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A coffeehouse, coffee shop, or café (French: [kafe] ^ⓘ), is an establishment that serves various types of coffee, espresso, latte, americano and cappuccino, among other hot beverages. Some coffeehouses may serve iced coffee among other cold beverages, such as iced tea, as well as other non-caffeinated beverages. A coffeehouse may also serve food, such as light snacks, sandwiches, muffins, cakes, breads, pastries, and/or donuts. Many doughnut shops in the Canadian and U.S. serve coffee as an accompaniment to doughnuts.^[1][2] In continental Europe, some cafés even serve alcoholic beverages. Coffeehouses range from owner-operated small businesses to large multinational corporations. Some coffeehouse chains operate on a franchise business model, with numerous branches across various countries around the world.

While café may refer to a coffeehouse, the term “café” can also refer to a diner, British café (also colloquially called a “caff”), “greasy spoon” (a small and inexpensive restaurant), transport café, teahouse or tea room, or other casual eating and drinking place.^{[3][4][5][6][7]} A coffeehouse may share some of the same characteristics of a bar or restaurant, but it is different from a cafeteria. Many coffeehouses in West Asia offer shisha (actually called nargile in Levantine Arabic, Greek, and Turkish), flavored tobacco smoked through a hookah. An espresso bar is a type of coffeehouse that specializes in serving espresso and espresso-based drinks.

From a cultural standpoint coffeehouses largely serve as centers of social interaction: a coffeehouse provides patrons with a place to congregate, talk, read, write, entertain one another, or pass the time, whether individually or in small groups. A coffeehouse can serve as an informal social club for its regular members.^[8] As early as the 1950s Beatnik era and the 1960s folk music scene, coffeehouses have hosted singer-songwriter performances, typically in the evening.^[9] The digital age saw the rise of the Internet café along similar principles.

Etymology

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The most common English spelling of café is the French word for both coffee and coffeehouse;^[11][12] it was adopted by English-speaking countries in the late 19th century.^[13] The Italian spelling, caffè, is also sometimes used in English.^[14] In Southern England, especially around London in the 1950s, the French pronunciation was often facetiously altered to /kæf/ and spelt caff.^[15]

The English word coffee and French word café (coffeehouse) both derive from the Italian caffè^[11][16]—first attested as caveé in Venice in 1570^[17]—and in turn derived from Arabic qahwa (قهوة). The Arabic term qahwa originally referred to a type of wine, but after the wine ban by Islam, the name was transferred to coffee because of the similar rousing effect it induced.^[18] European knowledge of coffee (the plant, its seeds, and the drink made from the seeds) came through European contact with Turkey, likely via Venetian-Ottoman trade relations.

The English word café to describe a restaurant that usually serves coffee and snacks rather than the word coffee that describes the drink, is derived from the French café. The first café in France is believed to have opened in 1660.^[11] The first café in Europe is believed to have been opened in Belgrade, Ottoman Serbia in 1522 as a Kafana (Serbian coffee house).^[19]

The translingual word root /kafe/ appears in many European languages with various naturalized spellings, including Portuguese, Spanish, and French (café); German (Kaffee); Polish (kawa); Serbian (кафа / kafa); Ukrainian (кава, ‘kava’); and others.

History

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Ottoman Empire

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Ottoman miniature of a meddah performing at a coffeehouse

Storyteller (meddah) at a coffeehouse in the Ottoman Empire. The first coffeehouses appeared in the Muslim world in the 15th century.

The first coffeehouses appeared in Damascus. These Ottoman coffeehouses also appeared in Mecca, in the Arabian Peninsula in the 15th century, then spread to the Ottoman Empire‘s capital of Istanbul in the 16th century and in Baghdad. Coffeehouses became popular meeting places where people gathered to drink coffee, have conversations, play board games such as chess and backgammon, listen to stories and music, and discuss news and politics. They became known as “schools of wisdom” for the type of clientele they attracted, and their free and frank discourse.^[20][21]

Coffeehouses in Mecca became a concern of imams who viewed them as places for political gatherings and drinking, leading to bans between 1512 and 1524.^[22] However, these bans could not be maintained, due to coffee becoming ingrained in daily ritual and culture among Arabs and neighboring peoples.^[20] The Ottoman chronicler İbrahim Peçevi reports in his writings (1642–49) about the opening of the first coffeehouse (kiva han) in Istanbul:

Until the year 962 [1555], in the High, God-Guarded city of Constantinople, as well as in Ottoman lands generally, coffee and coffeehouses did not exist. About that year, a fellow called Hakam from Aleppo and a wag called Shams from Damascus came to the city; they each opened a large shop in the district called Tahtakale, and began to purvey coffee.^[23]

Persia

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The 17th-century French traveler and writer Jean Chardin gave a lively description of the Persian coffeehouse (qahveh khaneh in Persian) scene:

People engage in conversation, for it is there that news is communicated and where those interested in politics criticize the government in all freedom and without being fearful, since the government does not heed what the people say. Innocent games … resembling checkers, hopscotch, and chess, are played. In addition, mollas, dervishes, and poets take turns telling stories in verse or in prose. The narrations by the mollas and the dervishes are moral lessons, like our sermons, but it is not considered scandalous not to pay attention to them. No one is forced to give up his game or his conversation because of it. A molla will stand up in the middle, or at one end of the qahveh-khaneh, and begin to preach in a loud voice, or a dervish enters all of a sudden, and chastises the assembled on the vanity of the world and its material goods. It often happens that two or three people talk at the same time, one on one side, the other on the opposite, and sometimes one will be a preacher and the other a storyteller.^[24]

Europe

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In the 17th century, coffee appeared for the first time in Europe outside the Ottoman Empire, and coffeehouses were established, soon becoming increasingly popular. The first coffeehouse is said to have appeared in 1632 in Livorno, founded by a Jewish merchant,^[25][26] or later in 1640, in Venice.^[27] In the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe, coffeehouses were very often meeting points for writers and artists.^[28]

Austria

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The traditional tale of the origins of the Viennese café begins with the mysterious sacks of green beans left behind when the Turks were defeated in the Battle of Vienna in 1683. All the sacks of coffee were granted to the victorious Polish king Jan III Sobieski, who in turn gave them to one of his officers, Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki, a Ukrainian cossack and Polish diplomat of Ruthenian descent. Kulczycki, according to the tale, then began the first coffeehouse in Vienna with the hoard, also being the first to serve coffee with milk. There is a statue of Kulczycki on a street also named after him.

