@@ooaaveehoo there was a now defunct youtube channel i used to watch that was formatted as a variety show, so i used to call it my youtube show. calling long form content series like this a youtube show almost seems like something we shouldve been doing the whole time
It's also important to discuss the role these eateries play as "third spaces", crucial for community and personal mental health. I used to look forward to a cup of coffee and a matzo ball soup when I'd commute home at all hours. I'd finally get to relax, enjoy good food, and nobody bothered me to leave so I could catch up on some reading and forget about the world for a while.
Interesting observation. Catching a hot bowl of ramen on the train platforms before the ride was comforting, and an opportunity to reset. Often other patrons were also eating alone and it became quite normal. we were unbothered by the space and activity beyond our bowls and body, like we were in our own space.
I’ve never been to an automat, but I spent the 80s and 90s in diners prior to coffee house culture. My friends and I would hang out for hours drinking lots of coffee and desert and leaving tips that were way bigger than the actual meal.
Going through the boarding school system, the school dining hall was an extremely important third space for the community. Entering I to the adult world and not having that any more has been very disorienting for me
Even in cafeterias, someone is still clearing the tables. Fun fact about automats, a lot of people really believed these places were fully automatic futurism, so when people in the back of house stopped refilling the compartments to protest their absymal wages, there was a great public confusion. It was called "The Strike Invisible" by the New York Sun
The behind the scenes automat in the movie "That Touch of Mink" is probably a pretty good idea of how those places worked. Mainly cafeteria food placed in little windows for people to select. These days we must be very careful about the places we choose to dine. The use of cheap quality industrial ultra processed food may fill the belly but will shorten the lifespan over time.
So it's the same story as it always is - Any time something feels affordable, it's on the back of an underpaid labor force. Either locally, or in another country as we see everywhere these days.
@@zncon Absolutely, it's a timeless tale. Yet somehow we never learn that nearly all the things we take for granted are furnished for us by the manual labor of the underclass.
@@zncon Yes, societal advancement was always driven by slavery of some sort. It is just now that we can finally at least see an alternative to human slavery at the horizon - AI should become the new slave.
i think this is part of why so many people idolize the college experience, because you’re in a community and you have those cafeterias, yea you pay an ungodly amount for them but in the moment it just feels like coming home to as much food as you need
Do you think people idolize the college experience because they had no responsibilities no one pushed them to even do their homework on time and they were in class for 9 hours a week and then the rest of the time they were fucking and doing drugs and sleeping late
@@njdevseddie741 you know the irony is you don't appreciate that that walkable Community doesn't ask anything of you you have absolutely no requirements except maybe showing up a few hours a week to class come to the rest of the time you wander around aimlessly with absolutely no timetables no accountability no punctuality.
Yeah. It's really depressing to leave that space and struggle with meal prep and rationing food, trying to survive. Realizing that people not even 30 years ago may have had the luxury of stopping by a place to get a few meals on the cheap each week-- hell, eating a meal that cost under $10 *anywhere*, it just feels like a dream now. I feel like we've lost an important piece of our culture as Americans.
Finally someone doing a video essay about how dinners WERE affordable. That’s how Gilmore Girls could afford to go out. So many forget that when doing how did Lorelai able to afford the house. I grew up near a train dinner.
When I was a kid takeout was considered a cheap meal. Now it's a twice-a-year festivity for me wherein I try not to cry looking at my bank account afterward. Also, a tip used to be like 10%, now you get spit in your food if you tip less than 20%.
I live in the Netherlands and they have automats here! It’s so nice being able to grab food from the little cubby holes when I’m in a rush at the train station. And I don’t have to wait in line or interact with anybody. You literally tap your card right at the food item to open the door and go!
I think they used to be a bit more common but the business model still makes sense. The Dutch "automatiek" isn't a sit-down restaurant, it's basically just a wall with all those cubby holes. They can be combined with a regular fast-food place, and I especially remember one at Utrecht Centraal where people could use the wall if they were on the go, or order at the counter if they had a bit more time. The wall just had the most popular items. This was before tap cards, I think you had to feed them quarters.
You are describing automats like we were living back then in a multicultural utopia. Our country was over 95% White and prosperous. Now fast-forward today and its become a hell-hole with massive violence and murders against "magas" and even social-justice warriors (one was just stabbed yesterday by a POC....). We cannot have good things anymore because racial hatred is dominating the landscape. Systematic murders and destruction of the White business is going up and accelerating. @@kendragaylord
Those places seemed like it made it easier to build community. Now it’s like, if you don’t have at least a +1 with you at a restaurant you feel out of place 🫤 great video ❤
We had a community dining room in the co-op grocery store where I used to live in a town in NE. They served hot buffet items and cold items like sandwiches. So lots of people would stop in and eat, some were alone and some in groups. There was a lot of community chat amongst the singletons, who were usually older people
Seems like modern America is designed to cultivate alienation, loneliness, depression and anxiety. Which is good for consumer capitalism I guess, but corrosive and destructive for everything else.
that's exactly why they can't allow them to exist, they saw how helpful these places were for civil rights activists. having any community whatsoever makes people less vulnerable to exploitation, so they must destroy any possibility of community
As a jersey girl it's absolutely horrible how expensive diners have gotten. One that my friends and I used to go to used to have a plate of mozzarella sticks for like $5... but now it's around $15. it's crazy
When I was in my 20s in the 2000s, my late night meal at a local diner was cup of coffee and fries. Cost $5 with tip and taxes. This place is selling 5 mozz for $10, it cost them less than $2 from Sysvo for them.
I’m moving to Hong Kong from Australia and it’s crazy because I’m Australia it is so expensive to eat out - 30 dollars a head minimum, but in Hong Kong there are places designed for people who don’t have kitchens, and often that’s cheaper than getting a larger apartment with kitchen space. It’s such a mind bend.
Hey. Aussie here. There are some places where food is a good deal cheaper than 30 a head but you do have to go out and find them. There's a cafe near me which is the closest I've ever experienced to a diner, 8.50 for a sandwich with chips and a coffee. I find a good bet is looking out for a tradie cafes as they serve a community demographic that pays for meals daily. If you're right in the heart of the city it can be more difficult too. Look out for Indian buffets. They often do all you can eat vegetarian curries for very affordable pricing (I find that a curry from most Indian restaurants will get you through three dinners if you take it home and cook rice at home). Also we have IKEA restaurants here. I believe they do value meals on Friday nights which are pretty popular.
I love the ikea cafeteria. I genuinely don't feel rushed and the food is filling, good, and affordable. I really wouldn't mind if it was a standalone diner or something
Like she mentioned at the end though, cafeteria nowadays are usually attached to some other business or organization. Unfortunately I think it's because fast food has replaced the lower end of the food segment, making it harder for cafeterias to be profitable unless they're attached to a captive customer base
@@fqwgads I think cafeterias, if they offered a to-go option the way salad bars do, would work really well in areas with a lot of offices. I used to work in a restaurant about 7 minutes from all the big office buildings in my town, and our biggest lunchtime leader was people coming in to get a giant affordable salad to go, and offices ordering takeout together. I always told my boss she should get a minibus and do a salad bar food truck, and just drive it down to the offices and charge by weight.
I'm interning at a company that has a cafe for its employees, and realizing how sustainable and affordable it would be for me to get lunch everyday there was eye opening for what food should be like
one of my old jobs had a tiny cafeteria in the break room where you'd scan your own things and pay with your card. It was cheap, and filling. I survived off of that until I was laid off.
My co-workers often complain about the price of food around us. As a second-generation food service worker, I remind them that restaurants and delis have to pay rent too, and so do their employees. There's something else: in NYC, wherever there's cheap food and/or a place to sit, there are unhoused, indigent, and/or mentally ill people, or just loiterers (e.g., juvenile delinquents) who can sometimes be unpleasant and deter customers. There are a lot of things that contribute to the disappearance of affordable prepared food in the city. But... there's a surprisingly shining beacon of hope, for food, if not ambience: restaurants with no seating. They're multiplying like mushrooms, especially if you count trucks, bodegas and supermarkets.
Then again we have seen generations of working people in books and movies eat in cafes and cafeterias, so the idea that it's something you do every single day isn't anything new in popular culture
I live in Germany and (nearly) every workspace has a subsidised cafeteria. A full meal (e.g. meat + sides, last week there were mussels!) is about $6. Also, it encourages you to eat with your coworkers - sharing a warm meal with them every day adds such value to my work life.
I don’t even understand this. Why is a company cafe eye opening? Of course you eat food like this. Did you grow up in extreme poverty and not have food in the house?
I watch a lot of Japan content and it seems like they still have this eating culture, the kitchens in major urban area apartments are just big enough to let you cook some basics but then you walk out your door and you can grab cheap, filling, tasty food from a convenience store all the way up to a sit down restaurant. In North America we live in a work culture where it would almost seem more likely to see these kinds of places *now* and yet they’ve become almost all but a memory. I definitely feel like it’s a reflection on the capitalist zeitgeist we are currently experiencing.
There are other factors that go into the Japanese restaurant industry, but a big part of it is absolutely the demand. I think another thing is that a lot of restaurants are practically automats. The gyudon counter has an attendant but all they do is bring your tray, take your money, and bus your place. They don't even take your order, every seat has its own PoS ordering touchscreen thing. That said, I think there are other tax and policy and cultural influences. Even the cheap food is made to a high standard. And there are businesses that you just can't understand how they exist. In the US we are really getting messed up by commercial real estate costs. Business rents are insane almost everywhere. That has a real effect on what kinds of restaurants can exist and be successful: there's no room for simple no frills businesses because they can't charge a high enough margin to pay their rent.
Been there recently. Things have gotten more expensive. Like anywhere else in the world, I guess. But yes! Food culture is different there and still very much for everyone. Meaning most stalls, izakayas/snack bars and so on are quite affordable and honestly a surprisingly good way to socialize with strangers. Which, to me at least, has become almost unimaginable in the west. I guess it's because community is still very much valued, which is sort of obvious considering japanese society is a collectivist one. Eating out is a very mundane past time there and also often mandatory when it comes to the lives of most workers who join their boss quite a bit either to have meetings or after the end of work, often in groups. Which leads me to another point, like the previous commenter said the demand is high. The harsh working culture is definitely an influence. Fast, filling and cheap food is almost necessary to get through the day. Be it quickly sitting down somewhere or on the go through a konbini or various vending machines (even if you can't or shouldn't eat while being literally on the go).
I think its a combination of capitalism, and the truly toxic individualism of this country. Japan is very much a communal, group centered culture. In the US, we've done basically everything we can to destroy every semblance of community in this country over the past seven decades.
@@newtunesforoldlogos4817 In Japan there's apparently a practice of sending VERY small children (think two or three year olds) to do simple errands, knowing that people along the way will look out for them and ensure that they get the errand completed and return home safely. Try that in the US and the result will most likely be the parents having CPS sicked on them. We're truly fucked. I'm so sick and tired of living in a toxically individualistic society.
Japan does capitalism just as much, if not moreso, than the US. The difference is that their social safety nets ensure that the take-home pay of the working class is almost entirely disposable. Meaning, because healthcare and retirement are withheld, folks are "safe" to spend everything they earn. I think a much bigger cultural difference is not some abstract notion of community or trust, but rather the values of craft and care. Whatever the underlying cause, doing things well matters a lot more, and you can see the direct result of this in the quality of everyday things. Even cheap things are good. Their cheapness comes from an economy of ingredients/materials, not from skimping on preparation and workmanship.
I almost never take lunch to work anymore because I can get a gourmet lunch optolion at my work cafeteria for $6. This week's options include poached fish with polenta cakes, curry with rice and stir fry, and braised lamb shank with potatoes and squash. It's cheaper and tastier than I can make at home and I don't have to worry about any mess. More places should be available like that
I hate cooking and I live alone. I ALWAYS fall into the "why can everyone else do it but I can't seem to?" mindset. I never knew anything like this existed until this video, this is the coolest thing ever. In an alternate universe where I don't have a million food allergies and I'm not limited to the 5 same options every day, this would be my haven. I love your line delivery style, this video was informative and also fun to watch, and no, those two things don't always go together :) You have a new house member!
The answer is everyone else can't do it. You have the most vocal types who yell about how they're so very self-sufficient in an attempt to guilt/shame the rest of society, and then you have the people who rely on frozen meals and prepared foods every day. Meal prepping culture is a walking self-delusion, built upon cult of hard work propaganda. Instead of trying to offer systemic solutions toward a society of people where a given high % are always not going to cook, it instead tries to force an individualistic and self-centered peg into the square hole that is - people working two jobs, people slaving for 14 hours a day just to make ends meet, people with anxiety and chronic pain disorders simply not being capable, edge cases, exceptions. And the problems don't go away. All the meditation apps in the world aren't making people into ubermensch. People don't go out, don't form community bonds, and rely on processed foods. We shouldn't try to shame them into 'better' lifestyles. We should fix the core problems. But that would require dirty dirty state intervention, and there's lots of vested interests working against that.
Just before the pandemic, I ate an old diner in Arlington Heights Illinois that my grandmother used to eat at. I sat down and had a giant BLT with massive fries for less than $6. The owners, who were elderly, refused to raise pieces. They were about service, not profits. THAT'S the kind of place where Seinfeld ate. Meanwhile, Denny's is currently charging $3.89 for a cup of joe.
what bizzaro world have you been living in that it was ever more expensive (by unit price) to purchase groceries than eat out? Rule number 1 of saving money on food is to cook it yourself
I feel like another example of these kinds of cafeterias and how much easier they can make your life is dining halls on campuses! I’m about to graduate college and the ability to just go eat whenever is something I’ve been thinking about a lot. Gonna miss it
Honestly thats something I miss the most about college. That and the sense of community. There were so many times that I went to breakfast/lunch alone, and ended up chatting with someone I didn't know. I've NEVER had that experience at any kind of eating establishment after college.
Dang. I started college during Covid, and one of the worst changes was limiting dining hall hours and cutting down the menu. When I did make it on time between online classes, they rarely had things I could eat that weren’t raw or undercooked. 😕
@@yuyukawa9104Same in my area. There is a limited food shop for people meant mainly for those who purchased a meal plan for the semester, which are not cheap on their own. You can buy things from it independently, but it is more expensive than even the restaurants at that point.
two words in your piece stands out for me: regulars and communal eating. This is significant in terms of a lost culture of a third place people would gather regularly if not daily and eat communally as opposed to limiting to circle of friends or families that is so prevalent now. A distinctive element of restaurants is dividing patrons into tables of familiar people, as if that table temporarily is that group's property. Earlier, there was a culture where tables were shared with strangers, yet few were totally strangers because they were seen regularly in same place. The establishments you list evolved out of an earlier saloon culture (generalized) that existed prior to prohibition, a place where people in neighborhood gathered at meal time, drawn to the location primarily because it was in the neighborhood, instead of being known for some specialty cuisine or atmosphere. The goal is more than just satiating hunger affordably, the goal is what comes from being a regular in a communal eating setting: making connections with the neighborhood one lives in instead of with shared interests, careers, or family relations.
