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.

Many of the chefs turned their talents from preparing food for the nobility to providing the illusion of nobility for a burgeoning bourgeoisie. It became a golden age for restaurants whose number increased more than five-fold in fifteen years, from one hundred in 1789 to between five and six hundred in 1804. Restaurant revolution brought many changes in the dining patterns. It introduced 11 am and 12 noon d'jeuner la fourchette (breakfast with a fork), preceeded by petit-d'jeuner (breakfast).

Even the boiler room of the kitchen did not remain unchanged. Count von Rumford invented the “ modern kitchen range ” , which became commercially available around the year 1800. Dishes involving instant cooking, such as pan-frying, dominated the menus in the restaurants. This revolutionized the eating out such that the roasts were side-lined, reducing the number of dishes on the menu.

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

The First Restaurant that came to be is supposedly a soup vendor who opened his business in Paris in 1765.

The first Cafeteria opened in 1891. It was established by the YWCA of Kansas City, MO.

Drive-In Restaurants: The first such restaurant came into existence in 1936 in Glendale, California. The restaurant served food to the patrons in their vehicles. This was most popular in the early 1950s.

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. The first nationwide Happy Meal was served in 1979.

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