However, it is now widely accepted that the first Viennese coffeehouse was actually opened by an Armenian merchant named Johannes Diodato (also known as Johannes Theodat). He opened a registered coffeehouse in Vienna in 1685.^[29][30]Fifteen years later, four other Armenians owned coffeehouses.^[30] The culture of drinking coffee was itself widespread in the country in the second half of the 18th century.

Over time, a special coffee house culture developed in Habsburg Vienna. On the one hand, writers, artists, musicians, intellectuals, bon vivants and their financiers met in the coffee house, and on the other hand, new coffee varieties were always served. In the coffee house, people played cards or chess, worked, read, thought, composed, discussed, argued, observed and just chatted. A lot of information was also obtained in the coffee house, because local and foreign newspapers were freely available to all guests. This form of coffee house culture spread throughout the Habsburg Empire in the 19th century.^[31][32]

Scientific theories, political plans but also artistic projects were worked out and discussed in Viennese coffee houses all over Central Europe. James Joyce even enjoyed his coffee in a Viennese coffee house on the Adriatic in Trieste, then and now the main port for coffee and coffee processing in Italy and Central Europe. From there, the Viennese Kapuziner coffee developed into today’s world-famous cappuccino. This special multicultural atmosphere of the Habsburg coffee houses was largely destroyed by the later National Socialism and Communism and can only be found today in a few places that have long been in the slipstream of history, such as Vienna or Trieste.^{[33][34][35][36]}

England

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Main article: English coffeehouses in the 17th and 18th centuries

The first coffeehouse in England was set up on the High Street in Oxford in 1650^[37]–1651^{[38][page needed]} by “Jacob the Jew”. A second competing coffee house was opened across the street in 1654, by “Cirques Jobson, the Jew” (Queen’s Lane Coffee House).^[39] In London, the earliest coffeehouse was established by Pasqua Rosée in 1652.^[40] Anthony Wood observed of the coffee houses of Oxford in his Life and Times (1674) “The decay of study, and consequently of learning, are coffee houses, to which most scholars retire and spend much of the day in hearing and speaking of news”.^[41] The proprietor was Pasqua Rosée, the servant of a trader in goods from the Ottoman Empire named Daniel Edwards, who imported the coffee and assisted Rosée in setting up the establishment there.^[42][43]

From 1670 to 1685, the number of London coffeehouses began to increase, and they also began to gain political importance due to their popularity as places of debate.^[44] English coffeehouses were significant meeting places, particularly in London. By 1675, there were more than 3,000 coffeehouses in England.^[45] The coffeehouses were great social levelers, open to all men and indifferent to social status, and as a result associated with equality and republicanism. Entry gave access to books or print news. Coffeehouses boosted the popularity of print news culture and helped the growth of various financial markets including insurance, stocks, and auctions. Lloyd’s of London had its origins in a coffeehouse run by Edward Lloyd, where underwriters of ship insurance met to do business. The rich intellectual atmosphere of early London coffeehouses was available to anyone who could pay the sometimes one penny entry fee, giving them the name of ‘Penny Universities’.^[46]

Though Charles II later tried to suppress London coffeehouses as “places where the disaffected met, and spread scandalous reports concerning the conduct of His Majesty and his Ministers”, the public still flocked to them. For several decades following the Restoration, the wits gathered around John Dryden at Will’s Coffee House, in Russell Street, Covent Garden.^[47] As coffeehouses were believed to be areas where anti-government gossip could easily spread, Queen Mary and the London City magistrates tried to prosecute people who frequented coffeehouses as they were liable to “spread false and seditious reports”. William III‘s privy council also suppressed Jacobite sympathizers in the 1680s and 1690s in coffeehouses as these were the places that they believed harbored plotters against the regimes.^[48]

By 1739, there were 551 coffeehouses in London; each attracted a particular clientele divided by occupation or attitude, such as Tories and Whigs, wits and stockjobbers, merchants and lawyers, booksellers and authors, men of fashion or the “cits” of the old city center. According to one French visitor, Antoine François Prévost, coffeehouses, “where you have the right to read all the papers for and against the government”, were the “seats of English liberty”.^[49]

Jonathan’s Coffee House in 1698 saw the listing of stock and commodity prices that evolved into the London Stock Exchange. Lloyd’s Coffee House provided the venue for merchants and shippers to discuss insurance deals^[repetition], leading to the establishment of Lloyd’s of London insurance market, the Lloyd’s Register classification society, and other related businesses. Auctions in salesrooms attached to coffeehouses provided the start for the great auction houses of Sotheby’s and Christie’s.

In Victorian England, the temperance movement set up coffeehouses (also known as coffee taverns) for the working classes, as a place of relaxation free of alcohol, an alternative to the public house.^[50][51]

Romania

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In 1667, Kara Hamie, a former Ottoman Janissary from Constantinople, opened the first coffee shop in Bucharest (then the capital of the Principality of Wallachia), in the center of the city, where today sits the main building of the National Bank of Romania.^[52]

France

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Pasqua Rosée, an Armenian by the name Harutiun Vartian, also established the first coffeehouse in Paris in 1672 and held a citywide coffee monopoly until Procopio Cutò, his apprentice, opened the Café Procope in 1686.^[53] This coffeehouse still exists today and was a popular meeting place of the French Enlightenment; Voltaire, Rousseau, and Denis Diderot frequented it, and it is arguably the birthplace of the Encyclopédie, the first modern encyclopedia.

Hungary

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The first known cafes in Pest date back to 1714 when a house intended to serve as a Cafe (Balázs Kávéfőző) was purchased. Minutes of the Pest City Council from 1729 mention complaints by the Balázs café and Franz Reschfellner Cafe against the Italian-originated café of Francesco Bellieno for selling underpriced coffee.^[54]

Italy

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During the 18th century, the oldest extant coffeehouses in Italy were established: Caffè Florian in Venice, Antico Caffè Greco in Rome, Caffè Pedrocchi in Padua, Caffè dell’Ussero in Pisa and Caffè Fiorio in Turin.