I love this comment OP. Many moons ago, I worked as a waitress in a diner. (Several actually, but I’m referring to the very first one) I usually worked the smoking section and/or the party room. But smoking was basically my haunt. I had some regulars that came in 7 days a week, multiple times per day. I’ve personally called the police to do a welfare check for an older gentleman that had been there like clockwork- longer than I had even been working there. I still remember his first name, Lee. Thankfully they found him and were able to bring him to the hospital and the surgeon there saved his life. He was back in the diner the day he was discharged. My boss even visited him while he was laid up in the hospital, bringing him balloons and a card we had all signed. Cheap restaurants and diners provide much needed community to those who don’t have many friends or family. Our regulars knew the staff and each other. Many of them were elderly. Poor teenagers and young people down on their luck. Single transplants new to town. Night workers whose days began at 1pm. We were like family to them. I mourn the death of the ubiquitous greasy spoon. It’s taking more from all us than I can even put into words.
@@h0rriphic The greasy spoon, the coffee house, the local dives - all serve a purpose in communities, but then communities are dying left and right from all the other woes inflicted upon them. Inflation, gentrification, predatory housing markets/new development, and fat cats who cash in on revolving door investments. Maybe the world did end in 2012, we just didn't realize it yet.
Circa 2004, I was working on a project for a company in a very small town (pop ~1200) in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming. Every day, I went to eat a cheap meal at the local diner on the main highway, one of about 4-5 places in town where you could get food (diner, pizza place in the gas station, the little grocery store, the bar & grill, and the co-op on certain days). The diner was an entertaining spot where you met people, saw the same faces, and people knew your name within a few visits. Food was dirt cheap, affordable to anyone, even on the local wages, and particularly with how cheap housing was back then ($40k was a nice house, many were $20k or less, and rent on my enormous 2/1 apartment was $150/month). Mind you, transportation (cars & fuel) was a huge portion of your monthly expenses because you needed a reliable car and to drive long distances regularly. Then when you saw another car (which were often many minutes apart) while driving, you always waved to the other driver. As pointed out in the video, the problem is that our allocation of money is broken. We should be spending a lot on eating out and spending time at these third places with other people. It's natural, good for us as individuals, and good for our communities. Spending so much of our money on housing should be unusual. No wonder our grandparents and great grandparents could live in small houses when they didn't need to cook every meal at home and had other places to spend their time.
I lived in Manhattan in the 1990s. My kitchen was miniscule. But there were dozens of restaurants within a few minutes walk where you could grab a cheap meal for under $5. Not anymore.
Automats are fantastic, we have a few in the Netherlands. I love them because there is one place I used to go when I was in middle school and today, 5+ years later, I returned to the automat I used to frequent and the woman behind the counter called me a sweetie, gave me a snack for free and told me that she looks forward to seeing me again. It's always weird how the automat was started in New York, it's such a part of Dutch life imo.
One of the interesting things about diners is that a big part of their decline was from the change in the way their suppliers worked. In a traditional diner, you can have a large number of meals made from the same few ingredients andf you'd reuse whatever didn't sell during the day. For instance, unsold home fries and hashbrowns from breakfast could get turned into mashed potatoes for lunch, unsold meat and veggies could go into stews and soups and so on, so they had very little waste. Then in the 50s, food wholesalers started pushing frozen premade foods that just needed to be dropped in a fryer. It was advertised as convenient because it reduced cooking time, but it meant that diners had to use their limited space to store all this frozen stuff and need to invest in walk-in-freezers, they also had more garbage to deal with and if you're making frozen hash browns, you can't make them into home fries or take today's roast chicken and make tomorrow's chicken salad and chicken noodle soup if you have frozen chicken tenders. So it increased costs massively and reduced what diners were capable of. Another big part is immigration. A lot of diners today are owned by Greek families, but that wasn't always the case. When they started they would be Jewish or Italian or Irish, but then the third or even second generations of these families don't want to get up at 3 am and spend all day over a hot grill, they want to work in factories and go to college, so in the 70s a lot of diners were sold to Greeks who were jhust establishing themselves in America, but now their children and grandchildren are reaching the point where they can't pass on their businesses to the next generation, and there isn't really a new group of immigrants ready to take them over.
That's interesting about the changes in wholesale food. About immigration, in a couple places I've heard of, new immigrant groups have taken on diners. I think in Queens there's a former Greek diner that now serves South American home-cooking alongside the US classics, because the new owners are from somewhere down south. A pretty isolated example, though. Here in the DC suburbs, we used to have a ton of little Vietnamese family restaurants run by people who came for refuge when Saigon fell. The owners have succeeded and their children have college degrees now--and don't want to be in the restaurant business. So most of the staff at these places are Spanish-speaking. Sometimes the owners are arranging to sell to their employees when they retire. So you can find Mexicans and Ecuadorians who have learned to be experts in making pho!
I think that's really interesting about the change to frozen food but I think you might be drawing the wrong conclusions about why that was bad. Trash and floor space aren't really going to massively increase costs, frozen foods are low waste as well. I would bet money they made those changes because it saved them money. Far less waste and crucially preparing frozen food is a lower skilled job. You don't need a skilled cook to ensure you have a diverse menu and use And if you don't have the need to use stuff up you don't have the need to vary the menu as much so you don't need to employ someone at a higher wage and even if the chef is the owner the incentives to offer more better food go out the window when you can just rely frozen food and simple to cook stuff that is their bread and butter. So variety and the basic quality of food declines and they simply stop offering stuff that involves more costly time use and skills.
@@mytimetravellingdog the down side on that however is that they then have to compete with fastfood places that do the same on a level a single diner can not compete. However a diner can compete by offering what would be seen as home style cooking. As they can make it cheaper (Bulk) then a single person. It's that small slice diners can cover.
Absolutely feeling the passing of the torch thing (or lack there of rather). Growing up in Denver (in my mid thirties now) we had a very healthy amount of really great diners, indeed all owned by Greek or Chicano families. Now, the later generations work in tech or started their own ventures in other fields and the diners throughout the Denver Metro Area are dropping like flies. Sad days.
On the topic of "why is this so hard for me humanity's been doing this forever" - we really haven't - ROMANS had fast food. It'd be unrecognizable to us as fast food now, but there were places for laborers to come and get cheap quickly-prepared food, socialize, etc for reasonable prices, where these places would take up a substantial part of their diet. I liked Invicta's video on it, but anyways my point is just how weird the moment we're in is. There's always been equivalents to things like the diner and automat, except now. On a similar if a bit unrelated topic - "why is it so hard to maintain a home" - for most of history, half the home could focus on maintaining that home, and work itself was often integrated into the home already, so it was possible to maintain the home as part of one's regular labor. Now both partners are gone for the majority of their waking hours, home is a transient place left empty all day. I'm not suggesting we should go back to the same gendered labor divisions - but every household is working twice as much as they would have at any point in history. We should be working less.
I had forgot those cool spaces....Thank You for reviving the sleeping memories! Way before the chain parasites invaded, McDonalds inside a Walmart as an example. A lunch counter/bar, with premade offers and a hot grill....gone anymore.
It's interesting how the view on eating out as a common daily thing in the early 1900s varies between countries and size of cities. I've been told my old relatives from a mid sized town in Sweden pretty much only ate at restaurants once per year. It was a huge deal. They couldn't even imagine someone eating at a diner several times per week.
I only just came across this video, thank you for producing it! These cafeterias and diners were also acting as 'third places', where communal activity occurs. And as you mentioned, people are lonelier than ever, these sorts of places I believe are more important than ever.
This is so fascinating to me, seeing the rise of even the lowest priced foods. $1 menu items at fast food places are shortening, heck the Dollar Tree is now $1.25 tree. It just seems like it's getting harder and harder to even be on a budget for working class people. I also wonder how much corporate consolidation/money consolidation contributes to these trends?
McDonalds is low-key expensive now, for the price it’s better to just go visit a „real“ restaurant and pick a cheap option. The difference is minuscule. I remember when Döner was ~3,50€ and a coke 1€. Now it’s 5-6€ for a Döner and 2,50-3€ for a drink on the side.
There used to be a diner in my town that was open 24 hours and had a menu like you showed in the video where some meals were typical for pricing today, but they also had cheap meals like a HUGE plate of biscuits and gravy was $2, a cup of coffee was $1.50, and eggs al a carte were $1.25 each. When I was living on my own, working poverty wages that place plus my one staff meal a day at work was how I survived. Unfortunately, the stopped being 24 hours, and raised all their prices like crazy after covid.
When I lived in Pittsburgh, Wilkensburg PA 1990s, there was a simple traditional type 24hr diner near my house. The food wasn't great but the costs were fair. The liver & onions was ✔️. I don't recall the coffee being worth a damn.
Yeah, then you elected shitheels who ran up trillions in deficits and turned the dollar into a total joke. They also rammed in over 8million illegal immigrants, oh, more like 25 million or more, and you are still wondering WTF happened.
I ate at diners in NYC all the time and really miss it. I'll never forget going to one in Queens for breakfast. The cook was making eggs and hash browns while smoking a cigarette with an ash a mile long. And no one cared.
A good breakfast place 🍳 is ✅️. SoDo in Orlando.gov has Peach Valley Cafe. They opened: 600am to 200pm around 2014(maybe 2013). Good food but the chefs, QC vary.
$1.50 breakfast at the diner in 1997 in Queens. I then moved to a different neighborhood later that year and it cost $5 for breakfast. I stopped going then.
This was really interesting. I'd had some similar feelings after watching Seinfeld and other 90s shows/movies. The idea of meeting up with friends for an inexpensive drink or meal has almost totally disappeared. And especially in cities where people's studio apartments are not suitable for hosting guests, these cheap eateries also acted as a key social space.
Hahaha!! I laughed out loud at the "Who can't relate to not keeping a diary when you're going through a manic episode?" Such a great video! Well done!!
My mother would have been 93 years old of she was alive. I remember her talking about taking my older siblings to Horn and Hadart. She said they would be so excited to put the coins in the machines. Thanks for a nice memory of her. ❤
One of the many good surprises I got when I moved to Spain was discovering the "menú del día": every bar/restaurant/cafeteria/whatever has a kitchen offers a choice of starter, main course, drink and dessert for between €9 and €12 on working days. There is plenty of choice so you can find the place you like best and also a wide variety of customers: from a single person on a lunch break to a table of 6+ tourists or business people.
Yeah i'm from spain and i felt pretty lucky for feeling like i still can get what she mentions. She's using NYC prices so maybe Madrid prices are a better equivalent to those, but even still 15-20€ menús are what you can see And i gotta say that taking into account american salaries they may be "better off" in the monetary sense. To be determined
Here in Germany in one of the more expensive cities you will get a starter and a main course for about 12€ in nearly all restaurants that have lunch on a working day
I just visited Japan recently, and I was blown away with how 1)cheap and 2) accessible to single eaters their dining options were. I was convinced they were eons ahead, but it’s surprising and honestly sad to know America was right there with them at a time.
Literally half the reason why I go to Japan are a bundle of reasons whose root cause is "Japan is too small for cars, lawns, and suburbs". "Oh wow it's cool that you can just get to places by walking" - AMERICA HAD THAT AND THREW IT AWAY IN THE NAME OF HENRY GOD DAMNED FORD "It's so convenient to get a quick bite to eat" - IT'D BE CONVENIENT IN AMERICA TOO IF TOWNS WERE STILL BUILT TO ALLOW MIXED USE ZONING "Oh hey they still have DDR and that weird Japanese drum game, I thought arcades and music games died in the 2000s" - THEY DIDN'T, BUT ASIDE FROM WEIRDOS LIKE ME WHO LIVE NEAR A ROUND1, NOBODY WANTS TO DRIVE HALF AN HOUR TO PLAY VIDEOGAMES ANYMORE
Japan is a very lonely place, the amount of singleton availability is destroying their family culture, birthrate etc it's honestly quite sad how few children I saw during my extended trip. i would hardly describe them as eons ahead when their birthrate is crashing so hard, their racism is extreme, most marriages are loveless and most ppl don't have friends ... don't be deceived by the shiny tech and singing bird toilets, scratch the surface and Japan is still very medieval. I was very happy to come home and ppl, that says a lot since I'm an introvert. we need to curate our culture to create the society we can all thrive in! (singles also) ex - Japan had a very, very poor diet pre-WW1 ate no fish, very little meat, not enough veg and too much grain. The govt revamped eating/diet for the whole country to create a healthy army for colonization&war. this process created a healthier population and those changes are still massively reflected in Japanese healthy eating habits of today! with a little planning and lots of legwork, we can create a better future for all of us!
Those pie charts on spending categories blew me away. The other thing i noticed any the old vs new menus: the old menus sound a lot like what we're always being told we should eat. Also what fast food places are always telling us can't be made at scale.
These very much remind me of how in the eastern block, canteens were not just limited to closed facilities (like factories etc). Some were also just public access, sort of filling the same niche as a fast food restaurant today. There were usually a 3-4 meals each day to pick from, they were cooked fresh, just in massive batches, and so it was pretty cheap and pretty much instant.
Yes, I went to a "stolovaya" a few times in Russia in the 90s. I had a good basic lunch which included a (small) mug of beer for a little over one USD.
this is great!! i was just thinking about how the common person in probably any city used to rely on prepared food. all those early apartments relied on a service part of the apartment where the kitchens were and the STAFF worked. the Chelsea Hotel, like other such places, had a common dining room for their tenants. in London, the streets were crowded with all kinds of food and beverage carts to feed all the workers and residents. cooking at home yourself was just not that common in big cities until relatively recently. it's so fascinating!
This goes all the way back to literally the Roman Empire at least. There were basically what we'd recognize as diners in Roman cities that served cheap food to people that were close to housing. Having a stay at home partner/parent that did all the cooking and eating all your meals at home was literally a fantasy popularized in like the thirties or forties, when automats and diners were still massively common. Learning more about history, you find out that our conception of it has more to do with ideas cooked up by people with ulterior motives in the last hundred years or so than it does with what actually happened.
@@frankm.2850 Having someone at home cooking is how farm families would work, obviously, so it's not just a fantasy. The thing with Roman cities was that apartments often didn't have any cooking facilities, and it was a fire risk if they did -- we're talking multi-story tenement buildings. So yeah, heavy dependence on street food or cookshops.
@@fibonacci2112agreed. And rather than finding automat-like solutions, the answer has been wildly unaffordable meal kits like hello fresh or blue apron, etc etc there are a million spawned things like that. And while it does save in food waste, it costs in transport, packaging, and boutique food markup.
i don't know why but i just started to tear up a little bit.. People tell you get a degree and study then get a job and yet these days the income from that isn't even enough...heck one meal at a restaurant is one hour of our work...
Start a garden and can your own vegetables, feed and raise your own animals, butcher your own animals. Then you will appreciate that food only costs 1 hour of labor.
I love this topic! I have fond memories of going to eat lunch with my Grandmother in the 80's at "Luby's Cafeteria." I always thought an automat looked so cool and futuristic.
When I was growing up (late '90s and early aughts), Luby's was an absolute dinner staple for my family, and we were less than a five minute drive away from it. I miss cafeterias. There's Piccadilly's here, but it's not the same.
Good point about the bulk food pricing. Diners making large pots of soup/stew, big pans of casseroles and other large volume servings, they could save money by paying a butcher for large cuts several times a week, paying for large bags of flour, etc. So by the time they spend money on preparing and serving the food, it should still be reasonably priced. YET, today a basic diner meal (and tip) costs 4 to 5 times what it would cost to make at home.
