Bickford's (restaurant)
Bickford's Restaurants and Cafeterias were mainstays in the New York City area from the 1920s into the 1970s. Samuel Longley Bickford (1885–1959) began his restaurant career in 1902, and in 1921, he established his quick-lunch Bickford's restaurant chain. In 1959, the company introduced the Bickford's Pancake House family restaurants, followed by the chain of Bickfords Grilles (minus the apostrophe) which currently operates throughout New England.
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[edit] Lunchrooms
In 1921, the Bickford's "lunchrooms," as they were known, offered modestly priced fare and extended hours. Bickford's architect was F. Russell Stuckert, who had been associated with Samuel Bickford since 1917. Stuckert's father, J. Franklin Stuckert, had designed buildings for Horn & Hardart in the 1890s.[1]
During the 1920s, the Bickford's chain expanded rapidly with 24 lunchrooms in the New York area and others around Boston. A letter with a company stock offering stated, "The lunchrooms operated are of the self-service type and serve a limited bill of fare, which makes possible the maximum use of equipment and a rapid turnover. Emphasis is placed on serving meals of high quality at moderate cost."[1] A 1964 New York City guidebook noted:
- Breakfast at Bickford's is an old New York custom. In these centrally located, speedy-service, modestly-priced restaurants a torrent of traffic is sustained for a generous span of hours with patrons who live so many different lives on so many different shifts.[2]
[edit] National expansion
With Bickford's restaurants opening in New Jersey and Massachusetts, Sam Bickford and his son, Harold, worked over four decades to expand their cafeteria chain throughout the Northeast. As their expansion continued with drive-in restaurants and associated locations in Florida, Pennsylvania and California, they ultimately opened 85 branches. Cheesecake, apple pie and rice pudding were some of the menu favorites.
In the 1930s, union conflicts resulted in vandalism, as noted by Christopher Gray in The New York Times:
- In 1932 the police blamed members of the glaziers union for vandalism against 24 Horn & Hardart and Bickford's restaurants in Manhattan, including the one at 488 Eighth Avenue. Witnesses said that a passenger in a car driving by used a slingshot to damage and even break the plate glass show windows. Glaziers union representatives had complained about nonunion employees installing glass at the restaurants.[1]
[edit] Expansion to Southeast and West Coast
Bickford's son, Harold, was in charge of expanding their cafeteria chain into Florida and California. In 1959, Bickford's, Inc. had two geographical divisions: the North-East Coast Division and the South East Coast ("M&M Cafeterias,Inc.") and West Coast ("Foster's Lunch System, Ltd.") Division. [3]
[edit] Foster's cafeterias
Foster's Cafeterias were operated under Bickford's Foster's Lunch System, Ltd. subdivision, headquartered in San Francisco, California. By 1959, there were 28 Foster's Cafeterias & Bakeries in San Francisco and other locations in the San Francisco Bay Area, including Oakland, Berkeley and San Mateo. The Foster's Lunch System, Ltd. also operated the huge Moar's Cafeteria on Powell Street near Market in San Francisco right across from the cable car turntable with a large mosaic by Benny Bufano on one wall. [3]
[edit] Foster's English muffins
Foster's cafeterias were famous for Foster's English Muffins, sourdough English muffins that were sold packaged at the cafeterias to take home. These muffins were a great breakfast favorite of native San Franciscans and were often mentioned by Herb Caen in his column. [4]They were also sold in supermarkets and corner markets. They were baked with numerous air pockets in them which made them extra crunchy. The flavor was like San Francisco sourdough French bread. It was considered gauche to cut them with a knife (which made them less crunchy by reducing the number of air pockets) rather than break them open by hand. [5] Foster's English Muffins continued to be sold under contract by various other bakeries (initially by Kilpatrick's Bakery) after the last Foster's cafeteria closed in 1972, but they started manufacturing the English muffins in both unsliced and pre-sliced versions. After 2004, in an ultimate culinary indignity, only pre-sliced Foster's English muffins were being sold. Foster's English Muffins ceased to be sold in 2008 when the Rainbo bakery on Folsom and 16th St. in San Francisco went out of business.
