Remember how I was telling you a few days ago that I’d gotten my hands on a 1933 Ypsilanti phone book? Well, here’s a little something that I thought you might find of interest. Back in ’33, there were roughly four times as many grocery stores in Ypsilanti as restaurants. Granted, the shops in question were likely all very small, but, even so, the thought that our city, which only had a little over 10,000 residents at the time, could have kept 23 grocery stores in business, is kind of astounding. Here, for those of you who are interested, is the list. [It’s worth noting that this list doesn’t include either butcher shops or dairies.]
Now, in comparison, check out the list of restaurants that Ypsilanti had at the time.
So, what do you make of the fact that grocery stores once outnumbered restaurants by about four to one Ypsilanti? I suspect that, to a large extent, it can be explained by changes in the workforce, the growing desire for immediate gratification, and the ready availability of credit, but I’m sure there are other drivers as well. Regardless of how it came to pass, I find it absolutely fascinating. And I can’t help but wonder if the pendulum might ever swing back the other way, with more people cooking at home than going out. But, of course, a lot of that was built on an system in which a majority of families could be supported by a single income, leaving a second adult free to visit multiple stores, prepare home cooked meals, etc. And I don’t know if we’ll ever go back to that. One wonders, however, what things will look like in another 84 years. Will grocery stores exist at all? Will restaurants, as we know them today, even exist? Will there be something new altogether? Where do you see all of this headed? I’m envisioning a network of nutrient sludge distribution kiosks. but, then again, I think we’ll all be living underground by then.
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Why wait that long?
https://www.soylent.com
Because I grew up in olden times in a rural place, I also grew up in a city with very very few restaurants. (Same size as A2 downtown…) Everyone ate at home for most meals. I remember the first pizza delivery place (which didn’t even go near my house); it was a big deal. McDonald’s was a big deal. There were still corner stores just about every block, plus super markets, plus a covered year round farmer’s market though. I think most places were like that going back to the 30’s. I know Ann Arbor was like that. The Old West Side, where I live, had a bakery, and butcher shop (now Jefferson Market) and many smaller grocery stores.
I’m not sure it had much to do with disposable income. I can eat out now for about the same price as cooking at home, unless its eggs, pasta, rice and beans. I think that was just what people did. The dinner table was important. It still should be. I find out 90% of what I know about my kids outside lives around the dinner table or walking places with them.
I forgot to say this, but families were larger then too. I’ve heard stories of this little OWS houses (smaller than Ypsi’s) holding families of 8. That was considered normal. Families of 8 don’t go to restaurants. It might be interesting to look at census numbers per household for the same time period.
The future isn’t Solyent. It’s food buckets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOH37W0jPpA
That’s a great point about family size. Clearly that’s a huge driver. I also think that a lot of the shift toward restaurants can probably be attributed to growing immigrant communities that pushed the concept. [Linette’s family, for instance, operated some of the first Chinese restaurants in Harlem back in the early 1900s.] I also expect that, to some extent, the growth in restaurants was driven by auto culture and suburban sprawl. As grocery stores consolidated, grew larger, and moved out of town, that left more empty storefronts in downtowns available to be used in new ways by a society more interested in entertainment than just sustaining life.
It’s also worth noting that there could have been lunch counters and the like that aren’t mentioned in the list of restaurants above. For instance, I suspect that Kresge’s had a lunch counter.
I wonder how the numbers would stack up if you were to count party stores, gas stations, Walgreens, Family Dollar, etc as “grocery stores”? They all sell groceries to one degree or another.
Even so, I imagine people tend to eat at restaurants a lot but that isnt as new as you might thing. In ancient Rome, people lived in insula, multi-story apartment buildings. They had no running water and also the risk of fire was great so most people didnt cook at home and instead bought prepared food on the street or went out to eat.
Cultures change and I imagine part of that involves changing habits around cooking and eating at home. I dont usually like cooking. It is just labor to me. I have no problem paying someone else to do it especially since economies of scale mean that eating out is often cheaper for me as a single person.