@@mystriddlery Many businesses operate at a low profit margin. They're only viable if they can supplement the income. For instance, I'm a professional musician, and often restaurants won't have enough to hire someone at a full wage, but they can pay part and the rest is filled in by putting out a tip jar....together they make the gig worthwhile.
@@betsybarnicle8016 If servers want more money, they should ask their bosses for a raise so they dont have to beg from the customers. You're defending an archaic model that leads to unequal pay for the same job and discrimination across the board (pretty women make more tips than older men for instance). Music is a niche industry whereas the service industry is not. I will never tip for anything. If you want more money, include it in the price.
@@mystriddlery Just because you want the restaurant industry to work like that, doesn't mean the financial reality can do it...and stay in business. That's why waitstaff has always needed supplemented. Study restaurant accounting to see where the numbers are. Me, I'd like to see all waitstaff replaced by automated ordering and robot table service (seriously).
It's not mentioned as much as I was expecting, but it seems obvious that it was fast food that crowded out the diners and automats, filling a similiar niche with the working class. They might not have been as nutrious or interesting, but the franchise model allowed for economy of scale that made them cheaper and more "reliable" - in the sense that no matter where you went you knew exactly what you would get. Also to be mentioned is that the move to the suburbs didn't only include the middle class - the poor also frequently ended up on the outskirts, where there were no diners, but plenty of fast food.
I'm in Australia and have a chronic illness. I think the current equivalent for single, time-poor people are frozen meals. Depending on the brand, they cost 4-10 AUD. I love cooking, but often i just don't have the energy for it. Many years ago i did the calculations, and figured that even when i batch cooked, what i spent per serve on making dinner myself was about the same. I still try to batch cook when I'm able to, but if i can't, there's still an easy, affordable meal for me.
This is a great point! It depends massively on the food (so frustrating how much research it takes to figure out each individual item!) but many things are cheaper frozen. Unless you like eating things raw, there's basically no reason not to go frozen. Frozen meals themselves rarely work for me because of allergies, but frozen ingredients are amazing. Cheap, usually ready to cook, and can be held at home indefinitely. It's sad to have no choice but to rely on them due to prices, but they are wonderful nonetheless and I'm happy that other people find them useful too.
@@kinseylise8595 Eh, maybe you have better selection, but frozen meals around me are definitely not the cheapest option for eating. We're talking at least $1 per 100 calories. I haven't worked out if they might be cheaper than making an equivalent meal from scratch, though I'd doubt it, but there are certainly cheaper ways of feeding yourself. Frozen ingredients do work well for some things; I get a lot of broccoli and berries that way, and fish is best frozen anyway (though canned salmon is cheaper.)
@@mindstalk Yeah, in my area frozen meals aren't any good because of how little is in them, it's the frozen ingredients that I use. Ounce to ounce they beat out fresh (obviously) and canned almost every time. Though like you say canned fish is probably cheaper, I sadly don't like it so never investigated. I will say, bulk buying is crazy where I live. The price of ground beef goes down a dollar when you pick ~3% higher fat (totally worth it, just drain if you want less) and another dollar to dollar fifty if you take high weight packages. It's the only way I can afford it tbh, the same amount of meat can go from $24 to $14 if the right type of package is available. Not frozen info but I feel like this must not be common since it wasn't the case in other places I've lived.
@@kinseylise8595 The discounts for 3+ pound packages of meat are bigger than I remember, yeah. Though possibly I never paid attention before as the 1 pound prices were more acceptable.
You’re ignoring the cost to your health from eating out all the time. With raw ingredients you have complete control over what goes into your body, the same cannot be said for restaurants which will often cut corners and use lower quality ingredients, at least ones that have a price point comparable to home cooked meals
The ancient Romans relied on thermopolia: tavern-like places where you could get a fast meal for a low price. They had variations with different concepts and focus groups (popinaes, etc.), but mostly they served food for every type of person of any class that might wander in at adjusted prices, because most people didn’t have kitchens.
Add to that dinners being places of socialization and third spaces. The closest equivalent to that type of atmosphere are bars, but it is kind of insidious that that social sphere requires alcohol consumption and spending on non-essential categories, which excludes such a large percentage of people
In Staten Island/NJ- there were loads of cheap diners with yummy food. While there seems to be enough left, the numbers are dwindling fast, the prices in these diners are skyrocketing, and they are selling pre-processed/pre-made food. It's depressing for locals. Now, food trucks are popping up. I'm starting to frequent those. Food trucks are our future.
Shout-out to S.I. diners of old: The Unicorn, the Country Club, heck even the old A&W had a diner vibe. South Brooklyn held out longer, still a few great places keeping the fire going.
Yeah but food truck prices are starting to be at or more than some of the regular restaurants that serve similar and their availability is limited (at least outside of the big cities)
@aformist sorry I didn't see your comment! I loved the old A & W 😢😢😢 oh so many memories. I'm trying to think when it went bad- I think in the early '00s I noticed all the Mike's prices went bazerk. I'm guessing rent went up a lot, too. As housing was going for a lot more. Everything got more expensive, then the '08 crash. Market fell- prices continued climbing. Nothing is left here of my past. Not even the people. Time to go to FL? Lol!
There are a lot of factors involved in this. A lot of them involve governments messing things up. I've travelled to 20 countries and almost everywhere I go, there are affordable options for food. Here in Mexico, everyone knows they can go to a taco stand or "economical kitchen" to get a cheap meal. it'll cost about $3-7 USD, about 50-120 pesos. now I'm a vegetarian, but there's still an option to go to a stand that sells boiled vegetables and eggs with chilli similarly in Thailand I would order pad Thai from a little stand. I can't remember how much it cost but it was probably around 2 dollars. in Vietnam, banh mi. in Paraguay I went to Mercado Cuatro and ate pork kebabs for about a dollar a piece. I know you'd be very interested in the "Strong Towns" movement, if you're not already. They focus on trying to change zoning laws to get these kinds of things to happen There was a case, I think in Canada. One potential food truck owner wanted to set up shop, but the current zoning and business code didn't allow for it. 50 restaurateurs showed up to protest, and it resulted in a food truck code so cumbersome that nobody could follow it It's similar with corner stores and hardware stores. Here in Mexico, you will find them in almost every neighborhood, except gated communities. In my native Australia, it is rarer and rarer to find them. likewise in Canada and the US. This is mostly because zoning laws for new developments declare that it will be a residential only area. Older parts of town are generally grandfathered in, so they have more freedom. I don't know if something like an automat would be viable today. it's possible it would be more viable, because of advances in technology. but there is surely a place for taco stands, sandwich stands, food trucks and other things, as long as the little guy has the freedom to set up shop
Zoning laws are heavily lobbied by the automobile industry, because when the population needs a car to do anything outside their homes, it means the car manufacturers and oil barons make bank. Even more bank than they already would.
Governments? What the hell are you talking about? The rich schmucks and Citizens United made corporate criminals take over. They own all the food supply in the world. That's why!
Another factor you missed but is related ia how the increased costs of living, and thus inflation, is also directly tied to how expensive housing is. Turning American single family suburbs into a Strong Town type of city would make it a drastically more affordable place to live and actively fight against inflation that makes cheap eating so rare in the first place.
@@fluidthought42 It's always suburbia's fault that assholes living in generationally blue cities can't get their act together. Do you even listen to yourselves?
This is the best RUclips video I've watched this year. Incredible research and synthesis bringing together so many ideas about urbanism and society. Thank you 🙏 Perhaps this incredible video could be thought of as: "The life and death of great American cities: diner edition"
Reminds me of my college cafeteria. Every swipe in on your card was a flat rate of $9.00 regardless of what you ate. It was crazy expensive and I couldn’t afford it after the first semester. No one I knew paid for it themselves, always their parents. And guess who couldn’t eat there? People paying for their own college, international students, working students, basically people who usually needed a quick cheap place to eat on campus the most.
I can remember visiting a local hospital when I was still tiny, probably five, and getting food out of an automat wall in the cafeteria while we were visiting my grandmother who was a patient there. That would have been in the early 90's. This sort of thing limped along for a long time and has seemingly only completely disappeared VERY recently.
my first high school in north dakota had like a vending machine/automat hybrid in the cafeteria. It was where I got my lunch half the time because it was so much easier than the other options.
My day job is as an engineer but after hours I am a public transit activist in the Boston area. What you are saying totally fits. Keep up the good work.
I remember learning about this when I was in like 3rd grade. It was a core memory because I was impressed with how cheap and how cool automats were! Really missed out on something good
Edit to add: cafeteria experience! I have a friend who grew up in a small town, so small that they didn't have many places to eat out. The college campus there was mixed in with the town itself, so it was normal for people of all ages to pass through on the way to work or class. A lot of people would buy meal plans with the school so that they could eat in the cafeteria without paying tax, and she told me that many elderly people would purchase the all-inclusive meal plan with unlimited access and eat every single meal there as a way to maintain their ability to live unassisted. It's much easier on them to walk to the cafeteria for breakfast, sit in the university park all morning, then eat lunch there and take a box home for dinner than it every would be to get to the store and back, deal with dishes and trash, even using the fridge that they had to bend down to access. Having a cafeteria (for elders who could walk there) meant staying out of nursing homes until they went crazy, had a major injury, or passed away. Cafeterias can serve the specialized needs of almost anyone using a generalized approach specifically because the solution to these individualized problems is almost always cheap, readily accessible, somewhat variable food. For the most part I also struggle to find prepared food worth buying. Even something prepared at the grocery store tends to cost enough that I'd rather make 10x the amount for myself and just eat it for a week. Everything is so much cheaper in bulk, even ground beef is more than a dollar per pound cheaper if you can handle a 3.5-4lb pack instead of 1-1.5lb one. There is one place that keeps decent prices near me. It's a deli and the sandwiches are big enough to be half your food for the day, and come out to $6.50-7.50 each including tax. They can sustain this despite being in a very desirable area by having a tiny footprint and being packed. There is a line out the door from 11:30am to 2pm, with a constant trickle of customers in between. They can even justify staying open late into the night because of college students using a nearby library until 2am. Although it's limited, they do have a decent amount of seating jammed in there, and outside of the lunch rush you'd have no issue staying there for hours (this is how I know how many people they serve). Since they're basically selling sandwiches constantly, it seems to be enough to keep the doors open. The quality is usually consistent as well, though since the manager retired it has gone downhill. I sincerely hope that more places like this appear, as I can't eat a sandwich every day but would love more options at this price range.
I just had a most enjoyable time watching your "show". Its actually the best thing I've watched in a long time. I'm in my 60's retired and have always lived very remote so I had no idea communal cafeterias were a big thing in the cities. It makes total sense and is a shame they have fallen by the wayside. Thanks for this video.
Diving into the first menu you shared has been so depressed. Some of the prices on the menu adjusted for inflation would be a steal today, and many of these items would cost 2x the adjusted for inflation price even at a cheap-ish diner where I am. I’m def getting old enough now where I see and feel the inflation, shrinkflation, and gouging. Across the board I’ve seen prices at least double in my lifetime so far, some things have gone up more like 3-5x other things maybe only 1.5, but I’m mentally averaging it to at least double. My income over the same timeframe has doubled, but only doubled, so things feel tighter now than when I was a fresh adult.
I always wondered about this. I moved out of my parents house at 23 (last year) because rent was too high for me to pay alone, and I can't afford a house. I try to keep all my meals under $3. Most of my money goes to rent, utilities, car insurance, medical bills, and groceries. I don't have any subscription services, my only luxury is owning a cat. My parents are wonderful enough to keep me on their phone plan. I earn too much to qualify for government assistance, but earn too little to make life less miserable. And having a disability makes most available jobs a physically painful nightmare. This generation can forget about having kids too, because we can't afford to raise them in a thriving environment. We are all in survival. Worked to the bone and never get home. I hope change happens soon. My folks are getting old and I want to be able to care for them :( I can hardly provide for myself with these wages.
because it was very communal: come one, come all. Businessman, prostitutes, blue collar workers, foreigners, immigrants, could go to the same place, around the same time , and get a meal. It promoted a sense of care and community, regardless if one wasn't even American or english-speaking.
I need to eat a lot and I have horrible executive dysfunction when it comes to making and packing food. Finding affordable half healthy food is a gauntlet. It's so hard to find a place that will sell food with fruits or vegetables. The hospital I work at has a cafeteria that makes me feel like I got bang for my buck 9/10 times. My fast food/restaurant/everywhere else batting average is like. 1 in 5 tops. I rarely get a meal that I feel like it was worth the price.
Having executive dysfunction and not enjoyig cooking makes one of the basics of life a pain in the ass. I'm lucky at the moment in that I live with my mother and she takes care of most of the cooking. My worry is what happens when she passes in the next couple decades. I'll most likely move in with my brother, but we have such different dietary needs that I'll be feeding myself out of necessity. I'd be alright if I could walk a couple blocks to a diner for a
@@frankm.2850 I don't know how doable this is for you since I don't know your specific struggles or what kind of space you have, but I do have a suggestion that you might not have considered. If you're able to take time for it on a good day, it's possible to cook big batches of 4+ meals at once and freeze them all in single serving sizes by spooning a serving into a plastic bag. This way, you can freeze enough food for 20+ meals and reduce the times you have to cook. I don't have enough freezer space to scale up more than this at the moment but it great for me and once I have a larger freezer, I can only imagine it getting better. Only having to think about cooking on one designated Sunday every two months sounds like a dream. Not to say you can't ever cook fresh if you want something specific either, but just as a way to reduce overall time/mental energy given to cooking.
I was in awe of the Hawker Centres of Singapore for the history and concept but also largely for the food itself! I truly miss finding a meal including a drink and dessert or snack for under $10 and it was made to order. A fresh juice would cost your $2. Sadly never happening in the USA not sure what they think will happen when people cant afford bare minimum it's so gross
Lol the working hours and pay of these hawker centre stalls is downright horrendous. Of course you're getting nice affordable food in a country without a minimum wage at all.
I think the first place I saw an automat was in the movie Dark City, and I thought it looked so neat. I also worked at a restaurant that had a diner vibe and I once served a guy who just ordered a coffee, then he loaded it up with cream, sugar, butter, jam, and ketchup and basically made a soup in a cup. I pretended not to see that, but made sure I was by often to warm up his cup for as long as he cared to stay. Life is tough.
Febo, in the Netherlands is a popular Automat that sells burgers, fries, chicken, desserts. etc. from walls of heated receptacles with glass doors. They used to be strictly cash operated vending machines, but now accept tap payments via card or smartphone. Every Dutch person secretly loves Febo... denies this to their colleagues... but eats there after a big night of drinking (possible followed by a morning of regret)
This might sound dumb, but when I was much younger and working at Steak and Shake, I always thought it would be awesome to be that one weird person trying to bring the concept of the Automat back. Thank you for this video! I haven't got there yet, but I haven't given it up entirely.
