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RubyRose
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Total Posts:
2168
- Joined: 5/7/2003
- Location: Lehigh Valley, PA
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Re:Pop Culture, The Media and the profound effect it has on Roadfood trends.
Mon, 06/1/09 7:32 AM
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Sometimes, the preservation of Roadfood-type establishments is due to external factors that would not be apparent to casual travelers passing through the area.
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I live in an area of PA that was settled in the first quarter of the 18th century, when dining away from home was primarily in inns and taverns along the main roads of that era. Skipping ahead to the 20th century, each county in our part of the state had a limited number of licenses for serving alcohol, both for restaurants and "hotels", most of which were located on properties that were once the wayside inns. The hotels/taverns/inns were the bastion of regional dishes. This week’s newspaper still shows Stuffed Beef Heart, Oyster Pie, and Pork & Sauerkraut with Potato Filling as nightly specials in some of them.
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A restaurant could sell their liquor license to another restaurant but a hotel could only sell it to another hotel. So a Red Lobster wanting to open in our county would have needed to buy and transfer a license from another restaurant but couldn’t buy one from the more plentiful hotel license holders. This situation squelched the development of chain restaurants for decades.
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A few years ago, the laws were changed to allow any type of liquor license to be transferred to a new establishment within the county. Many of the owners of those country inns, who’d worked 12 hour days most of their lives, sold their liquor licenses to the Darden Group, Applebee’s, etc., sold their property to CVS or another chain, shuttered their doors, and retired from the restaurant (and Roadfood) business.
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As for pop culture causing the demise of Roadfood as WJ defines it, I don't think anyone has mentioned the dissolution of the traditional American multi-generational family structure as a major contributor. The scenario of Grandma making the restaurant’s desserts for the next day, the teens waiting on tables after school and Mom and Pop being married and both actively involved in the business is now found more often in the ethnic groups who own the new Roadfood spots and is often a factor in the closing of the old ones.
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Nancypalooza
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Total Posts:
3757
- Joined: 6/17/2004
- Location: Columbia, SC
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Re:Pop Culture, The Media and the profound effect it has on Roadfood trends.
Tue, 06/2/09 3:47 PM
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