Beside it is a row of various hyper trendy restaurants that I never see similar patrons inside because they have terrible service and seating. The worst of them requires you to stand in a huge line and prepay then they bring the food out to you. This means watching idiot after idiot fumbling around with their phone or taking forever to find their card to pay while you stand in this line and burn up your lunch time. The clientele here is much different it's mostly tourists so is dead in the off season as no locals go.
I'm always interested in seeing how service industry runs things and it's usually just doing the basics better than everyone else that makes all the difference
The June 1940 photograph along Hwy 1 in Maryland had $0.05 hotdogs ($1.17) and $0.10 burgers ($2.34).
The Feb 1959 photograph from the NYC diner advertises a $0.45 burger ($5.14) and probably a $0.75 steak sandwich ($8.57)
We may have inflation in more than one sense: prices have gone up, and perhaps the size of burgers and hot dogs have also increased.
No doubt I can find portion size clues if I look around. Haven't done so yet.
Burger: $5.00
----------------
Meat: $0.20
Bun: $0.05
Staff: $0.25
Insurance: $4.50https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1447051/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8667835/
Edit: hamburgers and hotdogs are pretty standardized though
5¢ = $1
25¢ = $5
$1 = $20
$5 = $100
Where is the discrepancy? I've never really trusted these "adjusted for inflation" type numbers. I'm not an economist so I have no idea how they are calculated, but they've always just felt off to me. Usually, the numbers are for something esoteric to me, but these are about something I have some familiarity. In my experience, the adjusted burger price is about half the actual cost of today.
A hot dog / hamburger at a diner is mostly human labor, so you'd expect it to be cheaper in the past.
Remaining 70% is 30% food costs (which has dropped drastically since the 50s), then 20-30% operations. Profit is whatever is left.
So a diner burger is not mostly labor but I honestly have no idea what these costs were 70 years ago. I'd love to know, seems like something is missing.
Likely everything in the chain going up 1-10%.
Food appears somewhat cheaper, housing much cheaper; but clothing and tools/appliances were much more expensive. Things like student debt and healthcare costs are also interesting to compare and wildly differ over time & place.
Also common for the average middle class person to spend a sizable percentage of their income on travel/vacation today; as I understand it that was quite uncommon before the mid 20th century.
>The June 1940 photograph along Hwy 1 in Maryland had $0.05 hotdogs ($1.17) and $0.10 burgers ($2.34).
1940 $779 to today's $94K GDP per capita gives $6 for the 1940 $0.05 hotdog.
If you narrow down to Food for all Urban Consumers[1], it shifts to more like $5.24. If you look at "Food away from home in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA, urban wage earners and clerical workers, not seasonally adjusted" that number moves to $7.60. Which confirms your intuition: restaurant prices are way higher than the overall inflation rate predicts.
How do we explain the difference? A variety of ways. Maybe the burgers you get are "better" in some way. Bigger. Better cut of meat. More veggies and toppings. I wasn't around in 1959 and never ate at that specific diner, but it's a real possibility. In fact, this is explicitly called out in the FAQ[3]:
> Specifically, in constructing the "headline" CPI-U and CPI-W, the BLS is not assuming that consumers substitute hamburgers for steak. Substitution is only assumed to occur within basic CPI index categories, such as among types of ground beef in Chicago. Hamburger and steak are in different CPI item categories, so no substitution between them is built into the CPI-U or CPI-W.
There's also some other complicating factors to account for, like coupons and bundling. Like consider Applebee's Really Big Meal Deal deal. "NEW Big Bangin’ Burger with unlimited fries & soda, still just $9.99" Or you can order just the burger for... $15.99[4]. I don't even know how BLS copes with that and am sorta guessing they just take the a la carte prices for consistency, even though that likely overstates price levels consumers actually pay?
[1]: https://data.bls.gov/dataViewer/view;jsessionid=3A241A4C4F0A... [2]: CWURS12ASEFV [3]: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/common-misconceptions-abo... [4]: https://www.applebees.com/en/menu/handcrafted-burgers/big-ba...
Price of good i x Quantity of good i. Quantity is fixed year to year. So a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk, a TV, etc.
Sum those up across a reasonably representative basket, then compare that sum to the same quantity and new prices in a future year.
sum(P_i_new year x Q_i) / sum(P_i base year x Q_i) - 1 --> change in CPI
Hamburgers might be more expensive, but TVs, toilet paper, and dog kibble might not be.
(I don’t disagree with you directionally though; I think a nontrivial aspect of this is shifting expectations/norms around what passes for food service. Americans broadly want their food - even diner food - to be upclassed beyond a plain hamburger on a white bread bun.)
https://www.doordash.com/store/dick's-drive-in-seattle-77050...
I’ve read of political influence on the market basket to lower the reported rate of inflation by the incumbent party, but I’m not educated enough on the topic to give an opinion on if it happens.
Restaurant economics are a function of ingredient costs and labour. I suspect ingredient costs are close to OP's estimated multiples. But real wages are way up since the 1950s. Anything with a large labour component of costs will have tended to rise faster than inflation, which is an average of goods and services.
(There are specialised metrics if you actually wanted to dig into this question.)
What a specific purchase costs is highly dependant on the inputs, the cost of its labour (which might grow faster or slower than the average wage), and a lot of other factors.
Food is way more expensive today than it was 50 years ago. Airplane tickets are way cheaper. Everyone has a cellphone now, and middle class families have multiple cars, but a trip to the doctor will mean that ~15% of the population will be on the verge of not paying their bills. On the other hand, I have access to ~every major piece of music ever made for ~$15/month, so that's something.