Ireland

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In the 18th century, Dublin coffeehouses functioned as early reading centers and the emergence of circulation and subscription libraries that provided greater access to printed material for the public. The interconnectivity of the coffeehouse and virtually every aspect of the print trade were evidenced by the incorporation of printing, publishing, selling, and viewing of newspapers, pamphlets and books on the premises, most notably in the case of Dick’s Coffee House, owned by Richard Pue; thus contributing to a culture of reading and increased literacy.^[55] These coffeehouses were a social magnet where different strata of society came together to discuss topics covered by the newspapers and pamphlets. Most coffeehouses of the 18th century would eventually be equipped with their own printing presses or incorporate a book shop.^[56]

Today, the term café is used for most coffeehouses – this can be spelled both with and without an acute accent, but is always pronounced as two syllables. The name café has also come to be used for a type of diners that offers cooked meals (again, without alcoholic beverages) which can be standalone or operating within shopping centres or department stores. In Irish usage, the presence or absence of the acute accent does not signify the type of establishment (coffeehouse versus diner), and is purely a decision by the owner: for instance, the two largest diner-style café chains in Ireland in the 1990s were named “Kylemore Cafe” and “Bewley’s Café” – i.e., one written without, and one with, the acute accent.

Portugal

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The history of coffee in Portugal is usually told to have begun during the reign of king John V, when Portuguese agent Francisco de Melo Palheta supposedly managed to steal coffee beans from the Dutch East India Company and introduce it to Brazil. From Brazil, coffee was taken to Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe, which were also Portuguese colonies at the time. Despite this story, coffee already existed in Angola, having been introduced by Portuguese missionaries. During the 18th century, the first public cafés appeared, inspired by French gatherings from the 17th century, becoming spaces for cultural and artistic entertainment.

Several cafes emerged in Lisbon such as: Martinho da Arcada (being the oldest café still functioning, having opened in 1782), Café Tavares, Botequim Parras, among others. Of these several became famous for harbouring poets and artists, such as Manuel du Bocage with his visits to Café Nicola, which opened in 1796 by the Italian Nicola Breteiro; and Fernando Pessoa with his visits to A Brasileira, which opened in 1905 by Adriano Teles. The most famous of these coffee houses was the Café Marrare, opened by the napolitan Antonio Marrare, in 1820, frequently visited by Júlio Castilho, Raimundo de Bulhão Pato, Almeida Garrett, Alexandre Herculano and other members of the Portuguese government and the intelligentsia. It began its own saying: «Lisboa era Chiado, o Chiado era o Marrare e o Marrare ditava a lei» (English: “Lisbon was the Chiado, the Chiado was the Marrare and the Marrare dictated the law”).

Other coffee houses soon opened across the country, such as Café Vianna, opened in Braga, in 1858, by Manoel José da Costa Vianna, which was also visited by important Portuguese writers such as Camilo Castelo Branco and Eça de Queirós. During the 1930’s, a surge in coffee houses happened in Porto with the opening of several that still exist, such as Café Guarany, opened in 1933, and A Regaleira, opened in 1934.

Switzerland

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In 1761 the Turm Kaffee, a shop for exported goods, was opened in St. Gallen.^[57]

Finland

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Finland’s first coffee house, Kaffehus, was founded in Turku in 1778.^[58] The oldest still-in-use coffee house in Helsinki called Café Ekberg was founded 1852.^[59]

Gender

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The exclusion of women from coffeehouses as guests was not universal, but does appear to have been common in Europe. In Germany, women frequented them, but in England and France they were banned.^[60] Émilie du Châtelet purportedly cross-dressed to gain entrance to a coffeehouse in Paris.^[61]

In a well-known engraving of a Parisian café c. 1700,^[62] the gentlemen hang their hats on pegs and sit at long communal tables strewn with papers and writing implements. Coffee pots are ranged at an open fire, with a hanging cauldron of boiling water. The only woman present presides, separated in a canopied booth, from which she serves coffee in tall cups.

Aside from the discussion around women as guests of the coffeehouses, it is noted that women did work as waitresses at coffeehouses and also managed coffeehouses as proprietors. Well known women in the coffeehouse business were Moll King (coffee house proprietor) in England, and Maja-Lisa Borgman in Sweden.^[63]

Contemporary

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In most European countries, such as Spain, Austria, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, and others, the term café means a restaurant primarily serving coffee, as well as pastries such as cakes, tarts, pies, or buns. Many cafés also serve light meals such as sandwiches. European cafés often have tables on the pavement (sidewalk) as well as indoors. Some cafés also serve alcoholic drinks (e.g., wine), particularly in Southern Europe. In the Netherlands and Belgium, a café is the equivalent of a bar, and also sells alcoholic drinks. In the Netherlands a koffiehuis serves coffee, while a coffee shop (using the English term) sells “soft” drugs (cannabis and hashish) and is generally not allowed to sell alcoholic drinks. In France, most cafés serve as lunch restaurants in the day, and bars in the evening. They generally do not have pastries except in the mornings, when a croissant or pain au chocolat can be purchased with breakfast coffee. In Italy, cafés are similar to those found in France and known as bar. They typically serve a variety of espresso coffee, cakes and alcoholic drinks. Bars in city centers usually have different prices for consumption at the bar and consumption at a table.^{[64][citation needed]}

Americas

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Argentina

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Coffeehouses are part of the culture of Buenos Aires and the customs of its inhabitants. They are traditional meeting places for ‘porteños’ and have inspired innumerable artistic creations. Some notable coffeehouses include Confitería del Molino, Café Tortoni, El Gato Negro, Café La Biela.

United States

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The first coffeehouse in America opened in Boston, in 1676.^[65] However, Americans did not start choosing coffee over tea until the Boston Tea Party and the Revolutionary War. After the Revolutionary War, Americans momentarily went back to drinking tea until after the War of 1812 when they began importing high-quality coffee from Latin America and expensive inferior-quality tea from American shippers instead of Great Britain.^[66] Whether they were drinking coffee or tea, coffeehouses served a similar purpose to that which they did in Great Britain, as places where business was done. In the 1780s, Merchant’s Coffee House located on Wall Street in New York City was home to the organization of the Bank of New York and the New York Chamber of Commerce.^[67]

Coffeehouses in the United States arose from the espresso– and pastry-centered Italian coffeehouses of the Italian American immigrant communities in the major U.S. cities, notably New York City’s Little Italy and Greenwich Village, Boston’s North End, and San Francisco’s North Beach. From the late 1950s onward, coffeehouses also served as a venue for entertainment, most commonly folk performers during the American folk music revival.^[68] Both Greenwich Village and North Beach became major haunts of the Beats, who were highly identified with these coffeehouses. As the youth culture of the 1960s evolved, non-Italians consciously copied these coffeehouses. The political nature of much of 1960s folk music made the music a natural tie-in with coffeehouses with their association with political action. A number of well-known performers like Joan Baez and Bob Dylan began their careers performing in coffeehouses. Blues singer Lightnin’ Hopkins bemoaned his woman’s inattentiveness to her domestic situation due to her overindulgence in coffeehouse socializing in his 1969 song “Coffeehouse Blues”.^{[citation needed]}

