In the 50 years after the second world war the net flow of migrants into rich countries, relative to population, more than quadrupled. Starting a restaurant is a good career move for new arrivals; it neither requires formal qualifications nor, at least for chefs, fluency in the local language... The second factor was the changing microeconomics of the family... households’ choices about whether to make their own food or to buy it premade... also depend on what economists call “shadow costs”. The true cost of an at-home meal involves not just the outlay for the ingredients, but the time spent on shopping and preparation. In an era of low female labour-force participation, shadow costs were low... as more women entered the workforce during the 20th century this equation changed, raising the shadow cost of cooking... And so eating out made increasing economic sense, even as it became more expensive. The third factor was changing working patterns. Historically poor people have tended to work longer hours than rich ones. But in the latter half of the 20th century the opposite became true. The rise of knowledge-intensive jobs, and globalisation, made rich people’s work more financially rewarding—and enjoyable. Toiling into the night became a sign of status. The upshot was that the people with the most money to spend on dining out increasingly needed it most, since they had the least free time.
As the article points out, the pandemic may have again made eating out less attractive and may make restaurants more an experience need, "offering those who need to eat a taste of romance, glamour and love."
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