Costco not that far off.
https://www.tastingtable.com/1203923/best-diners-in-new-jers...
Also, the Bendix Diner is closed, likely permanently, because of fire code violations.
I'm thinking of the Chatterbox in Ocean City, NJ, for instance. Grace Kelly used to be a waitress.
If you have a classic diner in your town, take your foreign guests there for the experience.
> https://maps.app.goo.gl/NCiZgiRjGckp6Jzn6
And if that doesn't appeal, there's another one: https://maps.app.goo.gl/e3ZWtXWEKPvDnded8
Something you've got to realize is that this form of culture is something that has gone far beyond America's borders. To the European, it is the very pinnacle of "American Food" -- and 50s/60s themed diners are all over the place.
From Belgrade, Serbia: https://share.google/qGq9vC7tKgf0ISyLz
To out-of-the-way towns in Austria: https://maps.app.goo.gl/bzHfTAobTRkHpvAN9
Germany's chock full of them. (The Germans are also more obsessed with "Cowboys and Indians" and Western US culture than any nation I've ever seen.)
France has multiple "American Diner" chains e.g.: https://www.happydaysdiner.com/
I'd hazard that there are nearly as many of these restaurants outside the US as there are inside of it. Within the US it's "throwback/nostalgia." Outside the US it's "exotic/kitsch."
Maybe your Finnish friend was remarking that the American version somehow felt more "real"? I don't know... I've been to all sorts, and the ones in Europe are truly very similar.
Vegas has an eiffel tower too...
Diners are something else. In Germany we have "American diners" where you pay for each cup of coffee.
It's not the same.
I thought that the "Elvis Diner" was practically a meme in the UK, actually. Hah.
What do they serve?
Also, on my first visit to San Francisco, my mum and I stayed opposite the Pinecrest Diner on the edge of the Tenderloin. Being jetlagged, I woke up at 5am the first morning and went there just as it opened, and having my coffee and huge breakfast as various diner regulars stopped by was just fantastic.
That place was great cheap food.
I tried their liver and onions (an aquired taste it turns out I don't really have) and a slice of some meregiune pie and idk, it really transported me, the food is always very real tasting, it's hard to isolate what it is that makes so much food taste manufactured now.
It's like Donns Depot, places that connect us to some wholesome parts in our shared history.
Article would do well to mention that this particular style comes from cars manufactured by Budd Company, who developed the necessary process of welding the stainless steel, first seen on Burlington's “Zephyr”:
Leftovers for a later meal. Unless there is something about work involved and not having a place to put the leftovers in the fridge.
Used to go to Peppermill in Santa Clara, and Dennys many years ago.
Thanks for suggesting El Caminito, looks good. Our usual Mexican for many years has been La Milpa in Milpitas, haven’t found a good equivalent yet.
How can I get away from all this? Is there a town somewhere where everyone is over 45 and there is no cell service and a full meal is $5?
Heck I would settle for a small NorCal town that doesn't have gangs or meth.
Yes, but they're suspicious of outsiders and newcomers. They're afraid the newbies will vote away everything that makes that town feel like home.
There's also the "Denny's" problem. Classic diners tend to be pretty much the same as a Denny's in terms of quality.
But if you go to somewhere deeply rural you can still find cheap crappy diner food.
Only in the southern US unfortunately
And I don’t go there. The spots that get twice (or more) as much for that meal really are quite a bit better. And their coffee is truly foul. Classic diner coffee is fine, but if I’ve had better coffee on an airplane I’m not prone to going back.
It made me lament the lack of old school diners where I live. Sometimes you just need a perfectly cooked breakfast and some solid coffee!
New Mexico has lots of great dinners scattered all around the state. I'm in Massachusetts now and enjoying those I can find here.
the prices in that article shows the diners were cheap enough for a working man to eat daily there - a 10c dinner in 1940 - would be $2.38 today.
you can't find a hot meal for $2.30 anywhere in the states or Western Europe today.
just looking at the video makes me hungry.
A diner should only be able to legally call itself a diner if it's open 24/7, has a glass case showing slices of its desserts, offers breakfast, lunch and dinner all day, and if you order spaghetti, your server yells back to the kitchen for "a mile of rope".
My intellectual curiosity was gratified, hence I think it's good.
You can't arrive with your group of six friends and "join tables" so everybody can seat together. What Americans have against a big group of friends?
First, the patrons never put the tables and chairs back where they're supposed to be (even if they try, they get it wrong), so the minimum-wage waitress/busboy is stuck with the job of rearranging furniture, and cleaning up the floors. This is one reason that large groups get the "mandatory gratuity" treatment.
Turnover: every restaurant needs to turn over tables on the regular. If a large group is sort of lingering even after being decimated, and the diner can't reclaim those 4-tops for another party, that's potential lost revenue.
[Hmm, is that how "The Four Tops" got their name?]
Wait staff are often assigned "stations" based on a group of table numbers, so if you shove together enough tables for 12 patrons, you may have a conflict of 2-3 waitresses, but only one "main" can be allocated.
Any table or chair that can be lifted or moved by a patron becomes a potential melee weapon. Diners are occupied by rough crowds and after-club drunks who are trying to sober up. This is also why you're lucky to get a butter knife with your sirloin.
Booths feel more comfy, and offer a better feeling of privacy than tables. A table's more flexible if you have a family and toddlers, a wheelchair, or something, but booths are for lovers to cuddle.