In 1966, Alfred Peet began applying the dark roast style to high quality beans and opened up a small shop in Berkeley, California to educate customers on the virtues of good coffee.^[66] Starting in 1967 with the opening of the historic Last Exit on Brooklyn coffeehouse, Seattle became known for its thriving countercultural coffeehouse scene; the Starbucks chain later standardized and mainstreamed this espresso bar model.^[69]

From the 1960s through the mid-1980s, churches and individuals in the United States used the coffeehouse concept for outreach. They were often storefronts and had names like The Lost Coin (Greenwich Village), The Gathering Place (Riverside, CA), Catacomb Chapel (New York City), and Jesus For You (Buffalo, NY). Christian music (often guitar-based) was performed, coffee and food was provided, and Bible studies were convened as people of varying backgrounds gathered in a casual setting that was purposefully different from traditional churches. An out-of-print book, published by the ministry of David Wilkerson, titled, A Coffeehouse Manual, served as a guide for Christian coffeehouses, including a list of name suggestions for coffeehouses.^[70]

In 2002, Brownstones Coffee of Amityville, New York opened its first location as a breakfast-oriented coffeehouse well before that business model became popular.^[71] The trend later caught on through coffeehouses such as Starbucks,^[72] which seemed to be on every street corner in several major American cities including Los Angeles and Seattle.^[73]

Format

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See also: List of coffeehouse chains

Cafés may have an outdoor section (terrace, pavement or sidewalk café) with seats, tables and parasols. This is especially the case with European cafés. Cafés offer a more open public space compared to many of the traditional pubs they have replaced, which were more male dominated with a focus on drinking alcohol.

One of the original uses of the café, as a place for information exchange and communication, was reintroduced in the 1990s with the Internet café or Hotspot.^[74] The spread of modern-style cafés to urban and rural areas went hand-in-hand with the rising use of mobile computers. Computers and Internet access in a contemporary-styled venue help to create a youthful, modern place, compared to the traditional pubs or old-fashioned diners that they replaced.

Asia

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Coffeehouses in Egypt are colloquially called ‘ahwah /ʔhwa/, which is the dialectal pronunciation of قَهْوة qahwah (literally “coffee”)^[75][76] (see also Arabic phonology#Local variations). Also commonly served in ‘ahwah are tea (shāy) and herbal teas, especially the highly popular hibiscus blend (Egyptian Arabic: karkadeh or ennab). The first ‘ahwah opened around the 1850s and were originally patronized mostly by older people, with youths frequenting but not always ordering. There were associated by the 1920s with clubs (Cairo), bursa (Alexandria) and gharza (rural inns). In the early 20th century, some of them became crucial venues for political and social debates.^[75]

In India, coffee culture has expanded in the past twenty years. Chains like Indian Coffee House, Café Coffee Day, Barista Lavazza have become very popular. Cafes are considered good venues to conduct office meetings and for friends to meet.^[77]

In China, an abundance of recently started domestic coffeehouse chains may be seen accommodating business people for conspicuous consumption, with coffee prices sometimes even higher than in the West.

In Malaysia and Singapore, traditional breakfast and coffee shops are called kopi tiam. The word is a portmanteau of the Malay word for coffee (as borrowed and altered from English) and the Hokkien dialect word for shop (店; POJ: tiàm). Menus typically feature simple offerings: a variety of foods based on egg, toast, and coconut jam, plus coffee, tea, and Milo, a malted chocolate drink that is extremely popular in Southeast Asia and Australasia, particularly Singapore and Malaysia.

In Indonesia, traditional coffee houses are called kedai kopi, rumah kopi, or warung kopi which is often abbreviated as warkop. Kopi tubruk is a common drink in small warkop. As a coffee drink companion, traditional kue is also served in the coffee house. The first coffee house in Indonesia was founded in 1878 in Jakarta which named Warung Tinggi Tek Sun Ho.^[78]

In the Philippines, coffee shop chains like Starbucks have become the prevalent hangouts for upper- and middle-class professionals in such districts as the Makati CBD. However, carinderias (small eateries) continue to serve coffee alongside breakfast and snack dishes. Events called “Kapihan” (fora) are often held inside bakeshops or restaurants that also serve coffee for breakfast or merienda. There are also a number of establishments often referred to as “cafés” that serve not just coffee and pastries, but full meals, often international cuisine highly altered to Filipino tastes.^[79]

In Thailand, the term “café” is not only a coffeehouse in the international definition, as in other countries, but in the past was considered a night restaurant that serves alcoholic drinks during a comedy show on stage. The era in which this type of business flourished was the 1990s, before the 1997 financial crisis.^[80]

The first real coffeehouse in Thailand opened in 1917 at the Si Kak Phraya Si in the area of Rattanakosin Island, by Madam Cole, an American woman who living in Thailand at that time, Later, Chao Phraya Ram Rakop (เจ้าพระยารามราฆพ), Thai aristocrat, opened a coffeehouse named “Café de Norasingha” (คาเฟ่นรสิงห์) located at Sanam Suea Pa (สนามเสือป่า), the ground next to the Royal Plaza.^[81] At present, Café de Norasingha has been renovated and moved to within Phayathai Palace.^[82] In the southern region, a traditional coffeehouse or kopi tiam is popular with locals, like many countries in the Malay Peninsula.^[83]

Australia

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In the 19th century, coffee houses such as the Collingwood Coffee Palace or the Federal Coffee Palace in the centre of Melbourne were established and were part of the temperance movement to reduce the consumption of alcohol in society.^[84]

In modern Australia, coffee shops are ubiquitously known as cafés. Since the post-World War II influx of Italian and Greek immigrants introduced the first espresso coffee machines to Australia in the 1950s, there was initially a slow rise in café culture, particularly in Melbourne, until a boom in locally owned cafés Australia-wide began in the 1990s.^[85] Alongside the rise in the number of cafés there has been a rise in demand for locally (or on-site) roasted specialty coffee, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne. A local favourite is the “flat white” which remains a popular coffee drink.^[86]

Africa

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In Cairo, the capital of Egypt, most cafés have shisha (waterpipe). Most Egyptians indulge in the habit of smoking shisha while hanging out at the café, watching a match, studying, or even sometimes finishing some work. In Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, independent coffeehouses that struggled prior to 1991 have become popular with young professionals who do not have time for traditional coffee roasting at home. One establishment that has become well-known is the Tomoca coffee shop, which opened in 1953.^[87][88]

