How do you think a vintage diner would do in modern times?

[Dinerman]

Yes, all real diners were built in factories and shipped to the site. That was the whole point. They were decedents of the lunch wagons of the late 1800s.
A diner of that era would have been a one-piece affair. Reopening on-site is one thing. Moving a place opens all kinds of cans of worms, especially if it's been sitting on site for 75 odd years. Rot, rust and age take their toll. It's like finding a car that's been sitting in a barn for 75 years and thinking you can just drive it away without doing some work.

Most diners in this situation are either demolished, or moved to a field by someone who thinks that it can be moved and set up "for a very reasonable fee" and left to rot.

Recently moved/restored diners you might want to look into to study successes and failures. You might also want to get in touch with Steve Harwin of Diversified Diners.

Cheyenne Diner, moved 2008, still not open
Triangle Diner, restoration started 2008, still not open
Moondance Diner, Moved 2008, closed 2012
Capital City Diner, moved 2009, closed 2012, now sitting on blocks
Hometown Diner, moved/restored 2010, closed 2012
The Victory Diner, moved 2007, demolished 2012
Bel-Aire Diner, demolished 2012
Wildwood Diner, demolished 2006
Tin Man Diner, moved 2003, sitting in a field
Eddies Diner, moved 2003, sitting in a field
Traveler's Diner, moved 2003, sitting in a field

Monarch Diner/Roger's Redliner, reopening soon
Spud Boy Diner, moved c. 2001, restored 2008-2012, reopened 2012
Broadway Diner, moved 2012, open
Road Island Diner, moved 2009, open

 

[Matt Crunk]

A free vintage diner would be great, but transporting one (in two pieces no less) from New York to Northern Alabama would seem to be a bit cost prohibitive. I'm thinking more along the lines of scratch-building the thing pre-fab style in my back yard, then transporting it to the site in two pieces, just like a factory would have done back in the day.

 

[Guttersnipe]

Here's a pretty sobering article to read through. A lot of these chains are (rather, were) 100% old school:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/famous-restaurant-chains-shrinking-fast-105142828.html

 

[1961MJS]

...You are being sold a hamburger, not a fashion accessory. It will not be the best hamburger you ever ate, and it won't be the worst. It's just a hamburger. Nothing more and nothing less, ever. There is no subtext....

Hi

Actually many of the better burgers I've had over the years are made that way. There's a new place called Tucker's in OKC that serves burgers from a griddle. They have a few different toppings, and you can get a single, double, or triple (I think). They use pretty good meat and you can taste the difference. Their fries are horrid, but I can stand just the burger anyway.

Later

 

[1961MJS]

I find it hard to believe the restaurant was put out of business by the high cost of gas. In the last few years hundreds of new gas wells have come to market and the price of gas has dropped.

There may be some other reason they prefer not to disclose.

Hi

The problem was that the gas price went up, rent went up, and business went down. $2500 a month for gas is cheap when your gross is $20,000 a month. It's not when your gross is $4000 a month. I wonder if new griddles are more efficient? No clue, not in the business.

Later

 

[fashion frank]

I can brag that Rhode Island was one of if not the first state to have diners .
Haven Brothers used to be a diner that served pie and coffee to the newspaper workers at the Providence Journal and is
still going strong today !

https://www.google.com/search?q=hav...hK8PZtAaA04HIAQ&ved=0CEQQsAQ&biw=1163&bih=810


All the Best ,Fashion Frank

 

[Harry Gooch]

I think Dinerman may be interested in this article from the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/n...side-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region&_r=0

 

[Fading Fast]

I think Diner Man may be interested in this article from the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/n...side-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region&_r=0

Enjoyable article, thank you for posting it. When I first moved to NYC in the late '80s, diners were everywhere - and a Godsend to those on a budget. There were several in my old neighborhood, Lyric, mentioned in the article, was a favorite for its oversized cookies (truly like manhole covers) that I'd buy to take home.

There are still a good number, but they are going away. The only new diners I've seen are the kitschy retro ones that feel "off" and fake.

My favorite real diner just had a small kitchen fire, but thankfully, re-opened as I was afraid that it wouldn't - fires seem to end many businesses.

I'm hoping that the NYC market will "reset" at a lower but stable number of diners soon.

 

[BlueTrain]

It's odd that diners ("classic" diners, that is) developed from lunch wagons. But now the original diners are all but gone, while lunch wagons are still around. They just don't have horses now.

There is a relatively new chain of diners in the Mid-Atlantic area called Silver Diner. Most are in the Washington, D.C., area with outliers in Richmond and Philly. They are very nice places with a good menu. They still have a counter but most seating is at tables and booths. They aren't fast food places, which the original diners were, but the menu is a lot closer than today's fast food places. To be honest, Wendy's, McDonald's, et al, are rather more like the original diners, although the ancestry isn't exactly the same. They were a while getting around to having indoor seating and none have counters. They now have regular breakfasts of a sort but there's no Blue Plate Specials that diners were known for. Anyway, the Silver Diners have got the look down pat.