I live in Michigan and when I think of diners, I think of our (many) Coney Island restaurants. Originally created by Greek immigrants, they usually have an extensive breakfast and lunch menu and a large amount of Greek/Mediterranean dishes. Like Gyros and lentil soup and Greek salad and spinach feta pie. The rest of the menu is typical American diner food-sandwiches, burgers, pancakes, omelette, etc. It’s all incredibly affordable and you could definitely eat there alone without getting side eyed. In the Detroit metro area, you’re never more than a few miles from a Coney. It’s extraordinary-but I don’t think I appreciated how much until right now. (I would still give my right arm to visit an automat though 😂)
eyy fellow michigander! Shoutout to the polish diners too, I've got a couple of those close to me, similar thing of basic diner food with some stuff like pierogis and sausage thrown in!
I'm feeling a lack of them over here on the other side of the state - not near enough coneys compared to growing up on the east side. Every week when my grandparents did their shopping we'd get dinner at one of the two coney islands!
The algorithm placed this video in my feed and I’m glad it did! My dad was born in Los Angeles in the 50s and he says he misses the automat, cafeteria, style food. It’s interesting that the rise of car budgets is correlated with the decline of most cheap eats. Diners, cafeterias, and automats have been replaced by fast food places and those are becoming less and less pedestrian friendly. The newest models for Taco Bell and Burger King don’t even have dining rooms but instead lockers where you pick up food to go.
My local white castle locks its lobby doors at 4pm. I did a grubhub pickup from there, and had to call the restaurant and walk through the drive-thru before I could get my food. I feel like a lot of fast food places used COVID as an excuse to shut down their lobbies, *especially* in lower-income areas, so they don't have to deal with the homeless population. It sucks.
Wonderful article, and the transition from the death of diners to the increase in transportation and housing costs was amazing. You have a very NPR voice too.
What a fascinating video. Love the data with the cost of living over the decades. Very timely given inflation and cost of living we're going through now
The Dutch still have automats and they’re great. It’s mostly snacks in the Netherlands, but if you need a bite, nothing beats a hot order of bitterballen for €2-3
Except intentionally or not, we've made it all but impossible. We seem dead set on destroying community and making life hard-impossible for anyone in this country who's not already independently wealthy. Then we can't figure out why everything is going to shit.
I’ve got bad news for you: the automat recipe is still alive and well, it is just that they are the Fast Food restaurants. The food is made in advance or as quick as possible, sold to people quickly and cheaply, and mainly can do this via a bulk buying and preparing mindset. The only difference is that you can’t drive your car into an automat. There is a sage wisdom in the phrase “Good, Fast, or Cheap, you only get two.”
There are modern automat concepts being tested in some cities. Otherwise, yes. They’ve been replaced by fast food restaurants and convenience stores that have selections of premade sandwiches and salads.
@@drewgon13 Well, I have news for you. Fast food has nothing to do with automat dining, except for being fast. Automats were known for serving a wide variety of fresh-made food, that just happened to be available for purchase quickly, and at a lower cost.
i literally read about utopian communities in the US that had meal halls and meal plans for local families that did this, and they also had communal work schedules for their different farms so it wouldn't just be one family on their ass if someone got injured or something and couldn't help maintain the farm. they also had shared childcare and I think education and some lived in apartments together in groups. it was wild since we never learn about this stuff in school either!! omg
I’ve been lamenting the loss of local coffee shops and diners since the 1990s. Dropping in at regular spots with friends on a night out. Or just grabbing a bite and coffee with a book and notebook when I wanted to be around people without having to be with people. I especially miss being called “hon” by the motherly waitresses.
This covers so much of what I've been experiencing, thinking, and feeling over the past couple years since graduating. How can anyone survive!!! There's no welcoming-feeling space for people of all classes to eat somewhat well, somewhat affordably. It's either high end and $20, or trash like a $14 meal from a fast food corporation.
I went into this video with no clue what an automat was. I think I heard the term before, but I don't think I would have even been able to tell you it was a place people could eat. I was blown away by the footage of what it was like to be inside one of them. What a magical place! And what a tragedy that we don't have them anymore.
Nice video - Thanks for posting! My dad who would be 96 if he had lived, often told me about how much he enjoyed eating at the Automat when he lived and worked in NewYork City in the 1950s. Twenty to twenty-five years ago when I still lived in the South, I used to go to the Piccadilly and Morrison's cafeterias. For the price of a greasy burger and fries, I could have grilled chicken, vegetables and a nice dessert. It broke my heart to hear that those chain cafeteria restaurants had gone out of business. Even here in Buffalo, NY, there used to be a chain of "family style," hole-in-the-wall type restaurants called Your Host that served as a community "third place" where people could get food and hang out long before the days of Starbucks and Panera. These days, my "workaround" to get affordable food is to order meals from various "meal prep" stores. A meal prep "balsamic herb sirloin" with sliced grilled steak, broccoli, and garlic mashed potatoes at $8 costs twice as much as Stouffer's from the grocery store, but can be half as much as the same meal from Applebee's. There are a lot of factors that figure into the pricing of restaurant food, but as you point out in your video, to get consistently good food at a cheap price, there must be that economy of scale and a large, regular number of customers in the neighborhood to support it - whether that be a huge metropolis or a college campus. Perhaps some of the trends that began to advance during the pandemic such as "ghost kitchens" could retrieve the concept of the Automat for the 21st century.
I'm old enough to have actually eaten in what I think was the last Horn & Hardart Automat in the ground floor of a building I worked in (fresh out of college in 1977) at 42nd St & Third Ave in NYC. Meatloaf with gravy, soup, pie - were behind glass doors you could open by depositing the appropriate coins. It didn't last much longer than that: pizzerias, burger places, and other fast food drove 'em out.
In the southern part of Germany (Bavaria) we have something like this at the so called Biergarten´s. Restaurants where you eat outside (under chestnut trees), cheap, and you can even take something to eat with you and just buy drinks there (that´s an old tradition). And you don´t have waiters, you can take your food and pay it and take it with you to free tables. I like this, because you can stay as long as you want, because space isn´t a problem outside and eating there can be cheaper, when you don´t need waiters. And everybody goes to this places, because they are beautiful, with the chestnut trees and you can spend hours with your friends and family at this places. It´s just sad, that you don´t have something like this in the winter.
Yeah I was thinking of beer gardens too! And the Brauhaus (brewery pub, for English speakers :) ), at least in my area. It's also very community-oriented and people tend to share tables with others.
Thank you for this video! Really interesting discussion of a part of food culture I haven’t heard much of before. I also really appreciated your comment on how it relates to feeding individuals. I have been living without roommates that I cook and grocery shop with for the first time, and it’s been a nightmare to hold myself to this standard that I need to cook every meal for myself, feeling like I’m failing at a basic human function. I like that you point out how new and potentially unreasonable this idea really is, and highlight and honor the role that these types of places can fill in feeding people.
Horn and Hardart was such an icon that P.D.Q. Bach (Peter Schickele) wrote and recorded a funny symphony using one as a musical instrument. Jean Shepherd's Duel in the Snow or Red Ryder Nails the Cleveland Street Kid (the baseline story for a Christmas Story) started in one ("Disarm the toy industry!").
Haven't even watched this video yet, but I've been wondering this for years!!! You read books from the 40s/50s/60s and going to a diner or automat is just a normal thing, while making a home cooked meal isn't - even if you're married, you may go to a diner while on a business trip or for lunch.
So good! I spent a lot time in diners in my 20s! My city has several 24 hour diners and they were perfect after a night of drinking and bars closed down at 2am. Realizing how lucky I got to experience it. To my knowledge they’re all still open
Eating out is nuts now a days. A bowl of noodles w/ my lady always comes out to damn near 50 bucks after tips etc. I'm an old cranky cheap guy, so I try to cut back on this sort of thing.
Thanks so much for your Video, My grandma (Nana) used to take me to Horn & Hardart in the mid-1960s. I remember it well even as a young man it was like something from the future! ( Space program in full swing at this point ) ! also she would let me walk on my own in the Bronx to the corner candy store ( LOFTS OR BARRACINNIS ) and sit down with a soda jerk ( no offense ) and get a Egg Cream Soda ! WOW imagine that today.... your video brought back memories I will never forget thanks again.
Once upon a time (back in the 70s), my father worked for an insurance company. The building had an entire floor devoted to a cafeteria, conference rooms, a game room with comfortable chairs, and a theater (yes, I'm serious; this was before you could cut a ten-minute training video and send the link to everyone). Business realized staff ate, rested, and were people. Kinda puts the current business mindset of people as resources that cannot be trusted, doesn't it? Superb video.
I feel too broke to consistently eat out anywhere enough to become a regular but I would love to be able to afford to regularly patron some of my favorite places.
I’m sure others have mentioned this, but as someone who frequently travels to the US with work, I stay in cities and I just want to straightforward meal so I actually use Whole Foods like this and the cost is pretty cheap. if I think about the Whole Foods, that’s in downtown New York, they have tables where you bus your own tray and usually the cost is under a 10 or $12 for dinner with a drink
I feel very grateful that where I live in ga there are still cafes that hold this feel of “I can get together with my friends, chat it up for hours, and not be drained of all my money.”
This is so interesting! I live in Japan and have been to a few restaurants that operate this way, you punch in what you want and pay at the vending machine (or now sometimes a fancy touchpad) and it spits out your ticket which you hand to the chef. Then they cal your order after you’ve found a table and you go grab it. You also take your tray back to the counter at the end. They typically have menus with a range of incomes in mind like you can (usually) get maybe soba with no toppings for ¥700, the most basic toppings for ¥800 and a bigger meal for ¥1000. I had no idea what these were called, thanks for enlightening me and yes they are great lol.
This is the first of your videos I’ve seen, subscribed, after only a few minutes! As someone who’s worked in the service industry for almost my whole life (and got a business minor in college) i’ve always been fascinated with the history of how we eat, both at home and out on the town. It’s also interesting how much of our eating and sleeping habits are dictated by capitalism and societal pressures of the time. Funny that I work at a restaurant now has a layout very similar to the classic diner, and also an isolated, enclosed feeling but in a basement.
This was so interesting! My first thought was food subsidies would be one of the main impacts rather than rent prices and it was interesting to think about that connection. It made me think about the rising popularity of food halls, though those are often trendy small business incubators rather than dedicated affordable places to eat.
Great discussion on restaurants being less of a place to get together and more of an overpriced experience. In my town, you are not getting away from spending $60 minimum for two people to sit down or $30 to drive through breakfast from McDonald's. Now we are being asked to pay sit down prices for food delivered to our homes so we aren't even getting the experience we paid for.
... my parents were kids in this era, and I did not know that these places existed. My parents are also deeply conservative, and stick their ears in their fingers whenever people use governence to improve lives. People who say Pull Yourseld Up By Your Bootstraps unironically cause that's what they think they did. I am so tired of people not talking about their actual memories. Good on your dad for being part of this ❤
I was in Kragujevac, Serbia last summer. While I was there, I visited a restaurant modeled like the automats of 1940s NYC. You could sit down anywhere and order anything off their menu, they prepare it fresh and bring to your table. The service was quick and convenient, the food tasted fresh and had an excellent quality.
Wow Kendra, you've hit on a few quirky obsessions of mine--the automat, old menus and prices adjusted for inflation. Thank you for touching on the housing relation. I once read that 2 cars in the 1950s cost more than the average 3 bedroom detached house and the average income to housing ratio in 1960 was 2.1 in contrast to 3.5 in 2019 (and I swear it's higher where I live). I think we can talk about lower prices existing now due to higher efficiencies leading to higher output and both tech and offshoring leading to cheaper labor costs but the automat and the decline of the diner are perfect examples of where we've gone backwards. People seem to value artisanal at the expense of efficiency. Even Subway gives you the illusion that your sandwich is made to order, though we all know the animals that made the meat were slaughtered ages ago. But yes, I just want a decent place to have a cup of coffee and a good slice of pie without worrying about going over my budget. I subscribed after this one.
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
Absolutely charmed by your dad calling this your “show”
Isn't it though?
@@ooaaveehoo there was a now defunct youtube channel i used to watch that was formatted as a variety show, so i used to call it my youtube show. calling long form content series like this a youtube show almost seems like something we shouldve been doing the whole time
Yes! That’s what made the Time Machine feeling authentic. 😂
That's exactly what's "charming" about it, that he gets the essence of the idea even though he's not up to date with terminology.@@ooaaveehoo
He sound soo sweet 🥺 i wish i got to have a cool dad
It's also important to discuss the role these eateries play as "third spaces", crucial for community and personal mental health. I used to look forward to a cup of coffee and a matzo ball soup when I'd commute home at all hours. I'd finally get to relax, enjoy good food, and nobody bothered me to leave so I could catch up on some reading and forget about the world for a while.
Interesting observation. Catching a hot bowl of ramen on the train platforms before the ride was comforting, and an opportunity to reset. Often other patrons were also eating alone and it became quite normal. we were unbothered by the space and activity beyond our bowls and body, like we were in our own space.
As a Singaporean these eateries already exist, they are called hawker center, cheap food cheap drinks just sit eat and go when you feel like it
I’ve never been to an automat, but I spent the 80s and 90s in diners prior to coffee house culture. My friends and I would hang out for hours drinking lots of coffee and desert and leaving tips that were way bigger than the actual meal.
Going through the boarding school system, the school dining hall was an extremely important third space for the community. Entering I to the adult world and not having that any more has been very disorienting for me
ah, third spaces. another thing that's gone extinct.
Even in cafeterias, someone is still clearing the tables. Fun fact about automats, a lot of people really believed these places were fully automatic futurism, so when people in the back of house stopped refilling the compartments to protest their absymal wages, there was a great public confusion. It was called "The Strike Invisible" by the New York Sun
The behind the scenes automat in the movie "That Touch of Mink" is probably a pretty good idea of how those places worked. Mainly cafeteria food placed in little windows for people to select. These days we must be very careful about the places we choose to dine. The use of cheap quality industrial ultra processed food may fill the belly but will shorten the lifespan over time.
And boomers call our generation dumb.
So it's the same story as it always is - Any time something feels affordable, it's on the back of an underpaid labor force. Either locally, or in another country as we see everywhere these days.
@@zncon Absolutely, it's a timeless tale. Yet somehow we never learn that nearly all the things we take for granted are furnished for us by the manual labor of the underclass.
@@zncon Yes, societal advancement was always driven by slavery of some sort. It is just now that we can finally at least see an alternative to human slavery at the horizon - AI should become the new slave.
i think this is part of why so many people idolize the college experience, because you’re in a community and you have those cafeterias, yea you pay an ungodly amount for them but in the moment it just feels like coming home to as much food as you need
Do you think people idolize the college experience because they had no responsibilities no one pushed them to even do their homework on time and they were in class for 9 hours a week and then the rest of the time they were fucking and doing drugs and sleeping late
This! The only time for most people they live in a fully walkable community as well
@@njdevseddie741 you know the irony is you don't appreciate that that walkable Community doesn't ask anything of you you have absolutely no requirements except maybe showing up a few hours a week to class come to the rest of the time you wander around aimlessly with absolutely no timetables no accountability no punctuality.
Yeah. It's really depressing to leave that space and struggle with meal prep and rationing food, trying to survive. Realizing that people not even 30 years ago may have had the luxury of stopping by a place to get a few meals on the cheap each week-- hell, eating a meal that cost under $10 *anywhere*, it just feels like a dream now. I feel like we've lost an important piece of our culture as Americans.
