The First Restaurant Chain in America

By Frank Ruffo

            I’m back with another first, or what may be considered a first. We all eat at chain restaurants; TGI Fridays, Longhorn, Applebee’s, Bob Evans and the list could go on forever. There are regional restaurant chains, national chains and even international chains. Now the big question, what was the first restaurant chain in America? According to Epicurus.com, Wikipedia and various other sources, the first chain restaurant was started by Fred Harvey in 1878 and they were called “Harvey House.”

             Fred Harvey came to New York from England in 1850. He worked at various jobs from dishwasher in New York to restaurant owner in St. Louis to sorting mail for the railway post-office. During his stint in the railway post-office, he became aware of the difficulties of train travel and in particular, the trouble of dining in the one hour dining stops. While working for the Kansas Pacific RR, he and a partner opened three restaurants along the Kansas Pacific Railroad line. He approached his employer with the idea to build a network of restaurants to service the travelers of the Kansas Pacific RR but was struck down. He then took his idea to a new line, the Atcheson, Topeka & Sante Fe Railroad where he was met with great approval from the Railroads’ Superintendant. 

            There was a necessity of getting the travelers’ food fast with good service because there was only an hour for meal stops. I should note that this was before the spread of dining cars. Fred Harvey solved this by enabling travelers to order and prepay while on board the train. A trainman would wire the orders in from the stop before the meal stop thus enabling the staff at Harvey House to start preparing the meals. When the travelers entered the restaurant, the waitresses would quickly take their drink orders while the final touches to their meals were being taken care of. 

                                            Picture from “seligmanhistory.com”

            Harvey House became famous for their steaks, ribs and chops, along with their generous portions. Their pies were cut into four pieces as opposed to the standard six and according to a book by Stephen Fried, Fred Harvey’s last words to his sons were, “Don’t cut the ham too thin boys”. There is a cook book available on Amazon.com called “The Harvey House Cookbook” if anybody wants to try some of the original recipes. The link is http://www.amazon.com/Harvey-House-Cookbook-George-Foster/dp/1563523574/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1298748490&sr=8-10

            Charles Ferruzza states that “Fred Harvey was the man whose vision led to the practices that restaurant chains use today. The qualities most of us take for granted in modern restaurants were actually implemented by the English-born Harvey, who believed that Americans wanted clean dining rooms, well-trained servers and meals that were as consistently good in one Harvey restaurant as in another.” They were also famous for their waitresses, “The Harvey Girls”. The girls that were hired were between the ages of 18 and 30 and had to conform to strict moral and ethical guidelines. Fred Harvey brought decent, respectable women to work when women in the work place was almost unheard of.

“The Harvey Girls” could be a complete blog for someone writing about women in the work place. If you’re interested, take a look at these web sites for their story. http://www.oerm.org/pages/Harveygirls.html, http://www.florenceks.com/text/local/local_hh-girls.htm . There are some others, and just a side note; there was a movie about the Harvey Girls in 1946, starring Judy Garland, among others, that is said to depict their lives quite accurately.

            There is a lot more history of the Fred Harvey Company and how they weathered the onset of dining cars, war and Fred’s death in 1901 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Harvey_Company and at the works cited below.

Works cited

Bob, “Harvey House: America’s First Restaurant Chain”. Epicurus, 2007. Web. 19 Feb. 2011

Ferruzza, Charles. “Fred Harvey: America’s first restaurant millionaire”. Fat City. Pitch blogs, 2010.  Web. 19 Feb. 2011

“Fred Harvey Company”.  Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Wikipedia, 2009. Web. 19 Feb. 2011