But even the Silver Diner has serious completion from other restaurants built around a different concept. I'd say that a so-called sports bar is a super idea, although it isn't to everyone's taste. The ones I've been to are family places, even with a bar, and everyone goes there (which is why they're busy and noisy and fresh).

Not all diners of the past were classic free-standing diners, of course, made in a factory and bolted together on the site. I can recall a few diners in a certain small town where I grew up that were store-front main street locations. I was impressed by the fancy booths that looked like something out of the movies. But they were chiefly for the lunch time crowd during a period when there were lots of businesses downtown, which consisted of about a four block stretch of street, plus another block a mile or so away in front off the county courthouse. Although there is a booming hospitality business just outside of town now, the old main street is dead. Not a single business is there that was there 50 years ago, I think, except for one diner, believe it or not, and the Western Auto store. The diner was "Jimmie's." I understand the menu has been reduced. There was another similar establishment dating from the 1920s named "Ferrell's Diner." I believe the owners of both places were from Lebanon or Syria.

One thing most fast-food places and even the retro-diners don't seem to have is local foods. By no means did the original diners have any local specialties but some did. The store-front diners tended to be a little different. I was in one such place in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. There were a lot of immigrants at one time from Eastern Europe in Southwestern Pennsylvania and they had several things on their menu that I'd never heard of. In that sense, they were like restaurants that have Italian or Greek dishes. They may have been a little dated but they were in no sense retro.

Boy, I sure am hungry now, for some reason.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Fast-food restaurants are sort of a cousin to the diner by way of White Castle, the first chain-hamburger place, which dates back to 1916. The original White Castles were set up in a diner format -- not externally, although the standard building for the chain was made from prefabricated metal panels, but internally. A White Castle had only a short counter with five or six stools, and the whole environment was intended to feed people fast -- the production of the hamburgers was geared around speed, the service crew was intended to work fast, and the customers were encouraged to eat fast.

The restaurants got bigger as the chain prospered in the 1920s, but the format remained essentially the same. There were several imitations of White Castle that used the same fast-service idea and limited-facilities buildings, and by the 1930s they were all pretty well known.

Interior of a typical White Castle, c. 1933.

The real difference between these early franchised "hamburger joints" and postwar "fast food restaurants" was that the former were geared to foot traffic -- they were always squeezed into urban neighborhoods -- and the latter were geared to car traffic, being mostly located in suburbia. McDonald's didn't open its first restaurant in Manhattan until the 1970s, by which time White Castle had been in business there for fifty years.

 

[BlueTrain]

Yes, I agree about foot traffic. In fact, most everything seemed to be geared to foot traffic, at least before the war. That eventually changed after the war. Old photos of city streets often show them bare of vehicles but with lots of pedestrians, allowing for when the photo was taken. But I also recall how people complained about the traffic and the lack of parking in my little hometown in the 1950s. It was a legitimate complaint, however, since the main highway, U.S. 460, went down the main street and no one would stoop to park on a side street and walk one block to a store. I was astonished that a neighboring city of about 30,000 (then) had a parking garage.

At some point drive-in restaurants were being developed, although I don't know if any ever achieved classic status. I suppose those were the origins of fast food restaurants of today but they were different. A "real" drive-in had curb service. I imagine that's as scarce as an original diner--or a drive-in movie. I rather doubt they catered to the lunch-time crowd. If there were ever classic drive-ins, they would have to be in Southern California, but I don't recall seeing any on our visits out there. Probably just wasn't looking.

 

[Fading Fast]

...

...

⇧ that picture not only looks staged to me, but as if the restaurant was trying to get the message out that it is okay / safe for women - office working women (note the nice clothes) to eat here alone. Just a thought - no evidence of course.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Quite likely. Even as early as the twenties, diners had a reputation for being roughneck places -- many of them were located outside factory gates or in neighborhoods where they attracted a thick-necked, hairy-fisted clientele, and they weren't always known for being spotlessly clean.

White Castle made a point of trying to avoid the more shady parts of town, and was rigorously clean -- its employees were dressed in white starched aprons, and were issued handbooks warning them not to chew gum on the job, not to chew matchsticks, and to clean their fingernails and wash their armpits daily. White Castle even invented the disposable flat paper cap that later became the symbol of all fast food workers as a way of cutting the cost of laundering the linen caps its employees were first issued.

Once all this was in place, White Castle then hired a woman to impersonate "Julia Joyce," who was a Betty Crocker-like figure the company developed to build up its public image, and sent her around to women's clubs in each city where the chain operated. "Julia" would hand out free samples of White Castle hamburgers and deliver a short lecture on how they were prepared and how clean and inviting the restaurants were. This did much to break down the idea that any place selling five-cent hamburgers out of a tin building had to be a greasy dive.