Finally someone doing a video essay about how dinners WERE affordable. That’s how Gilmore Girls could afford to go out. So many forget that when doing how did Lorelai able to afford the house.
I grew up near a train dinner.
I remember a couple train diners when I visited LI and NYC with a university group in early 2012
When I was a kid takeout was considered a cheap meal. Now it's a twice-a-year festivity for me wherein I try not to cry looking at my bank account afterward. Also, a tip used to be like 10%, now you get spit in your food if you tip less than 20%.
Heavy on the HOW! Most would do a surface level complaint video. This is some anthropology right here. Props to ms. Gaylord!
They went to The Bangles concert. It was affordable.
it’s so weird to me that people keep bringing up gilmore girls as someone who didn’t like the show that much
I live in the Netherlands and they have automats here! It’s so nice being able to grab food from the little cubby holes when I’m in a rush at the train station. And I don’t have to wait in line or interact with anybody. You literally tap your card right at the food item to open the door and go!
Tap has probably helped so much with modern automats! Much faster than nickels.
I was gonna mention FEBO haha
So Jelly; (Jealous), right now! 😣
I think they used to be a bit more common but the business model still makes sense. The Dutch "automatiek" isn't a sit-down restaurant, it's basically just a wall with all those cubby holes. They can be combined with a regular fast-food place, and I especially remember one at Utrecht Centraal where people could use the wall if they were on the go, or order at the counter if they had a bit more time. The wall just had the most popular items. This was before tap cards, I think you had to feed them quarters.
You are describing automats like we were living back then in a multicultural utopia. Our country was over 95% White and prosperous. Now fast-forward today and its become a hell-hole with massive violence and murders against "magas" and even social-justice warriors (one was just stabbed yesterday by a POC....). We cannot have good things anymore because racial hatred is dominating the landscape. Systematic murders and destruction of the White business is going up and accelerating. @@kendragaylord
Those places seemed like it made it easier to build community. Now it’s like, if you don’t have at least a +1 with you at a restaurant you feel out of place 🫤 great video ❤
Yes!!
We had a community dining room in the co-op grocery store where I used to live in a town in NE. They served hot buffet items and cold items like sandwiches. So lots of people would stop in and eat, some were alone and some in groups. There was a lot of community chat amongst the singletons, who were usually older people
Correct. Community members rather than consumers and customers
Seems like modern America is designed to cultivate alienation, loneliness, depression and anxiety. Which is good for consumer capitalism I guess, but corrosive and destructive for everything else.
that's exactly why they can't allow them to exist, they saw how helpful these places were for civil rights activists. having any community whatsoever makes people less vulnerable to exploitation, so they must destroy any possibility of community
As a jersey girl it's absolutely horrible how expensive diners have gotten. One that my friends and I used to go to used to have a plate of mozzarella sticks for like $5... but now it's around $15. it's crazy
It's $5 for a side of bacon now at the diner near me. Jersey diners were always the best but now I don't think I'll even bother.
I damn sure read that last part with a "stink face".
I used to pick up a large cheese steak with large fries at my local NJ Deli for $12.
Go to cinnaminson!
When I was in my 20s in the 2000s, my late night meal at a local diner was cup of coffee and fries. Cost $5 with tip and taxes. This place is selling 5 mozz for $10, it cost them less than $2 from Sysvo for them.
We as a society kinda forgot how to go some spend time at some small restaurant/ cafe with out spending a lot or needing a reason to even be there
*capitalism excised it
I’m moving to Hong Kong from Australia and it’s crazy because I’m Australia it is so expensive to eat out - 30 dollars a head minimum, but in Hong Kong there are places designed for people who don’t have kitchens, and often that’s cheaper than getting a larger apartment with kitchen space. It’s such a mind bend.
Hey. Aussie here. There are some places where food is a good deal cheaper than 30 a head but you do have to go out and find them. There's a cafe near me which is the closest I've ever experienced to a diner, 8.50 for a sandwich with chips and a coffee. I find a good bet is looking out for a tradie cafes as they serve a community demographic that pays for meals daily. If you're right in the heart of the city it can be more difficult too. Look out for Indian buffets. They often do all you can eat vegetarian curries for very affordable pricing (I find that a curry from most Indian restaurants will get you through three dinners if you take it home and cook rice at home). Also we have IKEA restaurants here. I believe they do value meals on Friday nights which are pretty popular.
I love the ikea cafeteria. I genuinely don't feel rushed and the food is filling, good, and affordable. I really wouldn't mind if it was a standalone diner or something
I think a lot of people feel the same. People def go to Ikea just to eat and hang out
Like she mentioned at the end though, cafeteria nowadays are usually attached to some other business or organization. Unfortunately I think it's because fast food has replaced the lower end of the food segment, making it harder for cafeterias to be profitable unless they're attached to a captive customer base
Come on@@fqwgads 😄
Srsly tho, I think cafeterias attached to businesses/organizations are subsidized by the organization, allowing them to be cheap.@@fqwgads
@@fqwgads I think cafeterias, if they offered a to-go option the way salad bars do, would work really well in areas with a lot of offices. I used to work in a restaurant about 7 minutes from all the big office buildings in my town, and our biggest lunchtime leader was people coming in to get a giant affordable salad to go, and offices ordering takeout together. I always told my boss she should get a minibus and do a salad bar food truck, and just drive it down to the offices and charge by weight.
I'm interning at a company that has a cafe for its employees, and realizing how sustainable and affordable it would be for me to get lunch everyday there was eye opening for what food should be like
one of my old jobs had a tiny cafeteria in the break room where you'd scan your own things and pay with your card. It was cheap, and filling. I survived off of that until I was laid off.
My co-workers often complain about the price of food around us. As a second-generation food service worker, I remind them that restaurants and delis have to pay rent too, and so do their employees.
There's something else: in NYC, wherever there's cheap food and/or a place to sit, there are unhoused, indigent, and/or mentally ill people, or just loiterers (e.g., juvenile delinquents) who can sometimes be unpleasant and deter customers.
There are a lot of things that contribute to the disappearance of affordable prepared food in the city.
But... there's a surprisingly shining beacon of hope, for food, if not ambience: restaurants with no seating. They're multiplying like mushrooms, especially if you count trucks, bodegas and supermarkets.
Then again we have seen generations of working people in books and movies eat in cafes and cafeterias, so the idea that it's something you do every single day isn't anything new in popular culture
I live in Germany and (nearly) every workspace has a subsidised cafeteria. A full meal (e.g. meat + sides, last week there were mussels!) is about $6. Also, it encourages you to eat with your coworkers - sharing a warm meal with them every day adds such value to my work life.
I don’t even understand this. Why is a company cafe eye opening? Of course you eat food like this.
Did you grow up in extreme poverty and not have food in the house?
I watch a lot of Japan content and it seems like they still have this eating culture, the kitchens in major urban area apartments are just big enough to let you cook some basics but then you walk out your door and you can grab cheap, filling, tasty food from a convenience store all the way up to a sit down restaurant. In North America we live in a work culture where it would almost seem more likely to see these kinds of places *now* and yet they’ve become almost all but a memory. I definitely feel like it’s a reflection on the capitalist zeitgeist we are currently experiencing.
There are other factors that go into the Japanese restaurant industry, but a big part of it is absolutely the demand. I think another thing is that a lot of restaurants are practically automats. The gyudon counter has an attendant but all they do is bring your tray, take your money, and bus your place. They don't even take your order, every seat has its own PoS ordering touchscreen thing.
That said, I think there are other tax and policy and cultural influences. Even the cheap food is made to a high standard. And there are businesses that you just can't understand how they exist.
In the US we are really getting messed up by commercial real estate costs. Business rents are insane almost everywhere. That has a real effect on what kinds of restaurants can exist and be successful: there's no room for simple no frills businesses because they can't charge a high enough margin to pay their rent.
Been there recently. Things have gotten more expensive. Like anywhere else in the world, I guess.
But yes! Food culture is different there and still very much for everyone.
Meaning most stalls, izakayas/snack bars and so on are quite affordable and honestly a surprisingly good way to socialize with strangers. Which, to me at least, has become almost unimaginable in the west. I guess it's because community is still very much valued, which is sort of obvious considering japanese society is a collectivist one.
Eating out is a very mundane past time there and also often mandatory when it comes to the lives of most workers who join their boss quite a bit either to have meetings or after the end of work, often in groups. Which leads me to another point, like the previous commenter said the demand is high.
The harsh working culture is definitely an influence. Fast, filling and cheap food is almost necessary to get through the day. Be it quickly sitting down somewhere or on the go through a konbini or various vending machines (even if you can't or shouldn't eat while being literally on the go).
I think its a combination of capitalism, and the truly toxic individualism of this country. Japan is very much a communal, group centered culture. In the US, we've done basically everything we can to destroy every semblance of community in this country over the past seven decades.
@@newtunesforoldlogos4817 In Japan there's apparently a practice of sending VERY small children (think two or three year olds) to do simple errands, knowing that people along the way will look out for them and ensure that they get the errand completed and return home safely. Try that in the US and the result will most likely be the parents having CPS sicked on them. We're truly fucked. I'm so sick and tired of living in a toxically individualistic society.
Japan does capitalism just as much, if not moreso, than the US. The difference is that their social safety nets ensure that the take-home pay of the working class is almost entirely disposable. Meaning, because healthcare and retirement are withheld, folks are "safe" to spend everything they earn.
I think a much bigger cultural difference is not some abstract notion of community or trust, but rather the values of craft and care. Whatever the underlying cause, doing things well matters a lot more, and you can see the direct result of this in the quality of everyday things. Even cheap things are good. Their cheapness comes from an economy of ingredients/materials, not from skimping on preparation and workmanship.
I almost never take lunch to work anymore because I can get a gourmet lunch optolion at my work cafeteria for $6. This week's options include poached fish with polenta cakes, curry with rice and stir fry, and braised lamb shank with potatoes and squash. It's cheaper and tastier than I can make at home and I don't have to worry about any mess. More places should be available like that
that's cause rent and other costs are covered by the firm that owns the building. the cafeteria isn't making a profit (typically)
Alsonthe food is probably subsidized by the workplace.
I hate cooking and I live alone. I ALWAYS fall into the "why can everyone else do it but I can't seem to?" mindset. I never knew anything like this existed until this video, this is the coolest thing ever. In an alternate universe where I don't have a million food allergies and I'm not limited to the 5 same options every day, this would be my haven. I love your line delivery style, this video was informative and also fun to watch, and no, those two things don't always go together :) You have a new house member!
The answer is everyone else can't do it. You have the most vocal types who yell about how they're so very self-sufficient in an attempt to guilt/shame the rest of society, and then you have the people who rely on frozen meals and prepared foods every day.
Meal prepping culture is a walking self-delusion, built upon cult of hard work propaganda. Instead of trying to offer systemic solutions toward a society of people where a given high % are always not going to cook, it instead tries to force an individualistic and self-centered peg into the square hole that is - people working two jobs, people slaving for 14 hours a day just to make ends meet, people with anxiety and chronic pain disorders simply not being capable, edge cases, exceptions. And the problems don't go away. All the meditation apps in the world aren't making people into ubermensch.
People don't go out, don't form community bonds, and rely on processed foods. We shouldn't try to shame them into 'better' lifestyles. We should fix the core problems.
But that would require dirty dirty state intervention, and there's lots of vested interests working against that.
Just before the pandemic, I ate an old diner in Arlington Heights Illinois that my grandmother used to eat at. I sat down and had a giant BLT with massive fries for less than $6. The owners, who were elderly, refused to raise pieces. They were about service, not profits. THAT'S the kind of place where Seinfeld ate.
Meanwhile, Denny's is currently charging $3.89 for a cup of joe.
the fact that dennys is considered cheap for me and my friends right now.. sucks. eating out is just as expensive as groceries.
what bizzaro world have you been living in that it was ever more expensive (by unit price) to purchase groceries than eat out? Rule number 1 of saving money on food is to cook it yourself
Food safety & food quality at most US restaurants, casual dining, QSRs is way way off. 🍽 . QC in Orlando, Orlando.gov was 📉. 2023.
3 89 for a cup of coffee????
@@corilia9529 Yup
I feel like another example of these kinds of cafeterias and how much easier they can make your life is dining halls on campuses! I’m about to graduate college and the ability to just go eat whenever is something I’ve been thinking about a lot. Gonna miss it
Honestly thats something I miss the most about college. That and the sense of community. There were so many times that I went to breakfast/lunch alone, and ended up chatting with someone I didn't know. I've NEVER had that experience at any kind of eating establishment after college.
Dang. I started college during Covid, and one of the worst changes was limiting dining hall hours and cutting down the menu. When I did make it on time between online classes, they rarely had things I could eat that weren’t raw or undercooked.
😕
Over here the university cafeteria is just expensive restaurants
@@yuyukawa9104 Yeah, not to mention if you have food allergies it's impossbile to find anyhting :c
@@yuyukawa9104Same in my area. There is a limited food shop for people meant mainly for those who purchased a meal plan for the semester, which are not cheap on their own. You can buy things from it independently, but it is more expensive than even the restaurants at that point.
two words in your piece stands out for me: regulars and communal eating. This is significant in terms of a lost culture of a third place people would gather regularly if not daily and eat communally as opposed to limiting to circle of friends or families that is so prevalent now.
A distinctive element of restaurants is dividing patrons into tables of familiar people, as if that table temporarily is that group's property. Earlier, there was a culture where tables were shared with strangers, yet few were totally strangers because they were seen regularly in same place.
The establishments you list evolved out of an earlier saloon culture (generalized) that existed prior to prohibition, a place where people in neighborhood gathered at meal time, drawn to the location primarily because it was in the neighborhood, instead of being known for some specialty cuisine or atmosphere.
The goal is more than just satiating hunger affordably, the goal is what comes from being a regular in a communal eating setting: making connections with the neighborhood one lives in instead of with shared interests, careers, or family relations.
I love this comment OP. Many moons ago, I worked as a waitress in a diner. (Several actually, but I’m referring to the very first one) I usually worked the smoking section and/or the party room. But smoking was basically my haunt. I had some regulars that came in 7 days a week, multiple times per day. I’ve personally called the police to do a welfare check for an older gentleman that had been there like clockwork- longer than I had even been working there. I still remember his first name, Lee. Thankfully they found him and were able to bring him to the hospital and the surgeon there saved his life. He was back in the diner the day he was discharged. My boss even visited him while he was laid up in the hospital, bringing him balloons and a card we had all signed.
Cheap restaurants and diners provide much needed community to those who don’t have many friends or family. Our regulars knew the staff and each other. Many of them were elderly. Poor teenagers and young people down on their luck. Single transplants new to town. Night workers whose days began at 1pm. We were like family to them. I mourn the death of the ubiquitous greasy spoon. It’s taking more from all us than I can even put into words.
@@h0rriphic The greasy spoon, the coffee house, the local dives - all serve a purpose in communities, but then communities are dying left and right from all the other woes inflicted upon them.
Inflation, gentrification, predatory housing markets/new development, and fat cats who cash in on revolving door investments.
Maybe the world did end in 2012, we just didn't realize it yet.
