WI: No McDonald's

Agreed. Besides which, the idea of chain restaurants with the same food isn't a new idea. There's a railway chain restauarant going back 100yr or more (name I can never recall:eek:).

That would be the Harvey House chain of railroad-station restaurants, founded by Fred Harvey. They were among the first people to hire women as waitresses, from what I understand; there's an old Judy Garland movie called The Harvey Girls. The company not only had the restaurant concession for the Santa Fe Railroad, but ran restaurants on the Illinois Tollway until 1975.

You might say these were among the first fast-food restaurants, due to the tightness of many railroad connections. I once saw a 19th-century cartoon which depicted a mob scene of travelers eating frantically at one such restaurant, trying to have their meals in time to catch their train connections while the restaurant staff ran hither and yon. (Actually, the Harvey House was, in its time, famed for bringing classy restaurant dining to the "Wild West".)
 
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joea64 said:
That would be the Harvey House chain of railroad-station restaurants, founded by Fred Harvey.
That's them.:cool: Thx.:) Also the first to demand standard look & quality, IIRC.
David S Poepoe said:
I thought Taco Time was a different franchise. They serve tater tots, which Taco Bell doesn't.
I've always thought it was a naming issue. You may be right.:eek:
ivanotter said:
a bit of "home from home" then it is a default choice for not making a decision on what and where to eat. It is not a positive choice (Let's go to Gordon Ramsey's restaurant to have a meal) but more of a non-choice (just get some MacD or KFC or whatever).
More of a "safe choice". If you're travelling, do you really want bad food before you start driving? Or when you stop somewhere? How do you know?

When Interstates made highway travel easier, that became a bigger issue. (As said, railway chain restaurants had already harkened to it.) Plus, the drive-in made fast food virtually mandatory: if people can just drive away, rather than wait...:eek::rolleyes: (BTW, we had A&Ws for years here before McDonalds' ever arrived.)
 

Rex Mundi

Banned
That's them.:cool: Thx.:) Also the first to demand standard look & quality, IIRC.

I've always thought it was a naming issue. You may be right.:eek:

More of a "safe choice". If you're travelling, do you really want bad food before you start driving? Or when you stop somewhere? How do you know?

Well with fast food franchises you know by the incompetence of the employees, the unnatural and inedible ingredients contained within the meals and generally just the number of deaths caused by the food itself.
 
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