[edit] Decline
Bickford's and its Southeast subsidiary M&M Cafeterias and West Coast subsidiary Foster's Cafeterias had trouble staying in business because of rising labor costs, competition from the non-union cheap labor at fast food restaurants, and rising crime, which kept people home after dark. In 1960, there were 48 Bickford's in New York, down to 42 in 1970 and only two in 1980. By 1982, the last two were closed as well.[2] The last Foster's cafeteria in San Francisco closed in 1972.
[edit] Literati
[edit] Bickford's
Jack Kerouac sometimes wrote while sitting in Bickford's, and he mentioned the restaurant in Lonesome Traveler. Other famed members of the Beat Generation could be found at night in the New York Bickford's as noted by The New York Times:
- The best minds of Allen Ginsberg's generation "sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's," he wrote in Howl. The Beat Generation muse, Herbert Huncke, practically inhabited the Bickford's on West 42nd Street. Walker Evans photographed Bickford's customers, and Andy Warhol rhapsodized about Bickford's waitresses. Bickford's made its way into the work of writers as diverse as Woody Allen and William Styron.[2]
Andy Warhol's assistant was out getting a coffee-to-go at Bickford's when Warhol was shot. The Mad cartoonist Wally Wood was 21 years old when he worked as a Bickford's busboy shortly after his 1948 arrival in Manhattan.
[edit] Foster's
Allen Ginsberg when he was living in San Francisco liked to go to the large Foster’s cafeteria on the north side of Sutter between Powell and Stockton. He wrote the first section of Howl there in 1954. [6]He took vows there about January 1955 with Peter Orlovsky to be his homosexual lover, their promise being "that neither of us would go into heaven unless we could get the other one in". [7]
[edit] Evolution
In October 1959, in Peabody, Massachusetts, Harold Bickford introduced a new concept, the Bickford's Pancake House, a specialty family restaurant with an emphasis on the breakfast menu. Over the next three decades, the Bickford's Pancake House chain grew to 30 restaurants throughout New England. By the mid-1990s, there were almost 70 Bickford's restaurants in New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts.[8]
The Bickford's upgrade of 2003 included a focus on take-out, restaurant decor makeovers, the creation of new signs, beer and wine licenses, flat-screen TVs and a change in uniforms. The eateries in Woburn, Sharon, Brockton, Burlington, Framingham, Auburn, and Seekonk, Massachusetts, along with the Salem and Portsmouth, New Hampshire restaurants, were renamed Bickfords Grille, with a new logo eliminating the apostrophe. Many locations are open 24 hours and offer "Breakfast Anytime," their longtime slogan. The Dutch baby pancake is a specialty of some diners and chains that specialize in breakfast dishes, such as the Oregon-founded The Original Pancake House or Bickfords Grille, which serves a similar pancake, the Baby Apple (with embedded apple slices), and a plain Dutch Pancake. The lunch/dinner menus expanded to include fresh turkey, roasted daily in the restaurants, for turkey dinners, plus turkey club and hot turkey sandwiches.[8]
Bickford's corporate headquarters are now located in Brighton, Boston, Massachusetts. Financial forecaster Jeffrey S. Bickford, the grandson of the founder, maintains a nostalgic and comprehensive website displaying articles, photographs, postcards and a directory of branches past and present.[9]
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Gray, Christopher. "Streetscapes," The New York Times, June 3, 2001.
- ^ a b c "Breakfast at Bickford's," The New York Times, December 10, 2000.
- ^ a b Foster's Cafeteria:
- ^ Herb Caen column February 9, 1996:
- ^ English muffin stories in the S.F. Chronicle, 1969:
- ^ The Great Cafes—Café Trieste in North Beach:
- ^ How Beat Happened:
- ^ a b Bickford's Grille
- ^ Bickford, Jeffrey S. Bickford's Inc.