I remember reading about the one on Sheridan because Phyllis Diller used to live on Oakwood and worked the owner of the store into her early stand up. I think these neighborhood groceries existed in part because most families at that time had one (or zero) car. That was also during the Depression so most people probably couldn’t afford to go to restaurants very much. I love this stuff, keep it coming!
Where those really full grocery stores or neighborhood corner stores which are similar to today’s party stores.
Great question, D.G. It might be interesting to look at the Sanborn maps and try to calculate the square footage of each of these stores. I wonder if all of them together would equal what we have between Meijer, Kroger, Fresh Thyme, etc.
While moving from a one income household to a two income household can bring increased prosperity to that particular household in the short to medium term, if all households do this, then what might happen with an effective doubling of the labor supply is a net halving of purchasing power per income earner, such that households become dependent on having two income earners to have the same purchasing power as a single earner household in the past. This is assuming that the basic demand necessities of a functional household does not increase in proportion to the increased labor supplied by the household.
Fast Food “restaurants”!
They are still slowly and effectively addicting us to large intakes of fat, sugar and salt while infecting, and robbing our communities. Now they are part of the landscape and no one seems to care. I remember when they were trying to build the first McDonald’s in my little hometown (pop. 20,000) in Rutland, Vermont in the early 70’s. The city fought back legally, and won, and then McDonalds brought a bulldozer and built their killing machine anyhow!! Now there are 3 McDonalds (and others) in the small town of Rutland Vermont. Heroin is the headline addiction problem in Rutland now–but I’m convinced that McDonald’s helped pave the way for this higher risk addiction.
Fast food type restaurants are not more unhealthy than most other sorts of restaurants. Guess what? Fat, sugar, and salt taste really good to most people and even the most high end chefs realize that. You aren’t getting better meals at higher end restaurants generally or at least what research there is shows that. Overall, sit down restaurants tend to be slightly less healthy than fast food restaurants.
I think a lot of the vilification of fast food has much more to do with classism than anything else. I wouldn’t say that no one seems to care either. Plenty of privileged people care deeply and make sure to impress upon others the moral failings of hitting a McDonald’s drive through and the moral superiority of their own food choices. This, even though if you actually read the nutritional information for fast food items, you can find that it is actually pretty possible to make reasonably healthy choices there. E.g. I don’t have time to make breakfast in the morning so I often go through the drive through to get an Egg McMuffin and a couple of those oranges they sell. Yes, I pay more for that than I would if I put an egg on an English muffin at home and bought my own oranges but that meal from McDonalds is not less healthy than the same exact thing when prepared at home.
The notion that fast food is a gateway drug for heroin is absurd. If there is a correlation between fast food meals and heroin use, I suspect that it has more to do with the income levels of fast food consumers vs the income levels of folks scarfing down at say, The Gandy Dancer or really most restaurants around. The fried chicken at Haabs may taste a heck of a lot better than KFC but is it healthier? I am skeptical
But were there any Undertaker / Sandwich Shoppes in ye ole Ypsilanti?
I read that one as “Theft Corner” the first time through.
It’s true that many ‘American’ restaurants have equally caloric and unhealthy food as fast food restaurants. They honestly source food from the same places– and the food comes in the same pre-packaged, almost instant packaging that Americans (and increasingly the rest of the world) love. That said, there are many many options that are more healthy and less expensive. Usually the food comes from other places and cultures with food traditions less bastardized by food modernization and mass production. Class is an overlay on food. There is no food that is inherently fanicer than any other. Most people eat three times a day the world over. Americans by and large choose to eat like shit. Some have no option, but most do. There are billions of poor people the world over who eat better (and many who do not). I disagree that there are healthy food choices at Mc Donald’s. That’s just bullshit. It’s all sugar laden and processed wth minimal nutrient value to caloric intake ratio.