Europe

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United Kingdom

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The patrons of the first coffeehouse in England, The Angel, which opened in Oxford in 1650,^[89] and the mass of London coffee houses that flourished over the next three centuries, were far removed from those of modern Britain. Haunts for teenagers in particular, Italian-run espresso bars and their formica-topped tables were a feature of 1950s Soho that provided a backdrop as well as a title for Cliff Richard‘s 1960 film Expresso Bongo. The first was The Moka in Frith Street, opened by Gina Lollobrigida in 1953. With their “exotic Gaggia coffee machine[s],… Coke, Pepsi, weak frothy coffee and… Suncrush orange fountain[s]”^[90] they spread to other urban centers during the 1960s, providing cheap, warm places for young people to congregate and an ambience far removed from the global coffee bar standard that would be established in the final decades of the century by chains such as Starbucks and Pret a Manger.^[90][91]

Espresso bar

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The espresso bar is a type of coffeehouse that specializes in coffee drinks made from espresso. Originating in Italy, the espresso bar has spread throughout the world in various forms. Prime examples that are internationally known are Starbucks Coffee, based in Seattle, U.S., and Costa Coffee, based in Dunstable, U.K. (the first and second largest coffeehouse chains respectively), although the espresso bar exists in some form throughout much of the world.

The espresso bar is typically centered around a long counter with a high-yield espresso machine (usually bean to cup machines, automatic or semiautomatic pump-type machine, although occasionally a manually operated lever-and-piston system) and a display case containing pastries and occasionally savory items such as sandwiches. In the traditional Italian bar, customers either order at the bar and consume their drinks standing or, if they wish to sit down and be served, are usually charged a higher price. In some bars there is an additional charge for drinks served at an outside table. In other countries, especially the United States, seating areas for customers to relax and work are provided free of charge. Some espresso bars also sell coffee paraphernalia, candy, and even music. North American espresso bars were also at the forefront of widespread adoption of public WiFi access points to provide Internet services to people doing work on laptop computers on the premises.

The offerings at the typical espresso bar are generally quite Italianate in inspiration; biscotti, cannoli and pizzelle are a common traditional accompaniment to a caffe latte or cappuccino. Some upscale espresso bars even offer alcoholic drinks such as grappa and sambuca. Nevertheless, typical pastries are not always strictly Italianate and common additions include scones, muffins, croissants, and even doughnuts. There is usually a large selection of teas as well, and the North American espresso bar culture is responsible for the popularization of the Indian spiced tea drink masala chai. Iced drinks are also popular in some countries, including both iced tea and iced coffee as well as blended drinks such as Starbucks’ Frappucino.

A worker in an espresso bar is referred to as a barista. The barista is a skilled position that requires familiarity with the drinks being made (often very elaborate, especially in North American-style espresso bars), a reasonable facility with some equipment as well as the usual customer service skills.

Gallery

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• “Café” neon sign in Breda
• Café Mélange, Vienna
• Café Kampela, Helsinki
• The Grey Owl Coffee shop in Norman, Oklahoma
• A café in a former church, Utrecht
• Roadside café with a summer terrace. Buryatia, Russia
• Inside of a kopitiam, Malaysia

A restaurant is an establishment that prepares and serves food and drinks to customers.^[1] Meals are generally served and eaten on the premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and food delivery services. Restaurants vary greatly in appearance and offerings, including a wide variety of cuisines and service models ranging from inexpensive fast-food restaurants and cafeterias to mid-priced family restaurants, to high-priced luxury establishments.

Etymology

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The word derives from the early 19th century, taken from the French word restaurer ‘provide meat for’, literally ‘restore to a former state’^[2] and, being the present participle of the verb,^[3] the term restaurant may have been used in 1507 as a “restorative beverage“, and in correspondence in 1521 to mean ‘that which restores the strength, a fortifying food or remedy’.^[4]

History

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A public eating establishment similar to a restaurant is mentioned in a 512 BC record from Ancient Egypt. It served only one dish, a plate of cereal, wildfowl, and onions.^[5]

A forerunner for the modern restaurant is the thermopolium, an establishment in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome that sold and served ready-to-eat food and beverages. These establishments were somewhat similar in function to modern fast food restaurants. They were most often frequented by people who lacked private kitchens. In the Roman Empire, they were popular among residents of insulae.^[6]

In Pompeii, 158 thermopolia with service counters have been identified throughout the town. They were concentrated along the main axis of the town and the public spaces where they were frequented by the locals.^[7]

The Romans also had the popina, a wine bar which in addition to a variety of wines offered a limited selection of simple foods such as olives, bread, cheese, stews, sausage, and porridge. The popinae were known as places for the plebeians of the lower classes of Roman society to socialize. While some were confined to one standing room only, others had tables and stools and a few even had couches.^[8][9]

Another early forerunner of the restaurant was the inn. Throughout the ancient world, inns were set up alongside roads to cater to people travelling between cities, offering lodging and food. Meals were typically served at a common table to guests. However, there were no menus or options to choose from.^[10]

Early eating establishments recognizable as restaurants in the modern sense emerged in Song dynasty China during the 11th and 12th centuries. In large cities, such as Kaifeng and Hangzhou, food catering establishments catered to merchants who travelled between cities. Probably growing out of tea houses and taverns which catered to travellers, Kaifeng’s restaurants blossomed into an industry that catered to locals as well as people from other regions of China. As travelling merchants were not used to the local cuisine of other cities, these establishments were set up to serve dishes familiar to merchants from other parts of China. Such establishments were located in the entertainment districts of major cities, alongside hotels, bars, and brothels. The larger and more opulent of these establishments offered a dining experience similar to modern restaurant culture. According to a Chinese manuscript from 1126, patrons of one such establishment were greeted with a selection of pre-plated demonstration dishes which represented food options. Customers had their orders taken by a team of waiters who would then sing their orders to the kitchen and distribute the dishes in the exact order in which they had been ordered.^[11][12]

There is a direct correlation between the growth of the restaurant businesses and institutions of theatrical stage drama, gambling and prostitution which served the burgeoning merchant middle class during the Song dynasty.^[13] Restaurants catered to different styles of cuisine, price brackets, and religious requirements. Even within a single restaurant choices were available, and people ordered the entrée from written menus.^[12] An account from 1275 writes of Hangzhou, the capital city for the last half of the dynasty:

The people of Hangzhou are very difficult to please. Hundreds of orders are given on all sides: this person wants something hot, another something cold, a third something tepid, a fourth something chilled. one wants cooked food, another raw, another chooses roast, another grill.^[14]

