Industrialization Effects On America's Dining Culture Essay

Industrialization’s Effect on America’s Dining Culture

Industrialization caused a shift in almost all spheres of life across the globe, but industrialization drawing in new types of laborers has had one of the most profound effects on America’s now 800-billion-dollar restaurant industry.

The first restaurants in America fell into two categories, either fancy and French, or taverns for poor people traveling through and lower-class workers. For over 150 years, high-end food and French food were synonymous with each other. There were not fancy sit-down restaurants for the majority of America- the middle class. The whole concept of a true sit-down restaurant originated in France, and during the French revolution French cuisine and the concept

As an influx of immigrants from around the world came to America for the new economic opportunities brought with the industrial revolution, their cuisines followed as well. “The advantages of restaurants featuring foreign cuisine were cheapness, abundance and an interesting assortment of flavors both unfamiliar and appealing.” Because of all of these advantages, ethnic foods such as Chinese, German, and Mexican food began to become very popular around America, and the choices for types of food expanded from just French, to a wide variety of cuisines. Also, these new types of restaurants offered a wider range of restaurant prices, appealing more to the middle-class worker. Chinese restaurants in San Francisco offered "a wide range of restaurants, from the low-end, serving day workers for just a few cents, to a middle level, offering more meat and more variety for salaried workers, to very expensive banquet halls" Immigrants helped make restaurants more diverse and more accessible, with their cheaper food options and new flavors that intrigued the American public. These new flavors also led to the Americanization of those ethnic foods, creating some of the most iconic American foods like the hamburger. Immigrants helped build the modern-day diverse American food

Factory jobs overtook the previously reigning agricultural jobs because of higher wages and the more types of jobs that factory jobs offered. The new factory jobs also replaced women’s traditional roles in the family of producing goods like clothes for the family, so the number of women who actually worked outside of the house began to increase. More manufactured goods compounded with the surplus of new jobs available, the need for women staying at home all day was reduced and more women began getting jobs. In the 1800s-1920s, most restaurants didn’t allow women to dine in a restaurant without a husband, so new types of restaurants began to be created specifically for women, which have changed the restaurant industry. While most “men’s restaurants” consisted of alcohol, steaks, and more expensive meals, the new “women’s restaurants” created an outline for the casual dining experiences seen today. Women’s restaurants in the 1900s consisted of “coffee shops, tea rooms, department store restaurants, and chain restaurants” , and had less expensive options and lighter meals than the other restaurants at the time. These casual, cheaper, and lighter meal options have consequently become more and more popular with the thousands of coffee shops, salad bars, and sandwich shops that now populate