Fast food restaurants are not ok, whether they are McDonalds or TGIF or Chili’s or Red Lobster. Or the school cafeteria. They are killing our citizenry. They are destroying our environment. No one should eat that shit if they can avoid it. The real horror is that that food is peddled to the poor at price points they can afford. If you care about class issues, then going after fast food is not the solution, but neither is defending it.
I wish there were retro school style cafeterias around here. I’m nostalgic for pot roast, boiled carrots, mashed potatoes, boiled peas, served on a divided metal tray.
Back in the olden days, Kresge’s on the corner of State Street and North University in Ann Arbor did have a lunch counter. I didn’t think much of it then, but I long for it now.
McDonald’s, BK, and Wendy’s have their place. The value menu really is a good value. Cheap protein, fat, and carbs. No less healthy than if you made it yourself at home or went to a fancy artisanal hamburger restaurant.
I disagree, Jean. I think calling bullshit on classism, which is soooooo common around food and body weight, does help with class issues in the same way calling out racism and calling out sexism does. It is amazing how snobby and superior Ann Arbor liberals get on this subject. I have never heard anyone make the claim that Zingerman’s sandwiches are NOT OK in the same way they attack fast food or chain sitdown restaurants even though fat, sugar, and salt are a big part of their menu too.
Oh and fuck your judgement about what other people eat. Fast food is a healthy part of my diet. A toasted english muffin with ham, egg, and cheese and whole fruit is not more healthy if I make it at home, I assure you. For me, it is the healthiest option especially since if I skip breakfast, I tend to make really unhealthy choices at lunch. Fast food may not be OK to you but it is OK. It is a reasonable choice for a lot of people depending on what THEY value. I mean, I have worked with a nutritionist and have those breakfasts worked in as part of a healthy diet but sometimes I eat for reasons other than health and that is OK too. It is OK to choose to do unhealthy things if one finds value in it.
stupid hick, It probably isn’t the same but Sidetrack has some pretty good pot roast sometimes. You could suggest that they get some divided metal trays and then call it a “blue light special” or something. That would be fun.
David Jeffries shared the following to Facebook in response to this post of mine.
“Found this in the basement of 206 W Michigan. It’s a counterweight for Dunlap and Sons’ old elevator, although they changed names to Dunlap and George… I’m guessing.”
The obesity epidemic is not exclusively caused by the the fast food, but the gallon of corn syrup folks drink with their meal. I love the sign at Lucky-7 which show’s how the soda jerk should properly mix your coke a cola. The proper serving size from around 1905 was a 7 oz. soda. I remember the first soda vending machine I saw, a coke was nickel in a 6 oz. bottle. The new mega big mac is easily three times the size of the original .10 $ bugger.
The other thing to remember–not everyone bothered with a phone. There may be other dining establishments in private homes (my home town had a rib House, quite literally). And I don’t think I see the address for Haabs listed, though it was around then.
There are good reasons to reject fast food that have nothing to do with classism. Fast food is expensive. You could assemble 12 breakfast sandwiches with no meat and light cheese for the cost of 1 McDonald’s breakfast sandwich. Reliance on fast food and processed food is killing poor people’s bank accounts.
Haab’s opened a year later, in 1934.
From Wikipedia: “Haab’s was opened in 1934 by Otto and Oscar Haab on a site which had been used for a restaurant and bar since the 1870s.”
I don’t see anything here listed at 18 West Michigan Ave, though. Maybe, in ’33, there was nothing operating at that site. Or, as you said, maybe they didn’t have a phone. I’d think, however, that most places of that size would have had phones by ’33.
Not to mention what those IPhones are doing to their healthcare budgets.
Why do people always want to tell other people how to live?
I am not telling Lynne how to live. I am disputing the set of fact she is using to justify her behavior. Fast food is expensive.
Oops. My bad. I just reread Lynne’s comment. I thought (wrongly) she said it was not cheaper to make an egg sandwich at home.