The recently renovated Sheetz in PA have both
Circa 2004, I was working on a project for a company in a very small town (pop ~1200) in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming. Every day, I went to eat a cheap meal at the local diner on the main highway, one of about 4-5 places in town where you could get food (diner, pizza place in the gas station, the little grocery store, the bar & grill, and the co-op on certain days). The diner was an entertaining spot where you met people, saw the same faces, and people knew your name within a few visits. Food was dirt cheap, affordable to anyone, even on the local wages, and particularly with how cheap housing was back then ($40k was a nice house, many were $20k or less, and rent on my enormous 2/1 apartment was $150/month). Mind you, transportation (cars & fuel) was a huge portion of your monthly expenses because you needed a reliable car and to drive long distances regularly. Then when you saw another car (which were often many minutes apart) while driving, you always waved to the other driver.
As pointed out in the video, the problem is that our allocation of money is broken. We should be spending a lot on eating out and spending time at these third places with other people. It's natural, good for us as individuals, and good for our communities. Spending so much of our money on housing should be unusual. No wonder our grandparents and great grandparents could live in small houses when they didn't need to cook every meal at home and had other places to spend their time.
Diners used to be great for elderly who were alone.
I lived in Manhattan in the 1990s. My kitchen was miniscule. But there were dozens of restaurants within a few minutes walk where you could grab a cheap meal for under $5. Not anymore.
Automats are fantastic, we have a few in the Netherlands. I love them because there is one place I used to go when I was in middle school and today, 5+ years later, I returned to the automat I used to frequent and the woman behind the counter called me a sweetie, gave me a snack for free and told me that she looks forward to seeing me again. It's always weird how the automat was started in New York, it's such a part of Dutch life imo.
One of the interesting things about diners is that a big part of their decline was from the change in the way their suppliers worked. In a traditional diner, you can have a large number of meals made from the same few ingredients andf you'd reuse whatever didn't sell during the day. For instance, unsold home fries and hashbrowns from breakfast could get turned into mashed potatoes for lunch, unsold meat and veggies could go into stews and soups and so on, so they had very little waste. Then in the 50s, food wholesalers started pushing frozen premade foods that just needed to be dropped in a fryer. It was advertised as convenient because it reduced cooking time, but it meant that diners had to use their limited space to store all this frozen stuff and need to invest in walk-in-freezers, they also had more garbage to deal with and if you're making frozen hash browns, you can't make them into home fries or take today's roast chicken and make tomorrow's chicken salad and chicken noodle soup if you have frozen chicken tenders. So it increased costs massively and reduced what diners were capable of.
Another big part is immigration. A lot of diners today are owned by Greek families, but that wasn't always the case. When they started they would be Jewish or Italian or Irish, but then the third or even second generations of these families don't want to get up at 3 am and spend all day over a hot grill, they want to work in factories and go to college, so in the 70s a lot of diners were sold to Greeks who were jhust establishing themselves in America, but now their children and grandchildren are reaching the point where they can't pass on their businesses to the next generation, and there isn't really a new group of immigrants ready to take them over.
That's interesting about the changes in wholesale food. About immigration, in a couple places I've heard of, new immigrant groups have taken on diners. I think in Queens there's a former Greek diner that now serves South American home-cooking alongside the US classics, because the new owners are from somewhere down south. A pretty isolated example, though.
Here in the DC suburbs, we used to have a ton of little Vietnamese family restaurants run by people who came for refuge when Saigon fell. The owners have succeeded and their children have college degrees now--and don't want to be in the restaurant business. So most of the staff at these places are Spanish-speaking. Sometimes the owners are arranging to sell to their employees when they retire. So you can find Mexicans and Ecuadorians who have learned to be experts in making pho!
I think that's really interesting about the change to frozen food but I think you might be drawing the wrong conclusions about why that was bad.
Trash and floor space aren't really going to massively increase costs, frozen foods are low waste as well. I would bet money they made those changes because it saved them money. Far less waste and crucially preparing frozen food is a lower skilled job. You don't need a skilled cook to ensure you have a diverse menu and use
And if you don't have the need to use stuff up you don't have the need to vary the menu as much so you don't need to employ someone at a higher wage and even if the chef is the owner the incentives to offer more better food go out the window when you can just rely frozen food and simple to cook stuff that is their bread and butter. So variety and the basic quality of food declines and they simply stop offering stuff that involves more costly time use and skills.
@@mytimetravellingdog the down side on that however is that they then have to compete with fastfood places that do the same on a level a single diner can not compete. However a diner can compete by offering what would be seen as home style cooking. As they can make it cheaper (Bulk) then a single person. It's that small slice diners can cover.
Overhead costs also just aren’t the same nowadays to open restaurants.
Absolutely feeling the passing of the torch thing (or lack there of rather). Growing up in Denver (in my mid thirties now) we had a very healthy amount of really great diners, indeed all owned by Greek or Chicano families. Now, the later generations work in tech or started their own ventures in other fields and the diners throughout the Denver Metro Area are dropping like flies. Sad days.
On the topic of "why is this so hard for me humanity's been doing this forever" - we really haven't - ROMANS had fast food. It'd be unrecognizable to us as fast food now, but there were places for laborers to come and get cheap quickly-prepared food, socialize, etc for reasonable prices, where these places would take up a substantial part of their diet. I liked Invicta's video on it, but anyways my point is just how weird the moment we're in is. There's always been equivalents to things like the diner and automat, except now.
On a similar if a bit unrelated topic - "why is it so hard to maintain a home" - for most of history, half the home could focus on maintaining that home, and work itself was often integrated into the home already, so it was possible to maintain the home as part of one's regular labor. Now both partners are gone for the majority of their waking hours, home is a transient place left empty all day. I'm not suggesting we should go back to the same gendered labor divisions - but every household is working twice as much as they would have at any point in history. We should be working less.
You're right. Carbonara was invented at a restaurant serving coal miners.
@@Ella-g2m I had no idea, what a fun wikipedia read! Thanks for bringing that up!
I'm suggesting it
I'm with it. I'm ready to be able to stay home and focus on home. Good comment.
I was hoping someone would mention the Thermopoliums!
Let’s not forget about the department store lunch counter. Getting something to eat at Woolworth’s was a major treat when I was a child.
Yes and Kmart as well. Good memories!
@maureensmith9923Which mall was it?
Well, America killed the mall. Here in Asia malls are still thriving,
Woolworth fried chicken was the best Miami Florida downtown
I had forgot those cool spaces....Thank You for reviving the sleeping memories!
Way before the chain parasites invaded, McDonalds inside a Walmart as an example.
A lunch counter/bar, with premade offers and a hot grill....gone anymore.
It's interesting how the view on eating out as a common daily thing in the early 1900s varies between countries and size of cities. I've been told my old relatives from a mid sized town in Sweden pretty much only ate at restaurants once per year. It was a huge deal. They couldn't even imagine someone eating at a diner several times per week.
I only just came across this video, thank you for producing it! These cafeterias and diners were also acting as 'third places', where communal activity occurs. And as you mentioned, people are lonelier than ever, these sorts of places I believe are more important than ever.
No, there any be "third places" when everyone insists on injecting every conversation with their wild political views
This is so fascinating to me, seeing the rise of even the lowest priced foods. $1 menu items at fast food places are shortening, heck the Dollar Tree is now $1.25 tree. It just seems like it's getting harder and harder to even be on a budget for working class people. I also wonder how much corporate consolidation/money consolidation contributes to these trends?
I'm guessing its central. Feels like the US is being redesigned to punish anyone who isn't already independently wealthy.
Massively. We're essentially going back to the late 1800s but with internet.
McDonalds is low-key expensive now, for the price it’s better to just go visit a „real“ restaurant and pick a cheap option. The difference is minuscule.
I remember when Döner was ~3,50€ and a coke 1€. Now it’s 5-6€ for a Döner and 2,50-3€ for a drink on the side.
read a book on economics and stop voting democrat. then MAYBE, just maybe, prices for working class people will improve.
Somehow I doubt things looked so great with the republicans
There used to be a diner in my town that was open 24 hours and had a menu like you showed in the video where some meals were typical for pricing today, but they also had cheap meals like a HUGE plate of biscuits and gravy was $2, a cup of coffee was $1.50, and eggs al a carte were $1.25 each. When I was living on my own, working poverty wages that place plus my one staff meal a day at work was how I survived. Unfortunately, the stopped being 24 hours, and raised all their prices like crazy after covid.
When I lived in Pittsburgh, Wilkensburg PA 1990s, there was a simple traditional type 24hr diner near my house. The food wasn't great but the costs were fair. The liver & onions was ✔️. I don't recall the coffee being worth a damn.
Yeah, then you elected shitheels who ran up trillions in deficits and turned the dollar into a total joke. They also rammed in over 8million illegal immigrants, oh, more like 25 million or more, and you are still wondering WTF happened.
I ate at diners in NYC all the time and really miss it. I'll never forget going to one in Queens for breakfast. The cook was making eggs and hash browns while smoking a cigarette with an ash a mile long. And no one cared.
Just like grandma used to make!
A good breakfast place 🍳 is ✅️. SoDo in Orlando.gov has Peach Valley Cafe. They opened: 600am to 200pm around 2014(maybe 2013). Good food but the chefs, QC vary.
$1.50 breakfast at the diner in 1997 in Queens. I then moved to a different neighborhood later that year and it cost $5 for breakfast. I stopped going then.
This was really interesting. I'd had some similar feelings after watching Seinfeld and other 90s shows/movies. The idea of meeting up with friends for an inexpensive drink or meal has almost totally disappeared. And especially in cities where people's studio apartments are not suitable for hosting guests, these cheap eateries also acted as a key social space.
Hahaha!! I laughed out loud at the "Who can't relate to not keeping a diary when you're going through a manic episode?" Such a great video! Well done!!
My mother would have been 93 years old of she was alive. I remember her talking about taking my older siblings to Horn and Hadart. She said they would be so excited to put the coins in the machines. Thanks for a nice memory of her. ❤
One of the many good surprises I got when I moved to Spain was discovering the "menú del día": every bar/restaurant/cafeteria/whatever has a kitchen offers a choice of starter, main course, drink and dessert for between €9 and €12 on working days. There is plenty of choice so you can find the place you like best and also a wide variety of customers: from a single person on a lunch break to a table of 6+ tourists or business people.
Same thing happens in Mexico and latin america, the “menu del día” are my saviors while I’m in college.
Yeah i'm from spain and i felt pretty lucky for feeling like i still can get what she mentions. She's using NYC prices so maybe Madrid prices are a better equivalent to those, but even still 15-20€ menús are what you can see
And i gotta say that taking into account american salaries they may be "better off" in the monetary sense. To be determined
Here in Germany in one of the more expensive cities you will get a starter and a main course for about 12€ in nearly all restaurants that have lunch on a working day
And the Spanish meal can include a whole bottle of wine!
Um those prices aren’t that different from a chilis in America?? 😂
I just visited Japan recently, and I was blown away with how 1)cheap and 2) accessible to single eaters their dining options were.
I was convinced they were eons ahead, but it’s surprising and honestly sad to know America was right there with them at a time.
Literally half the reason why I go to Japan are a bundle of reasons whose root cause is "Japan is too small for cars, lawns, and suburbs".
"Oh wow it's cool that you can just get to places by walking" - AMERICA HAD THAT AND THREW IT AWAY IN THE NAME OF HENRY GOD DAMNED FORD
"It's so convenient to get a quick bite to eat" - IT'D BE CONVENIENT IN AMERICA TOO IF TOWNS WERE STILL BUILT TO ALLOW MIXED USE ZONING
"Oh hey they still have DDR and that weird Japanese drum game, I thought arcades and music games died in the 2000s" - THEY DIDN'T, BUT ASIDE FROM WEIRDOS LIKE ME WHO LIVE NEAR A ROUND1, NOBODY WANTS TO DRIVE HALF AN HOUR TO PLAY VIDEOGAMES ANYMORE
Because Japanese people aren't all total idiots.
Japan is a very lonely place, the amount of singleton availability is destroying their family culture, birthrate etc it's honestly quite sad how few children I saw during my extended trip. i would hardly describe them as eons ahead when their birthrate is crashing so hard, their racism is extreme, most marriages are loveless and most ppl don't have friends ... don't be deceived by the shiny tech and singing bird toilets, scratch the surface and Japan is still very medieval.
I was very happy to come home and ppl, that says a lot since I'm an introvert.
we need to curate our culture to create the society we can all thrive in! (singles also)
ex - Japan had a very, very poor diet pre-WW1 ate no fish, very little meat, not enough veg and too much grain. The govt revamped eating/diet for the whole country to create a healthy army for colonization&war. this process created a healthier population and those changes are still massively reflected in Japanese healthy eating habits of today!
with a little planning and lots of legwork, we can create a better future for all of us!
Those pie charts on spending categories blew me away.
The other thing i noticed any the old vs new menus: the old menus sound a lot like what we're always being told we should eat. Also what fast food places are always telling us can't be made at scale.
These very much remind me of how in the eastern block, canteens were not just limited to closed facilities (like factories etc).
Some were also just public access, sort of filling the same niche as a fast food restaurant today. There were usually a 3-4 meals each day to pick from, they were cooked fresh, just in massive batches, and so it was pretty cheap and pretty much instant.
Yes, I went to a "stolovaya" a few times in Russia in the 90s. I had a good basic lunch which included a (small) mug of beer for a little over one USD.
this is great!! i was just thinking about how the common person in probably any city used to rely on prepared food. all those early apartments relied on a service part of the apartment where the kitchens were and the STAFF worked. the Chelsea Hotel, like other such places, had a common dining room for their tenants. in London, the streets were crowded with all kinds of food and beverage carts to feed all the workers and residents. cooking at home yourself was just not that common in big cities until relatively recently. it's so fascinating!
This goes all the way back to literally the Roman Empire at least. There were basically what we'd recognize as diners in Roman cities that served cheap food to people that were close to housing. Having a stay at home partner/parent that did all the cooking and eating all your meals at home was literally a fantasy popularized in like the thirties or forties, when automats and diners were still massively common. Learning more about history, you find out that our conception of it has more to do with ideas cooked up by people with ulterior motives in the last hundred years or so than it does with what actually happened.
@@frankm.2850 Having someone at home cooking is how farm families would work, obviously, so it's not just a fantasy. The thing with Roman cities was that apartments often didn't have any cooking facilities, and it was a fire risk if they did -- we're talking multi-story tenement buildings. So yeah, heavy dependence on street food or cookshops.
@@fibonacci2112agreed. And rather than finding automat-like solutions, the answer has been wildly unaffordable meal kits like hello fresh or blue apron, etc etc there are a million spawned things like that. And while it does save in food waste, it costs in transport, packaging, and boutique food markup.
i don't know why but i just started to tear up a little bit.. People tell you get a degree and study then get a job and yet these days the income from that isn't even enough...heck one meal at a restaurant is one hour of our work...
Start a garden and can your own vegetables, feed and raise your own animals, butcher your own animals. Then you will appreciate that food only costs 1 hour of labor.
Try doing that without college and then complain to me. Not everyone in America is fortunate enough to have family to send them there
@@droolingpine9658 most people attend college via scholarship and loans but ok
I love this topic! I have fond memories of going to eat lunch with my Grandmother in the 80's at "Luby's Cafeteria." I always thought an automat looked so cool and futuristic.