There were other chains around the same time doing the same thing. The Schrafft's and Child's lunchroom chains around New York spent a lot of time and money attracting women as customers, to the point where Schrafft's, especially, became stereotyped as a dainty place for middle-class "ladies who lunch."

 

[LizzieMaine]

Drive ins, complete with carhops, were popular in Southern California by the mid-1930s. One operator in particular, a fellow named Bob Wian, who had a drive-in in Glendale, set the tone for the whole concept when he developed an oversized hamburger he called the "Big Boy" in 1936. He started to franchise the sandwich to other drive-in operators around the region, and the idea was widely imitated.

You'll see a classic 1930s California drive-in in the 1937 Warner Bros. musical "Hollywood Hotel." The character played by Dick Powell works as a "singing carhop," in a sequence filmed at an actual Hollywood drive-in on Sunset Boulevard.

The McDonald brothers opened their own first drive-in in San Bernadino in 1940, an octagonal glass and metal building surrounded by a huge parking lot.

 

[Fading Fast]

...There were other chains around the same time doing the same thing. The Schrafft's and Child's lunchroom chains around New York spent a lot of time and money attracting women as customers, to the point where Schrafft's, especially, became stereotyped as a dainty place for middle-class "ladies who lunch."

My mom's family was very poor as the Depression all but wiped them out. My dad's family faced the same issue, but his mother was a force of nature and pulled the family through the '30s and, with my dad's help, got it back on its feet in the '40s and even doing "okay" by the '50s. Meanwhile, my mother's family struggled through it all with only very modest improvement coming in the '50s.

My mom said the only "luxury" they had was a few times a year, for someone's birthday, she and her mother would go into "the City" (meaning New York as they lived in Jersey City) and have lunch at Schrafft's. I even have a picture of her mother and an aunt at the Schrafft's counter. I assure you, these were not "ladies who lunched," but were "ladies glad if they had lunch," period, but for whatever reason, Schrafft's became the one thing they'd do a few times a year to feel better. (Note, I'm am 100% sure you are correct about Schrafft's client base, just pointing out that for my mom's family, Schrafft's was Oz.)

I think about that when my girlfriend and I pop into a local diner for lunch or breakfast (not the we do it all the time, but probably do 20 or so times a year). While no one would mistake us for being rich, we are fortunate to be able to not think of a diner as a special treat. It makes me feel sad to know that my mom and her mom were struggling so much - but what can you do with that other than recognize it and appreciate what you have / work hard / and give and do things to help others.

I have never once seen a lunch counter and not also seen that picture of my mom's mom and aunt at Schraff's in my head. Life is odd.

 

[BlueTrain]

Very interesting places show up in old movies, although they never pretend to be at all typical. In one pre-war movie, there was a roadside hamburger stand with, if I remember correctly, a row of stools in front of a large open window, all of this just off the side of the road. Don't remember the movie but that image remains vivid. It is as dated as "tourist cabins."

Another interesting image of a sort-of diner was at the very beginning of the Alfred Hitchcock film "Saboteur." Employees of a factory cafeteria are standing around waiting for the noontime whistle to blow. But about then a first breaks out.

Other little diners and cafes show up now and then, invariably almost unrealistically small, but correctly featuring those very heavy cups and saucers that used to be almost a trademark of restaurants. None of these places were what you would call a white tablecloth restaurant.

 

[BlueTrain]

Dagwood Bumstead still eats lunch at a greasy spoon restaurant but Blondie no longer seems to have lunch with Mrs. Dithers at some fancy restaurant. Instead, she and Tootsie (?) run a catering business. And Dagwood carpools. They keep up with the times.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Those outdoor shack-and-stool places were the descendants of the "hot dog kennels" of the 1910s and 1920s -- these were notorious for their unsanitary conditions and the indifferent quality of their food, to the point where many commentators denounced them as a "national blight." The ultra-cleanliness of White Castle and its clones was a direct response to these attacks.

 

[LizzieMaine]

As for comic-strip diners, you'd be hard pressed to find one tougher than the "Rough House Cafe" frequented by Popeye and his friends.

 

[EngProf]

We have a diner here in Nashville that will turn 90 next year. It's still going strong and will very likely continue to do so.
The original trolley-car portion is still there with at least two substantial add-ons over the years.
It often wins "best-burger" awards around here.

It's near three universities and Music Row, so it has a very good customer base. (Supposedly more recording deals have been made at Brown's than any other place in Music City.)

"Big-Boy"drive-ins were nationally franchised sometime before the '60's since we cruised the local "Shoney's Big-Boys" in our muscle cars during the late '60's. (I wish I had a Shoney's Big-Boy burger right now - I'm hungry.) Shoney's was where you took your date when you wanted a place to go that was of adequate quality but didn't cost too much.

We still have Shoney's Restaurants but the drive-in aspect went away a long time ago.