Have I made a claim that fast food is cheaper than cooking at home in this conversation? I mean it IS if you consider the labor costs which go into it but I don’t think I have really gone into that aspect of it.
It is one of those things where it varies by individual. Really poor people who have no job are time rich and may value their leisure time at a lower rate. I have a full time job so for *me*, the homemade sandwich gets pretty expensive, but that is just because I put a high value on my leisure time and don’t like cooking so consider it labor. I could not prepare 12 egg sandwiches more cheaply than McDonald’s does. I couldn’t even make one more cheaply than they do. I mean I would have to get out a frying pan, fry an egg, fry the ham, slice the cheese. etc. Then clean up after. The whole operation would cost me 20 minutes of my time vs 5 to run through the drive thru on my way to work, a net labor cost of 15 minutes (that actually doesn’t include the grocery shopping labor). 15 minutes at minimum wage is $1.78. So even for really poor people, it often turns out that it is cheaper for them than cooking at home.
Sure you can make those sandwiches cheaper if you skimp on ingredients by making your breakfast sandwiches without meat and with barely any cheese but once you do that, you are no longer making a like comparison. I sure as hell wouldn’t bother to make such a shitty sandwich at home. Once my labor is factored in and once you factor in that I actually value my leisure time at a higher hourly rate than I get paid at my job, that homemade sandwich would cost me 3 times what it costs at McDonalds at least!
I agree that there are reasons to reject fast food that have nothing to do with classism but what has EVERYTHING to do with classism is your judgement that poor people are spending too much money on fast food or that eating in fast food restaurants is somehow a bad choice that is keeping them poor. I don’t think that is true. I have noticed that often part of classism is the complete devaluation of leisure time of the poor.
Wrong. It is cheaper to cook at home. Not even close. You have the luxury of not making factual calculations because you are not poor. I hope poor people do not justify their decisions based upon your wrong assumptions and calculations.Just because I can buy a bag of potatoe chips for cheaper than I can make a bag of potatoe chips does not mean potatoe chips a good deal. Non processed foods or almost free and way healthier.
Like I said, it varies by individual. If someone enjoys cooking and it is actually part of their leisure time and if they also either really enjoy the taste of non processed foods or value the health benefits of such things, then it may be cheaper for *them*. [and sure, you do have to consider the health care costs that go with certain diets as part of the cost but you also have to consider it as a cost of other risky activities] The point is though that YOU are not in a position to judge such things. It very well may be cheaper for YOU to eat non processed foods that you cook at home but you can’t make that determination for other people. You have no idea what other people value, be it time, tastiness, health, or whatever.
Potato chips are easy and certainly cheaper than other meals. I wouldnt put much value on a meal of only potato chips but do occasionally eat them as part of a meal and it would not be cheaper for me to make them at home. It would absolutely be a good deal me to buy potato chips from the store, especially when compared to home made potato chips. The opposite is also true. For someone who enjoys slicing potatoes and then deep frying them, it probably is cheaper to go homemade. I doubt homemade potato chips are much healthier than store bought ones though.
I don’t like cooking but I have cheap meals I prepare at home, mostly involving beans cooked in my slow cooker because the labor costs are low. I can make a ton of beans for just the labor of putting them in the slow cooker and then cleaning it afterwards, then frozen for quick microwaving later on. A plate of beans with a side of whole wheat pasta and microwaved frozen spinach (my dinner last night) certainly works out to be both cheaper and more healthy than it would have been for me to go out for fast food. Still, the equation there is highly individual. If I had wanted a hamburger or pizza instead of beans and pasta, it would have been cheaper for me to go out to get it. If I didn’t have time to go grocery shopping because I work two minimum wage jobs and I am really tired but also hungry, it might be cheaper to get some fast food.