When I was growing up (late '90s and early aughts), Luby's was an absolute dinner staple for my family, and we were less than a five minute drive away from it. I miss cafeterias. There's Piccadilly's here, but it's not the same.
I miss Luby’s their mac and cheese was my favorite!
Good point about the bulk food pricing. Diners making large pots of soup/stew, big pans of casseroles and other large volume servings, they could save money by paying a butcher for large cuts several times a week, paying for large bags of flour, etc. So by the time they spend money on preparing and serving the food, it should still be reasonably priced. YET, today a basic diner meal (and tip) costs 4 to 5 times what it would cost to make at home.
This goofball actually tips LOL you are a patron, not their employer.
@@mystriddlery Many businesses operate at a low profit margin. They're only viable if they can supplement the income. For instance, I'm a professional musician, and often restaurants won't have enough to hire someone at a full wage, but they can pay part and the rest is filled in by putting out a tip jar....together they make the gig worthwhile.
@@betsybarnicle8016 If servers want more money, they should ask their bosses for a raise so they dont have to beg from the customers. You're defending an archaic model that leads to unequal pay for the same job and discrimination across the board (pretty women make more tips than older men for instance). Music is a niche industry whereas the service industry is not. I will never tip for anything. If you want more money, include it in the price.
@@mystriddlery Just because you want the restaurant industry to work like that, doesn't mean the financial reality can do it...and stay in business. That's why waitstaff has always needed supplemented. Study restaurant accounting to see where the numbers are. Me, I'd like to see all waitstaff replaced by automated ordering and robot table service (seriously).
@@betsybarnicle8016 How do you think restaurants in europe or other places that dont use tipping manage then?
another banger!! as a new yorker im sad there arent more diners and frankly crushed that theres no automat equivalent. bring back automats!
It's not mentioned as much as I was expecting, but it seems obvious that it was fast food that crowded out the diners and automats, filling a similiar niche with the working class. They might not have been as nutrious or interesting, but the franchise model allowed for economy of scale that made them cheaper and more "reliable" - in the sense that no matter where you went you knew exactly what you would get. Also to be mentioned is that the move to the suburbs didn't only include the middle class - the poor also frequently ended up on the outskirts, where there were no diners, but plenty of fast food.
Except modern fast food isn't affordable
@@xaviers6983really only since inflation in the last couple of years
I'm in Australia and have a chronic illness. I think the current equivalent for single, time-poor people are frozen meals. Depending on the brand, they cost 4-10 AUD. I love cooking, but often i just don't have the energy for it. Many years ago i did the calculations, and figured that even when i batch cooked, what i spent per serve on making dinner myself was about the same. I still try to batch cook when I'm able to, but if i can't, there's still an easy, affordable meal for me.
This is a great point! It depends massively on the food (so frustrating how much research it takes to figure out each individual item!) but many things are cheaper frozen. Unless you like eating things raw, there's basically no reason not to go frozen. Frozen meals themselves rarely work for me because of allergies, but frozen ingredients are amazing. Cheap, usually ready to cook, and can be held at home indefinitely. It's sad to have no choice but to rely on them due to prices, but they are wonderful nonetheless and I'm happy that other people find them useful too.
@@kinseylise8595 Eh, maybe you have better selection, but frozen meals around me are definitely not the cheapest option for eating. We're talking at least $1 per 100 calories. I haven't worked out if they might be cheaper than making an equivalent meal from scratch, though I'd doubt it, but there are certainly cheaper ways of feeding yourself.
Frozen ingredients do work well for some things; I get a lot of broccoli and berries that way, and fish is best frozen anyway (though canned salmon is cheaper.)
@@mindstalk Yeah, in my area frozen meals aren't any good because of how little is in them, it's the frozen ingredients that I use. Ounce to ounce they beat out fresh (obviously) and canned almost every time. Though like you say canned fish is probably cheaper, I sadly don't like it so never investigated. I will say, bulk buying is crazy where I live.
The price of ground beef goes down a dollar when you pick ~3% higher fat (totally worth it, just drain if you want less) and another dollar to dollar fifty if you take high weight packages. It's the only way I can afford it tbh, the same amount of meat can go from $24 to $14 if the right type of package is available. Not frozen info but I feel like this must not be common since it wasn't the case in other places I've lived.
@@kinseylise8595 The discounts for 3+ pound packages of meat are bigger than I remember, yeah. Though possibly I never paid attention before as the 1 pound prices were more acceptable.
You’re ignoring the cost to your health from eating out all the time. With raw ingredients you have complete control over what goes into your body, the same cannot be said for restaurants which will often cut corners and use lower quality ingredients, at least ones that have a price point comparable to home cooked meals
9:54 I used to live across the street from the Metro Diner when I was in grad school...I miss that place.
The ancient Romans relied on thermopolia: tavern-like places where you could get a fast meal for a low price. They had variations with different concepts and focus groups (popinaes, etc.), but mostly they served food for every type of person of any class that might wander in at adjusted prices, because most people didn’t have kitchens.
Add to that dinners being places of socialization and third spaces. The closest equivalent to that type of atmosphere are bars, but it is kind of insidious that that social sphere requires alcohol consumption and spending on non-essential categories, which excludes such a large percentage of people
There's Cafes, but that seems so work related
I mean... we need some kind of social lubricant. Music, drinks, a shared activity, snacks, something!
Bars don't even work anymore. Drinks are far too expensive to be an activity you do with any regularity.
In Staten Island/NJ- there were loads of cheap diners with yummy food. While there seems to be enough left, the numbers are dwindling fast, the prices in these diners are skyrocketing, and they are selling pre-processed/pre-made food. It's depressing for locals. Now, food trucks are popping up. I'm starting to frequent those. Food trucks are our future.
Ironic how we have cycled back isn't it?
Shout-out to S.I. diners of old: The Unicorn, the Country Club, heck even the old A&W had a diner vibe. South Brooklyn held out longer, still a few great places keeping the fire going.
Yeah but food truck prices are starting to be at or more than some of the regular restaurants that serve similar and their availability is limited (at least outside of the big cities)
When ever I see a Mexican food truck when I'm out of town my heart beats a little faster.
@aformist sorry I didn't see your comment! I loved the old A & W 😢😢😢 oh so many memories. I'm trying to think when it went bad- I think in the early '00s I noticed all the Mike's prices went bazerk. I'm guessing rent went up a lot, too. As housing was going for a lot more. Everything got more expensive, then the '08 crash. Market fell- prices continued climbing. Nothing is left here of my past. Not even the people. Time to go to FL? Lol!
There are a lot of factors involved in this. A lot of them involve governments messing things up.
I've travelled to 20 countries and almost everywhere I go, there are affordable options for food. Here in Mexico, everyone knows they can go to a taco stand or "economical kitchen" to get a cheap meal. it'll cost about $3-7 USD, about 50-120 pesos. now I'm a vegetarian, but there's still an option to go to a stand that sells boiled vegetables and eggs with chilli
similarly in Thailand I would order pad Thai from a little stand. I can't remember how much it cost but it was probably around 2 dollars. in Vietnam, banh mi. in Paraguay I went to Mercado Cuatro and ate pork kebabs for about a dollar a piece.
I know you'd be very interested in the "Strong Towns" movement, if you're not already. They focus on trying to change zoning laws to get these kinds of things to happen
There was a case, I think in Canada. One potential food truck owner wanted to set up shop, but the current zoning and business code didn't allow for it. 50 restaurateurs showed up to protest, and it resulted in a food truck code so cumbersome that nobody could follow it
It's similar with corner stores and hardware stores. Here in Mexico, you will find them in almost every neighborhood, except gated communities. In my native Australia, it is rarer and rarer to find them. likewise in Canada and the US.
This is mostly because zoning laws for new developments declare that it will be a residential only area. Older parts of town are generally grandfathered in, so they have more freedom.
I don't know if something like an automat would be viable today. it's possible it would be more viable, because of advances in technology. but there is surely a place for taco stands, sandwich stands, food trucks and other things, as long as the little guy has the freedom to set up shop
Zoning laws are heavily lobbied by the automobile industry, because when the population needs a car to do anything outside their homes, it means the car manufacturers and oil barons make bank. Even more bank than they already would.
Governments? What the hell are you talking about? The rich schmucks and Citizens United made corporate criminals take over. They own all the food supply in the world.
That's why!
Another factor you missed but is related ia how the increased costs of living, and thus inflation, is also directly tied to how expensive housing is. Turning American single family suburbs into a Strong Town type of city would make it a drastically more affordable place to live and actively fight against inflation that makes cheap eating so rare in the first place.
@@fluidthought42 It's always suburbia's fault that assholes living in generationally blue cities can't get their act together. Do you even listen to yourselves?
"wage slavery for thee, not for me" basically
This is the best RUclips video I've watched this year. Incredible research and synthesis bringing together so many ideas about urbanism and society. Thank you 🙏
Perhaps this incredible video could be thought of as: "The life and death of great American cities: diner edition"
Thank you so much for your kind words. I know I’m late on this thank you, but it’s means so much.
Reminds me of my college cafeteria. Every swipe in on your card was a flat rate of $9.00 regardless of what you ate. It was crazy expensive and I couldn’t afford it after the first semester. No one I knew paid for it themselves, always their parents. And guess who couldn’t eat there? People paying for their own college, international students, working students, basically people who usually needed a quick cheap place to eat on campus the most.
I can remember visiting a local hospital when I was still tiny, probably five, and getting food out of an automat wall in the cafeteria while we were visiting my grandmother who was a patient there. That would have been in the early 90's. This sort of thing limped along for a long time and has seemingly only completely disappeared VERY recently.
my first high school in north dakota had like a vending machine/automat hybrid in the cafeteria. It was where I got my lunch half the time because it was so much easier than the other options.
This was so interesting! And I loved the cameo of your dad, he sounds very sweet.
My day job is as an engineer but after hours I am a public transit activist in the Boston area. What you are saying totally fits. Keep up the good work.
I remember learning about this when I was in like 3rd grade. It was a core memory because I was impressed with how cheap and how cool automats were! Really missed out on something good
This is what makes anthropology so damn interesting. I LOVE this. And now I really want a diner BLT and coffee.
I am loving this channel, it’s so educational and informative. So glad I found it.
I am so happy you like the channel! Thank you
Me too!! It’s refreshing I’m so tired of the trendy channels I don’t even know how I found this channel but I’m so glad I did
Yesss thank you youtube gods for showing me mizz Gaylord
@@jas000nWe found her on the same day. 😄😊 Must have been an algorithm bump.
Edit to add: cafeteria experience! I have a friend who grew up in a small town, so small that they didn't have many places to eat out. The college campus there was mixed in with the town itself, so it was normal for people of all ages to pass through on the way to work or class. A lot of people would buy meal plans with the school so that they could eat in the cafeteria without paying tax, and she told me that many elderly people would purchase the all-inclusive meal plan with unlimited access and eat every single meal there as a way to maintain their ability to live unassisted. It's much easier on them to walk to the cafeteria for breakfast, sit in the university park all morning, then eat lunch there and take a box home for dinner than it every would be to get to the store and back, deal with dishes and trash, even using the fridge that they had to bend down to access. Having a cafeteria (for elders who could walk there) meant staying out of nursing homes until they went crazy, had a major injury, or passed away. Cafeterias can serve the specialized needs of almost anyone using a generalized approach specifically because the solution to these individualized problems is almost always cheap, readily accessible, somewhat variable food.
For the most part I also struggle to find prepared food worth buying. Even something prepared at the grocery store tends to cost enough that I'd rather make 10x the amount for myself and just eat it for a week. Everything is so much cheaper in bulk, even ground beef is more than a dollar per pound cheaper if you can handle a 3.5-4lb pack instead of 1-1.5lb one. There is one place that keeps decent prices near me. It's a deli and the sandwiches are big enough to be half your food for the day, and come out to $6.50-7.50 each including tax. They can sustain this despite being in a very desirable area by having a tiny footprint and being packed. There is a line out the door from 11:30am to 2pm, with a constant trickle of customers in between. They can even justify staying open late into the night because of college students using a nearby library until 2am. Although it's limited, they do have a decent amount of seating jammed in there, and outside of the lunch rush you'd have no issue staying there for hours (this is how I know how many people they serve). Since they're basically selling sandwiches constantly, it seems to be enough to keep the doors open. The quality is usually consistent as well, though since the manager retired it has gone downhill. I sincerely hope that more places like this appear, as I can't eat a sandwich every day but would love more options at this price range.
I’m so happy I found your channel. As an urban planning enthusiast I learn so much from you! Please keep making more content ❤☺️.
Thank you! I love doing it so I will be making plenty more!
I just had a most enjoyable time watching your "show". Its actually the best thing I've watched in a long time. I'm in my 60's retired and have always lived very remote so I had no idea communal cafeterias were a big thing in the cities. It makes total sense and is a shame they have fallen by the wayside. Thanks for this video.
Diving into the first menu you shared has been so depressed. Some of the prices on the menu adjusted for inflation would be a steal today, and many of these items would cost 2x the adjusted for inflation price even at a cheap-ish diner where I am. I’m def getting old enough now where I see and feel the inflation, shrinkflation, and gouging. Across the board I’ve seen prices at least double in my lifetime so far, some things have gone up more like 3-5x other things maybe only 1.5, but I’m mentally averaging it to at least double. My income over the same timeframe has doubled, but only doubled, so things feel tighter now than when I was a fresh adult.
I always wondered about this. I moved out of my parents house at 23 (last year) because rent was too high for me to pay alone, and I can't afford a house. I try to keep all my meals under $3. Most of my money goes to rent, utilities, car insurance, medical bills, and groceries. I don't have any subscription services, my only luxury is owning a cat. My parents are wonderful enough to keep me on their phone plan. I earn too much to qualify for government assistance, but earn too little to make life less miserable. And having a disability makes most available jobs a physically painful nightmare. This generation can forget about having kids too, because we can't afford to raise them in a thriving environment. We are all in survival. Worked to the bone and never get home. I hope change happens soon. My folks are getting old and I want to be able to care for them :( I can hardly provide for myself with these wages.
"you don't have to speak English to get a meal" That's such a lovely sales pitch. I just...I love it so much
because it was very communal: come one, come all. Businessman, prostitutes, blue collar workers, foreigners, immigrants, could go to the same place, around the same time , and get a meal. It promoted a sense of care and community, regardless if one wasn't even American or english-speaking.
I need to eat a lot and I have horrible executive dysfunction when it comes to making and packing food.
Finding affordable half healthy food is a gauntlet. It's so hard to find a place that will sell food with fruits or vegetables.
The hospital I work at has a cafeteria that makes me feel like I got bang for my buck 9/10 times. My fast food/restaurant/everywhere else batting average is like. 1 in 5 tops. I rarely get a meal that I feel like it was worth the price.