The restaurants in Hangzhou also catered to many northern Chinese who had fled south from Kaifeng during the Jurchen invasion of the 1120s, while it is also known that many restaurants were run by families formerly from Kaifeng.^[15]

In Japan, a restaurant culture emerged in the 16th century out of local tea houses. Tea house owner Sen no Rikyū created the kaiseki multi-course meal tradition, and his grandsons expanded the tradition to include speciality dishes and cutlery which matched the aesthetic of the food.^[11]

In Europe, inns which offered food and lodgings and taverns where food was served alongside alcoholic beverages were common into the Middle Ages and Renaissance. They typically served common fare of the type normally available to peasants. In Spain, such establishments were called bodegas and served tapas. In England, they typically served foods such as sausage and shepherd’s pie.^[10] Cookshops were also common in European cities during the Middle Ages. These were establishments which served dishes such as pies, puddings, sauces, fish, and baked meats. Customers could either buy a ready-made meal or bring their own meat to be cooked. As only large private homes had the means for cooking, the inhabitants of European cities were significantly reliant on them.^[16]

France in particular has a rich history with the development of various forms of inns and eateries, eventually to form many of the now-ubiquitous elements of the modern restaurant. As far back as the thirteenth century, French inns served a variety of food — bread, cheese, bacon, roasts, soups, and stews – usually eaten at a common table. Parisians could buy what was essentially take-out food from rôtisseurs, who prepared roasted meat dishes, and pastry-cooks, who could prepare meat pies and often more elaborate dishes. Municipal statutes stated that the official prices per item were to be posted at the entrance; this was the first official mention of menus.^[17]

Taverns also served food, as did cabarets. A cabaret, however, unlike a tavern, served food at tables with tablecloths, provided drinks with the meal, and charged by the customers’ choice of dish, rather than by the pot.^[18] Cabarets were reputed to serve better food than taverns and a few, such as the Petit Maure, became well known. A few cabarets had musicians or singing, but most, until the late 19th century, were simply convivial eating places.^[17][18] The first café opened in Paris in 1672 at the Saint-Germain fair. By 1723 there were nearly four hundred cafés in Paris, but their menu was limited to simpler dishes or confectionaries, such as coffee, tea, chocolate (the drink; chocolate in solid state was invented only in the 19th century), ice creams, pastries, and liqueurs.^[18]

At the end of the 16th century, the guild of cook-caterers (later known as “traiteurs”) was given its own legal status. The traiteurs dominated sophisticated food service, delivering or preparing meals for the wealthy at their residences. Taverns and cabarets were limited to serving little more than roast or grilled meats. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, both inns and then traiteurs began to offer “host’s tables” (tables d’hôte), where one paid a set price to sit at a large table with other guests and eat a fixed menu meal.^[17]

Modern format

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The earliest modern-format “restaurants” to use that word in Paris were the establishments which served bouillon, a broth made of meat and egg which was said to restore health and vigour. The first restaurant of this kind was opened in 1765 or 1766 by Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau on rue des Poulies, now part of the Rue de Louvre.^[19] The name of the owner is sometimes given as Boulanger.^[20] Unlike earlier eating places, it was elegantly decorated, and besides meat broth offered a menu of several other “restorative” dishes, including macaroni. Chantoiseau and other chefs took the title “traiteurs-restaurateurs”.^[20] While not the first establishment where one could order food, or even soups, it is thought to be the first to offer a menu of available choices.^[21]

In the Western world, the concept of a restaurant as a public venue where waiting staff serve patrons food from a fixed menu is a relatively recent one, dating from the late 18th century.^[22]

In June 1786, the Provost of Paris issued a decree giving the new kind of eating establishment official status, authorising restaurateurs to receive clients and to offer them meals until eleven in the evening in winter and midnight in summer.^[20] Ambitious cooks from noble households began to open more elaborate eating places. The first luxury restaurant in Paris, the La Grande Taverne de Londres, was opened at the Palais-Royal at the beginning of 1786 by Antoine Beauvilliers, the former chef of the Count of Provence. It had mahogany tables, linen tablecloths, chandeliers, well-dressed and trained waiters, a long wine list and an extensive menu of elaborately prepared and presented dishes.^[20] Dishes on its menu included partridge with cabbage, veal chops grilled in buttered paper, and duck with turnips.^[23] This is considered to have been the “first real restaurant”.^[24][21] According to Brillat-Savarin, the restaurant was “the first to combine the four essentials of an elegant room, smart waiters, a choice cellar, and superior cooking”.^[25][26][27]

The aftermath of the French Revolution saw the number of restaurants skyrocket. Due to the mass emigration of nobles from the country, many cooks from aristocratic households who were left unemployed went on to found new restaurants.^[28][10] One restaurant was started in 1791 by Méot, the former chef of the Duke of Orleans, which offered a wine list with twenty-two choices of red wine and twenty-seven of white wine. By the end of the century there were a collection of luxury restaurants at the Grand-Palais: Huré, the Couvert espagnol; Février; the Grotte flamande; Véry, Masse and the Café de Chartres (still open, now Le Grand Véfour).^[20]

In 1802 the term was applied to an establishment where restorative foods, such as bouillon, a meat broth, were served (“établissement de restaurateur”).^[29] The closure of culinary guilds and societal changes resulting from the Industrial Revolution contributed significantly to the increased prevalence of restaurants in Europe.^[30]

Types of restaurants

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Main article: Types of restaurants

In the 1980s and 1990s the restaurant industry was revolutionized by entrepreneurs, including Terence Conran, Christopher Bodker, Alan Yau, and Oliver Peyton.^[31] Today restaurants are classified or distinguished in many different ways. The primary factor is usually the food itself e.g. vegetarianism, seafood, or steak. The origin of the cuisine may be also used to categorize restaurants e.g. Italian, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, French, Mexican, or Thai. The style of offering has become an important distinguishing factor in the restaurant industry e.g. tapas, sushi, buffet, or yum cha. Beyond this, restaurants may differentiate themselves on factors including speed of service e.g. fast food. Theme restaurants and automated restaurant have become big players in the restaurant industry and may include fine dining, casual dining, contemporary casual, family style, fast casual, coffeehouse, concession stands, food trucks, pop-up restaurants, and ghost restaurants.