I agree with you that it is entirely reasonable to objectively gauge and compare the nutritional value of a fast food restaurant and a sit down place and it is possible for equivalency between the two just as it is possible that the fast food restaurant comes out on top nutritionally depending on the meal.
The thing that puzzles me is that you seem to want to argue that it is not reasonable to objectively gauge and compare the cost of cooking at home versus eating fast food. I have a hard time not responding with sarcasm but maybe you should set up a program for for poor people that teaches them how much money they could save by eating bags of potatoe chips and McDonald’s.
Restaurants, fast food, and processed food is relatively expensive.
I honestly can’t understand your refusal to even consider labor costs when figuring out the total costs of a home cooked meal vs a fast food meal. Fast food is only expensive when compared to similar home cooked meals when you don’t factor in the labor involved with preparing the food at home. Once you do, the equation changes considerably.
I realize it is a difficult concept sometimes. Perhaps it would be easier if we were talking about something other than food which carries all kinds of emotional baggage with it. In absolute terms, it would be cheaper for me to change the oil in my car myself. But I don’t know how to do it, so the cost of a home oil change in my case would include HOURS of labor as I figured it out. Labor which would eat into my leisure time. Leisure time has value and it can be quantified. A home oil change would cost me in absolute terms just the cost of the oil but it would cost me a LOT in time. It is cheaper for me to hire someone to do it for $50 especially since the price includes a safety inspection I similarly wouldn’t be able to do well in as little time. It would be a mistake not to consider the value of my own labor when making a decision about getting an oil change.
Or consider knitting. If you live on a farm and keep your own sheep and then enjoy tasks like spinning and dying wool and knitting so you don’t consider it labor, you can get a nice sweater for almost nothing but the opportunity cost of keeping pasture for the sheep. But if you find the care of the sheep, the shearing, the spinning of the wool into yarn and then the actual knitting, that is a lot of labor and time if it isn’t your hobby. In that case, it is cheaper to buy the sweater at the store.
I guess what I am saying is that I hear you that for you, eating at home is cheaper and better than fast food and that fast food is more expensive for YOU. Perhaps you enjoy cooking so it is more hobby than labor? Maybe you have a skill set that allows you to minimize the labor involved? Maybe you have a car so trips to the grocery store are easier than if you had to walk or take the bus? I don’t know your individual situation. My point is that your situation is not the same as other people’s situations so you are not in a position to state that fast food is more expensive except in absolute terms that don’t factor in the labor that goes into a home cooked meal.
Lynne, people don’t get paid for leisure time.
I said nothing about cooking at home (though I do often). In fact I said that cooking at home is often as expensive or more than eating out, excepting booze, unless one sticks to rice beans and eggs. My point was that one can eat at a taqueria or Indian or a middle eastern place or even a decent diner and get more wholesome less processed food than fast food and for the same cost.
And there is a human and environmental cost to eating processed food as well. The conditions for workers in slaughter houses are horrible. Just last night, eating a yummy curry that cost me about $10 to prepare for three people, I learned from a nurse that workers picking our cheap vegetables and fruit regularly have kidney failure due to inadequate water. Death by dehydration. If you are concerned about class issues than there is simply no argument for fast food. None. It’s complete bullshit. the shittiest of human industries from dirt to final product, outside of cheap clothing. Don’t get me started on cotton t-shirts…
If you have capacity to eat elsewhere, you should. Period. Eating fast food does not make you one of the people. Refusing to eat it does not make one a snob.
Lynne, people don’t get paid for leisure time.
There are still opportunity costs. Leisure time is generally considered a normal good in economics. In lay speak, it just mans that it has value and that it has value to which individuals can quantify into dollar amounts. The general idea for working people is that an hour of leisure is equal to an hour of work although in reality it is a bit more complicated than that due to things like the law of diminishing marginal returns. i.e leisure time is much more valuable to someone who works 80 hours a week than it is to someone who works 10.