Having executive dysfunction and not enjoyig cooking makes one of the basics of life a pain in the ass. I'm lucky at the moment in that I live with my mother and she takes care of most of the cooking. My worry is what happens when she passes in the next couple decades. I'll most likely move in with my brother, but we have such different dietary needs that I'll be feeding myself out of necessity. I'd be alright if I could walk a couple blocks to a diner for a
@@frankm.2850 I don't know how doable this is for you since I don't know your specific struggles or what kind of space you have, but I do have a suggestion that you might not have considered. If you're able to take time for it on a good day, it's possible to cook big batches of 4+ meals at once and freeze them all in single serving sizes by spooning a serving into a plastic bag. This way, you can freeze enough food for 20+ meals and reduce the times you have to cook. I don't have enough freezer space to scale up more than this at the moment but it great for me and once I have a larger freezer, I can only imagine it getting better. Only having to think about cooking on one designated Sunday every two months sounds like a dream. Not to say you can't ever cook fresh if you want something specific either, but just as a way to reduce overall time/mental energy given to cooking.
Same brother same. I can’t cook for shit even though I love to cook. If I could eat somewhere for lunch every day for $5 I would.
In Mexico I saw a guy selling fruit and tanjin out of his little wagon and it was amazing. I don't think you can even do that here in the US.
I was in awe of the Hawker Centres of Singapore for the history and concept but also largely for the food itself! I truly miss finding a meal including a drink and dessert or snack for under $10 and it was made to order. A fresh juice would cost your $2. Sadly never happening in the USA not sure what they think will happen when people cant afford bare minimum it's so gross
Well they set up one in NYC... at NYC prices though. SGD $4.50 prawn mee becomes $26 in the NYC hawker center. 😱
Lol the working hours and pay of these hawker centre stalls is downright horrendous. Of course you're getting nice affordable food in a country without a minimum wage at all.
I think the first place I saw an automat was in the movie Dark City, and I thought it looked so neat. I also worked at a restaurant that had a diner vibe and I once served a guy who just ordered a coffee, then he loaded it up with cream, sugar, butter, jam, and ketchup and basically made a soup in a cup. I pretended not to see that, but made sure I was by often to warm up his cup for as long as he cared to stay. Life is tough.
Febo, in the Netherlands is a popular Automat that sells burgers, fries, chicken, desserts. etc. from walls of heated receptacles with glass doors.
They used to be strictly cash operated vending machines, but now accept tap payments via card or smartphone.
Every Dutch person secretly loves Febo... denies this to their colleagues... but eats there after a big night of drinking (possible followed by a morning of regret)
This might sound dumb, but when I was much younger and working at Steak and Shake, I always thought it would be awesome to be that one weird person trying to bring the concept of the Automat back. Thank you for this video! I haven't got there yet, but I haven't given it up entirely.
I live in Michigan and when I think of diners, I think of our (many) Coney Island restaurants. Originally created by Greek immigrants, they usually have an extensive breakfast and lunch menu and a large amount of Greek/Mediterranean dishes. Like Gyros and lentil soup and Greek salad and spinach feta pie. The rest of the menu is typical American diner food-sandwiches, burgers, pancakes, omelette, etc. It’s all incredibly affordable and you could definitely eat there alone without getting side eyed. In the Detroit metro area, you’re never more than a few miles from a Coney. It’s extraordinary-but I don’t think I appreciated how much until right now. (I would still give my right arm to visit an automat though 😂)
eyy fellow michigander! Shoutout to the polish diners too, I've got a couple of those close to me, similar thing of basic diner food with some stuff like pierogis and sausage thrown in!
Was looking for the inevitable coney island comment. We eatin good in the D on the cheap!
Yeah I was looking for more Midwest people! Dîner culture is very much still alive out there.
I'm feeling a lack of them over here on the other side of the state - not near enough coneys compared to growing up on the east side. Every week when my grandparents did their shopping we'd get dinner at one of the two coney islands!
Mr Burger is where it's at!
The algorithm placed this video in my feed and I’m glad it did! My dad was born in Los Angeles in the 50s and he says he misses the automat, cafeteria, style food.
It’s interesting that the rise of car budgets is correlated with the decline of most cheap eats. Diners, cafeterias, and automats have been replaced by fast food places and those are becoming less and less pedestrian friendly. The newest models for Taco Bell and Burger King don’t even have dining rooms but instead lockers where you pick up food to go.
My local white castle locks its lobby doors at 4pm. I did a grubhub pickup from there, and had to call the restaurant and walk through the drive-thru before I could get my food.
I feel like a lot of fast food places used COVID as an excuse to shut down their lobbies, *especially* in lower-income areas, so they don't have to deal with the homeless population. It sucks.
Wonderful article, and the transition from the death of diners to the increase in transportation and housing costs was amazing. You have a very NPR voice too.
What a fascinating video. Love the data with the cost of living over the decades. Very timely given inflation and cost of living we're going through now
The Dutch still have automats and they’re great. It’s mostly snacks in the Netherlands, but if you need a bite, nothing beats a hot order of bitterballen for €2-3
We need to bring back automats. High quality food at a cheap price, with the convenience of a fast food restaurant? Sign me up!
Except intentionally or not, we've made it all but impossible. We seem dead set on destroying community and making life hard-impossible for anyone in this country who's not already independently wealthy. Then we can't figure out why everything is going to shit.
I’ve got bad news for you: the automat recipe is still alive and well, it is just that they are the Fast Food restaurants. The food is made in advance or as quick as possible, sold to people quickly and cheaply, and mainly can do this via a bulk buying and preparing mindset. The only difference is that you can’t drive your car into an automat.
There is a sage wisdom in the phrase “Good, Fast, or Cheap, you only get two.”
There are modern automat concepts being tested in some cities. Otherwise, yes. They’ve been replaced by fast food restaurants and convenience stores that have selections of premade sandwiches and salads.
@@drewgon13 Well, I have news for you. Fast food has nothing to do with automat dining, except for being fast. Automats were known for serving a wide variety of fresh-made food, that just happened to be available for purchase quickly, and at a lower cost.
Nah Google what is a hawker centre, it only exist in my country and it will hands down beat any cheap food concept
i literally read about utopian communities in the US that had meal halls and meal plans for local families that did this, and they also had communal work schedules for their different farms so it wouldn't just be one family on their ass if someone got injured or something and couldn't help maintain the farm. they also had shared childcare and I think education and some lived in apartments together in groups. it was wild since we never learn about this stuff in school either!! omg
I love your style. Old Internet plus timesaving cuts. Thank you for doing this.
I’ve been lamenting the loss of local coffee shops and diners since the 1990s. Dropping in at regular spots with friends on a night out. Or just grabbing a bite and coffee with a book and notebook when I wanted to be around people without having to be with people.
I especially miss being called “hon” by the motherly waitresses.
This covers so much of what I've been experiencing, thinking, and feeling over the past couple years since graduating. How can anyone survive!!! There's no welcoming-feeling space for people of all classes to eat somewhat well, somewhat affordably. It's either high end and $20, or trash like a $14 meal from a fast food corporation.
I went into this video with no clue what an automat was. I think I heard the term before, but I don't think I would have even been able to tell you it was a place people could eat. I was blown away by the footage of what it was like to be inside one of them. What a magical place! And what a tragedy that we don't have them anymore.
just commenting for the engagement cuz you deserve to have a bigger channel!
your comment is very very appreciated ❤️
Nice video - Thanks for posting! My dad who would be 96 if he had lived, often told me about how much he enjoyed eating at the Automat when he lived and worked in NewYork City in the 1950s. Twenty to twenty-five years ago when I still lived in the South, I used to go to the Piccadilly and Morrison's cafeterias. For the price of a greasy burger and fries, I could have grilled chicken, vegetables and a nice dessert. It broke my heart to hear that those chain cafeteria restaurants had gone out of business. Even here in Buffalo, NY, there used to be a chain of "family style," hole-in-the-wall type restaurants called Your Host that served as a community "third place" where people could get food and hang out long before the days of Starbucks and Panera. These days, my "workaround" to get affordable food is to order meals from various "meal prep" stores. A meal prep "balsamic herb sirloin" with sliced grilled steak, broccoli, and garlic mashed potatoes at $8 costs twice as much as Stouffer's from the grocery store, but can be half as much as the same meal from Applebee's. There are a lot of factors that figure into the pricing of restaurant food, but as you point out in your video, to get consistently good food at a cheap price, there must be that economy of scale and a large, regular number of customers in the neighborhood to support it - whether that be a huge metropolis or a college campus. Perhaps some of the trends that began to advance during the pandemic such as "ghost kitchens" could retrieve the concept of the Automat for the 21st century.
I'm old enough to have actually eaten in what I think was the last Horn & Hardart Automat in the ground floor of a building I worked in (fresh out of college in 1977) at 42nd St & Third Ave in NYC. Meatloaf with gravy, soup, pie - were behind glass doors you could open by depositing the appropriate coins. It didn't last much longer than that: pizzerias, burger places, and other fast food drove 'em out.
In the southern part of Germany (Bavaria) we have something like this at the so called Biergarten´s. Restaurants where you eat outside (under chestnut trees), cheap, and you can even take something to eat with you and just buy drinks there (that´s an old tradition).
And you don´t have waiters, you can take your food and pay it and take it with you to free tables. I like this, because you can stay as long as you want, because space isn´t a problem outside and eating there can be cheaper, when you don´t need waiters.
And everybody goes to this places, because they are beautiful, with the chestnut trees and you can spend hours with your friends and family at this places.
It´s just sad, that you don´t have something like this in the winter.
Yeah I was thinking of beer gardens too! And the Brauhaus (brewery pub, for English speakers :) ), at least in my area. It's also very community-oriented and people tend to share tables with others.
Thank you for this video! Really interesting discussion of a part of food culture I haven’t heard much of before. I also really appreciated your comment on how it relates to feeding individuals. I have been living without roommates that I cook and grocery shop with for the first time, and it’s been a nightmare to hold myself to this standard that I need to cook every meal for myself, feeling like I’m failing at a basic human function. I like that you point out how new and potentially unreasonable this idea really is, and highlight and honor the role that these types of places can fill in feeding people.
Horn and Hardart was such an icon that P.D.Q. Bach (Peter Schickele) wrote and recorded a funny symphony using one as a musical instrument. Jean Shepherd's Duel in the Snow or Red Ryder Nails the Cleveland Street Kid (the baseline story for a Christmas Story) started in one ("Disarm the toy industry!").
Haven't even watched this video yet, but I've been wondering this for years!!! You read books from the 40s/50s/60s and going to a diner or automat is just a normal thing, while making a home cooked meal isn't - even if you're married, you may go to a diner while on a business trip or for lunch.
I am fascinated by the automat. It’s such a simple idea, but genius.
You just encapsulated like the main source of my anxiety these days as a broke grad student in 17 minutes. Thank you
So good! I spent a lot time in diners in my 20s! My city has several 24 hour diners and they were perfect after a night of drinking and bars closed down at 2am. Realizing how lucky I got to experience it. To my knowledge they’re all still open
Eating out is nuts now a days. A bowl of noodles w/ my lady always comes out to damn near 50 bucks after tips etc. I'm an old cranky cheap guy, so I try to cut back on this sort of thing.
Thanks so much for your Video, My grandma (Nana) used to take me to Horn & Hardart in the mid-1960s. I remember it well even as a young man it was like something from the future! ( Space program in full swing at this point ) ! also she would let me walk on my own in the Bronx to the corner candy store ( LOFTS OR BARRACINNIS ) and sit down with a soda jerk ( no offense ) and get a Egg Cream Soda ! WOW imagine that today.... your video brought back memories I will never forget thanks again.
Once upon a time (back in the 70s), my father worked for an insurance company. The building had an entire floor devoted to a cafeteria, conference rooms, a game room with comfortable chairs, and a theater (yes, I'm serious; this was before you could cut a ten-minute training video and send the link to everyone).
Business realized staff ate, rested, and were people. Kinda puts the current business mindset of people as resources that cannot be trusted, doesn't it?
Superb video.
Yet another banger ! I don't get tired from learning from your well thought out and researched videos :)
I feel too broke to consistently eat out anywhere enough to become a regular but I would love to be able to afford to regularly patron some of my favorite places.
I’m sure others have mentioned this, but as someone who frequently travels to the US with work, I stay in cities and I just want to straightforward meal so
I actually use Whole Foods like this and the cost is pretty cheap. if I think about the Whole Foods, that’s in downtown New York, they have tables where you bus your own tray and usually the cost is under a 10 or $12 for dinner with a drink
I feel very grateful that where I live in ga there are still cafes that hold this feel of “I can get together with my friends, chat it up for hours, and not be drained of all my money.”
This is so interesting! I live in Japan and have been to a few restaurants that operate this way, you punch in what you want and pay at the vending machine (or now sometimes a fancy touchpad) and it spits out your ticket which you hand to the chef. Then they cal your order after you’ve found a table and you go grab it. You also take your tray back to the counter at the end. They typically have menus with a range of incomes in mind like you can (usually) get maybe soba with no toppings for ¥700, the most basic toppings for ¥800 and a bigger meal for ¥1000. I had no idea what these were called, thanks for enlightening me and yes they are great lol.
This is the first of your videos I’ve seen, subscribed, after only a few minutes! As someone who’s worked in the service industry for almost my whole life (and got a business minor in college) i’ve always been fascinated with the history of how we eat, both at home and out on the town. It’s also interesting how much of our eating and sleeping habits are dictated by capitalism and societal pressures of the time.
Funny that I work at a restaurant now has a layout very similar to the classic diner, and also an isolated, enclosed feeling but in a basement.
This was so interesting! My first thought was food subsidies would be one of the main impacts rather than rent prices and it was interesting to think about that connection. It made me think about the rising popularity of food halls, though those are often trendy small business incubators rather than dedicated affordable places to eat.
Great discussion on restaurants being less of a place to get together and more of an overpriced experience. In my town, you are not getting away from spending $60 minimum for two people to sit down or $30 to drive through breakfast from McDonald's. Now we are being asked to pay sit down prices for food delivered to our homes so we aren't even getting the experience we paid for.
... my parents were kids in this era, and I did not know that these places existed.
My parents are also deeply conservative, and stick their ears in their fingers whenever people use governence to improve lives. People who say Pull Yourseld Up By Your Bootstraps unironically cause that's what they think they did.
I am so tired of people not talking about their actual memories. Good on your dad for being part of this ❤
I was in Kragujevac, Serbia last summer. While I was there, I visited a restaurant modeled like the automats of 1940s NYC. You could sit down anywhere and order anything off their menu, they prepare it fresh and bring to your table. The service was quick and convenient, the food tasted fresh and had an excellent quality.
Wow Kendra, you've hit on a few quirky obsessions of mine--the automat, old menus and prices adjusted for inflation. Thank you for touching on the housing relation. I once read that 2 cars in the 1950s cost more than the average 3 bedroom detached house and the average income to housing ratio in 1960 was 2.1 in contrast to 3.5 in 2019 (and I swear it's higher where I live). I think we can talk about lower prices existing now due to higher efficiencies leading to higher output and both tech and offshoring leading to cheaper labor costs but the automat and the decline of the diner are perfect examples of where we've gone backwards. People seem to value artisanal at the expense of efficiency. Even Subway gives you the illusion that your sandwich is made to order, though we all know the animals that made the meat were slaughtered ages ago. But yes, I just want a decent place to have a cup of coffee and a good slice of pie without worrying about going over my budget. I subscribed after this one.