Restaurants range from inexpensive and informal lunching or dining places catering to people working nearby, with modest food served in simple settings at low prices, to expensive establishments serving refined food and fine wines in a formal setting. In the former case, customers usually wear casual clothing. In the latter case, depending on culture and local traditions, customers might wear semi-casual, semi-formal or formal wear. Typically, at mid- to high-priced restaurants, customers sit at tables, their orders are taken by a waiter, who brings the food when it is ready. After eating, the customers then pay the bill. In some restaurants, such as those in workplaces, there are usually no waiters; the customers use trays, on which they place cold items that they select from a refrigerated container and hot items which they request from cooks, and then they pay a cashier before they sit down. Another restaurant approach which uses few waiters is the buffet restaurant. Customers serve food onto their own plates and then pay at the end of the meal. Buffet restaurants typically still have waiters to serve drinks and alcoholic beverages. Fast food establishments are also considered to be restaurants. In addition, food trucks are another popular option for people who want quick food service.

Tourists around the world can enjoy dining services on railway dining cars and cruise ship dining rooms, which are essentially travelling restaurants. Many railway dining services also cater to the needs of travellers by providing railway refreshment rooms at railway stations. Many cruise ships provide a variety of dining experiences including a main restaurant, satellite restaurants, room service, speciality restaurants, cafes, bars and buffets to name a few. Some restaurants on these cruise ships require table reservations and operate specific dress codes.^[32]

Restaurant staff

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A restaurant’s proprietor is called a restaurateur, this derives from the French verb restaurer, meaning “to restore”. Professional cooks are called chefs, with there being various finer distinctions (e.g. sous-chef, chef de partie). Most restaurants (other than fast food restaurants and cafeterias) will have various waiting staff to serve food, beverages and alcoholic drinks, including busboys who remove used dishes and cutlery. In finer restaurants, this may include a host or hostess, a maître d’hôtel to welcome customers and seat them, and a sommelier or wine waiter to help patrons select wines. A new route to becoming a restaurateur, rather than working one’s way up through the stages, is to operate a food truck. Once a sufficient following has been obtained, a permanent restaurant site can be opened. This trend has become common in the UK and the US.^{[citation needed]}

Chef’s table

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“Chef’s table” redirects here. For the Netflix documentary series, see Chef’s Table.

A chef’s table is a table located in the kitchen of a restaurant,^[33][34] reserved for VIPs and special guests.^[35] Patrons may be served a themed^[35] tasting menu prepared and served by the head chef. Restaurants can require a minimum party^[36] and charge a higher flat fee.^[37]

By country

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Europe

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France

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France has a long tradition with public eateries and modern restaurant culture emerged there. In the early 19th century, traiteurs and restaurateurs became known simply as “restaurateurs”. The use of the term “restaurant” for the establishment itself only became common in the 19th century.

According to the legend, the first mention to a restaurant dates back to 1765 in Paris. It was located on Rue des Poulies, now Rue du Louvre, and use to serve dishes known as “restaurants”.^[38] The place was run by a man named Mr. Boulanger.^[39] However, according to the Larousse Gastronomique, La Grande Taverne de Londres which opened in 1782 is considered as the first Parisian restaurant.^[40]

The first restaurant guide, called Almanach des Gourmands, written by Grimod de La Reyniére, was published in 1804. During the French Restoration period, the most celebrated restaurant was the Rocher de Cancale, frequented by the characters of Balzac. In the middle of the century, Balzac’s characters moved to the Café Anglais, which in 1867 also hosted the famous Three Emperors Dinner hosted by Napoleon III in honor of Tsar Alexander II, Kaiser Wilhelm I and Otto von Bismarck during the Exposition Universelle in 1867^[41]

Other restaurants that occupy a place in French history and literature include Maxim’s and Fouquet’s. The restaurant of Hotel Ritz Paris, opened in 1898, was made famous by its chef, Auguste Escoffier. The 19th century also saw the appearance of new kinds of more modest restaurants, including the bistrot. The brasserie featured beer and was made popular during the 1867 Paris Exposition.^[20]

North America

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United States

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See also: List of the oldest restaurants in the United States

In the United States, it was not until the late 18th century that establishments that provided meals without also providing lodging began to appear in major metropolitan areas in the form of coffee and oyster houses. The actual term “restaurant” did not enter into the common parlance until the following century. Prior to being referred to as “restaurants” these eating establishments assumed regional names such as “eating house” in New York City, “restorator” in Boston, or “victualling house” in other areas. Restaurants were typically located in populous urban areas during the 19th century and grew both in number and sophistication in the mid-century due to a more affluent middle class and to urbanization. The highest concentration of these restaurants were in the West, followed by industrial cities on the Eastern Seaboard.^[42]

When Prohibition went into effect in 1920, restaurants offering fine dining had a hard time making ends meet because they had depended on profits from selling wine and alcoholic beverages. Replacing them were establishments offering simpler, more casual experiences such as cafeterias, roadside restaurants, and diners. When Prohibition ended in the 1930s, luxury restaurants slowly started to appear again as the economy recovered from the Great Depression.^[43]

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed segregation based on race, color, religion, or national origin in all public accommodations engaged in interstate commerce, including restaurants. Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U.S. 294 (1964), was a decision of the US Supreme Court which held that Congress acted within its power under the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution in forbidding racial discrimination in restaurants as this was a burden to interstate commerce.^[44][45]

In the 1970s, there was one restaurant for every 7,500 persons. In 2016, there were 1,000,000 restaurants; one for every 310 people. The average person eats out five to six times weekly. 3.3% of the nation’s workforce is composed of restaurant workers.^[46] According to a Gallup Poll in 2016, nearly 61% of Americans across the country eat out at a restaurant once a week or more, and this percent is only predicted to increase in future years.^[47] Before the COVID-19 pandemic, The National Restaurant Association estimated restaurant sales of $899 billion in 2020. The association now projects that the pandemic will decrease that to $675 billion, a decline of $274 billion over their previous estimate.^[48]

South America

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Brazil

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In Brazil, restaurant varieties mirror the multitude of nationalities that arrived in the country: Japanese, Arab, German, Italian, Portuguese and many more.

Colombia

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The word piquete can be used to refer to a common Colombian type of meal that includes meat, yuca and potatoes, which is a type of meal served at a piqueteadero. The verb form of the word piquete, piquetear, means to participate in binging, liquor drinking, and leisure activities in popular areas or open spaces.^[49]

Peru

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In Peru, many indigenous, Spanish, and Chinese dishes are frequently found. Because of recent immigration from places such as China, and Japan, there are many Chinese and Japanese restaurants around the country, especially in the capital city of Lima.