Jean, I assure you that I don’t need any more reminders of the bias white liberals have against fast food. FWIW, I consider most diners to be fast food as well as places like Roy’s or Klucks in Ypsi. But also the chains. I don’t have the same bias against chains that many have
There are human and environmental costs to eating all kinds of things, not just fast food. here are huge human and environmental costs to a LOT of the choices we make. I care about class issues even though I choose to patronize McDonalds some mornings. I don’t eat there to be one of the people. I eat there because it is convenient and cheap and I think that an english muffin, some cheese, an egg, a piece of ham are pretty much the same regardless of the choice of where to get them. I don’t think you are a snob for refusing to eat fast food. I don’t care what you eat. I think you are a classist snob for being so judgmental about other people’s choices and the huge sense of smug superiority you and other rich white liberals project on this issue. You are not a better person for eating a curry instead of a big mac.
If you have the capacity to STFU about what other people are eating, you should. Period. It is funny how people are about what other people eat. I imagine that it is similar to how people are about who other people sleep with. Our culture tends to encourage people to get up in other people’s business about core bodily functions like eating or sex. I see your attitude about what I choose to eat to be as wrong and as damaging as the attitudes of conservatives about homosexual sex, fwiw. I don’t expect you to see it that way but that is how I see it after spending half of my life as a fat person dealing with people constantly judging what I put in my mouth. People who almost always have made their own environmentally unfriendly choices in other areas of their lives. e.g driving cars, having children, having pets, living in big houses, owning electronics like smart phones or TVs, and apparently eating vegetables too.
On a side note, I strongly believe that trying to approach most societal problems from the point of view of attempting to guilt or shame consumers into different choices works all that well anyways. And guess what? A person can get the occasional egg mcmuffin from McDonalds and still support systemic changes that make things better from a human rights perspective to an environmental perspective too. I assure you it is possible without being insufferably classist in your approach. You should try it sometime.
I see your point, Lynne..the oatmeal there is pretty good..but overall Mickey Dees is unhealthy.
As I have said before, I have worked with a professional nutritionist on my diet and those morning egg mcmuffins paired with whole fruit (2 cutie oranges) is a healthy choice for *me* with my lifestyle. But to be fair, since my office has started providing us with things like oatmeal and roasted almonds as snacks, I have been more prone to making that as a choice and that is also a healthy, but even more cheap and convenient breakfast.
The thing is that you can make healthy choices at fast food restaurants. And of course, at least according to one study, fast food restaurants tend to be slightly more healthy than sit down restaurants but not as healthy as cooking at home. For someone whose only concern is health, it absolutely is less healthy to eat fast food. For someone whose only concern is absolute cost, it also is cheaper to eat at home. But for someone like me who has other concerns such as my time, the cost/benefit analysis changes because I dont usually like cooking and consider it labor, not leisure. When I quantify my leisure time, an egg sandwich comparable to an egg mcmuffin costs me over $10! And of course for those who assign a moral cost it can be expensive too. Everyone is different. And that is OK.
It is really easy amd quick and cheap to make an egg and ham or sausage sandwiches at home, though it might be demoralizing to come home to a dirty skillet after work, if you don’t want to clean it before you leave for work
Right, it is quick and easy but still would take approximately 15 more minutes of my time than going to the drive thru on my way to work. Even if I value that time at the same rate as my paid labor, it would still make the homemade sandwich more expensive than one prepared by a fast food place. But that isn’t how I assign value to my leisure time in the morning. I value morning leisure time much much more than my rate of pay. I like to sleep in until the last possible moment. That 15 minutes saved by going to McDonalds (or Tim Horton’s) = 15 minutes more sleep. That fast food sandwich would have to cost a LOT before it would be worth it to me to give up that last bit of sleep. Especially next week while I adjust to Daylight Savings Time.
What’s for breakfast?
“If you have the capacity to STFU about what other people are eating, you should.”
Lol. So much yes.
Food for thought.
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2017/04/01/detroit-islandview-big-boy-closing/99911836/