Guides

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Main article: Restaurant rating

Restaurant guides review restaurants, often ranking them or providing information to guide consumers (type of food, handicap accessibility, facilities, etc.). One of the most famous contemporary guides is the Michelin series of guides which accord one to three stars to restaurants they perceive to be of high culinary merit. Restaurants with stars in the Michelin guide are formal, expensive establishments; in general the more stars awarded, the higher the prices.

The main competitor to the Michelin guide in Europe is the guidebook series published by Gault Millau. Its ratings are on a scale of 1 to 20, with 20 being the highest.

In the United States, the Forbes Travel Guide (previously the Mobil travel guides) and the AAA rate restaurants on a similar 1 to 5 star (Forbes) or diamond (AAA) scale. Three, four, and five star/diamond ratings are roughly equivalent to the Michelin one, two, and three star ratings while one and two star ratings typically indicate more casual places to eat. In 2005, Michelin released a New York City guide, its first for the United States. The popular Zagat Survey compiles individuals’ comments about restaurants but does not pass an “official” critical assessment.

Nearly all major American newspapers employ food critics and publish online dining guides for the cities they serve. Some news sources provide customary reviews of restaurants, while others may provide more of a general listings service.

More recently Internet sites have started up that publish both food critic reviews and popular reviews by the general public.

Economics

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Canada

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There are 86,915 commercial food service units in Canada, or 26.4 units per 10,000 Canadians. By segment, there are:^[50]

• 38,797 full-service restaurants
• 34,629 limited-service restaurants
• 741 contract and social caterers
• 6,749 drinking places

Fully 63% of restaurants in Canada are independent brands. Chain restaurants account for the remaining 37%, and many of these are locally owned and operated franchises.^[51]

European Union

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The EU-27 has an estimated 1.6m businesses involved in ‘accommodation & food services’, more than 75% of which are small and medium enterprises.^[52]

India

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The Indian restaurant industry is highly fragmented with more than 1.5 million outlets of which only around 3000 of them are from the organised segment.^[53] The organised segment includes quick service restaurants; casual dining; cafes; fine dining; and pubs, bars, clubs, and lounges.

Vietnam

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The restaurant industry in Vietnam is one of the important economic sectors, making a significant contribution to the national economy.^[54][55] According to the General Statistics Office of Vietnam, the number of restaurants in Vietnam has increased rapidly from 2000 to 2022.^[56] In 2000, there were about 20,000 restaurants nationwide, but by 2022, this number had increased to over 400,000 restaurants.^[57] The average annual growth rate is about 10%.^[58][59] The restaurant industry in Vietnam has also seen strong growth in recent years. According to a report by SSI Securities Corporation, the revenue of the restaurant industry in Vietnam reached VND610 trillion in 2022, up 16% from 2021.^[60][61] Of that, the out-of-home market accounted for VND333.69 trillion, up 19% from 2021.^[62][63]

United States

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As of 2006, there are approximately 215,000 full-service restaurants in the United States, accounting for $298 billion in sales, and approximately 250,000 limited-service (fast food) restaurants, accounting for $260 billion.^[64] Starting in 2016, Americans spent more on restaurants than groceries.^[65] In October 2017, The New York Times reported there are 620,000 eating and drinking places in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics. They also reported that the number of restaurants are growing almost twice as fast as the population.^[66]

One study of new restaurants in Cleveland, Ohio found that 1 in 4 changed ownership or went out of business after one year, and 6 out of 10 did so after three years. (Not all changes in ownership are indicative of financial failure.)^[67] The three-year failure rate for franchises was nearly the same.^[68]

Restaurants employed 912,100 cooks in 2013, earning an average $9.83 per hour.^[69] The waiting staff numbered 4,438,100 in 2012, earning an average $8.84 per hour.^[70]

Jiaxi Lu of the Washington Post reports in 2014 that, “Americans are spending $683.4 billion a year dining out, and they are also demanding better food quality and greater variety from restaurants to make sure their money is well spent.”^[71]

Dining in restaurants has become increasingly popular, with the proportion of meals consumed outside the home in restaurants or institutions rising from 25% in 1950 to 46% in 1990. This is caused by factors such as the growing numbers of older people, who are often unable or unwilling to cook their meals at home and the growing number of single-parent households. It is also caused by the convenience that restaurants can afford people; the growth of restaurant popularity is also correlated with the growing length of the work day in the US, as well as the growing number of single parent households.^[72] Eating in restaurants has also become more popular with the growth of higher income households. At the same time, less expensive establishments such as fast food establishments can be quite inexpensive, making restaurant eating accessible to many.

Employment

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The restaurant industry in the United States is large and quickly growing, with 10 million workers. 1 in every 12 U.S. residents work in the business, and during the 2008 recession, the industry was an anomaly in that it continued to grow. Restaurants are known for having low wages, which they claim are due to thin profit margins of 4-5%. For comparison, however, Walmart has a 1% profit margin.^[73] As a result of these low wages, restaurant employees suffer from three times the poverty rate as other U.S. workers, and use food stamps twice as much.^[73] Restaurants are the largest employer of people of color, and rank as the second largest employer of immigrants. These workers statistically are concentrated in the lowest paying positions in the restaurant industry. In the restaurant industry, 39% of workers earn minimum wage or lower.^[73]

Regulations

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In many countries, restaurants are subject to inspections by health inspectors to maintain standards for public health, such as maintaining proper hygiene and cleanliness. The most common kind of violations of inspection reports are those concerning the storage of cold food at appropriate temperatures, proper sanitation of equipment, regular hand washing and proper disposal of harmful chemicals. Simple steps can be taken to improve sanitation in restaurants. As sickness is easily spread through touch, restaurants are encouraged to regularly wipe down tables, door knobs and menus.^[74]

Depending on local customs, legislation and the establishment, restaurants may or may not serve alcoholic beverages. Restaurants are often prohibited from selling alcoholic beverages without a meal by alcohol sale laws; such sale is considered to be an activity for bars, which are meant to have more severe restrictions. Some restaurants are licensed to serve alcohol (“fully licensed”), or permit customers to “bring your own booze” (BYO / BYOB). In some places restaurant licenses may restrict service to beer, or wine and beer.^[75]

Occupational hazards

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Food service regulations have historically been built around hygiene and protection of the consumer’s health.^[76] However, restaurant workers face many health hazards such as long hours, low wages, minimal benefits, discrimination, high stress, and poor working conditions.^[76] Along with the COVID-19 pandemic, much attention has been drawn to the prevention of community transmission in restaurants and other public settings.^[77] To reduce airborne disease transmission, the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention recommends reduced dining capacity, face masks, adequate ventilation, physical barrier instalments, disinfection, signage, and flexible leave policies for workers.^[78]