There's a well run diner here beside the courts and because they have booths which are a little more private than tables it's always full of lawyers with clients or architects with builders that need space to lay out plans. It's always some professionals utilizing the whole table. Many armed sheriffs too so there is always security. It's run like a Michelin star restaurant the second you are out of water someone is there to refill. You will never come in and not be acknowledged immediately no matter how busy inside the staff have magical training to be able to multitask. There is tight windows for court staff they have to return on time and can't be waiting around trying to pay a bill with no staff in sight.
Beside it is a row of various hyper trendy restaurants that I never see similar patrons inside because they have terrible service and seating. The worst of them requires you to stand in a huge line and prepay then they bring the food out to you. This means watching idiot after idiot fumbling around with their phone or taking forever to find their card to pay while you stand in this line and burn up your lunch time. The clientele here is much different it's mostly tourists so is dead in the off season as no locals go.
I'm always interested in seeing how service industry runs things and it's usually just doing the basics better than everyone else that makes all the difference
Restaurant portion sizes have definitely increased - a lot - since the 1940s-50s. Maybe some minor pullback the last few years but still way larger than back then. A McDonald's Quarter-pounder was considered very large, that was in 1971, many sit-down restaurant burgers today are 5-8 oz.
One other thing to compare is business and health regulations. Compliance with that is certainly more involved and costly today than in 1940 and would account for part of the price.
The problem with this model is that the staff and insurance are essentially fixed costs, so if they sell 500 burgers on Saturday but only 250 on Tuesday, then the insurance cost-per-burger on Tues is double what it is on Sat. Staffing might increase by an extra body or two on the busy days but won't double, so it also has a much higher cost-per-burger on Tues.
I am not a restauranteur, just a customer (and observer) but I dont think many restaurant operators understand this concept either. Many seem to be raising prices to cover higher costs-per-item due to fewer customers to spread the fixed costs over. And then the higher prices turn more people off, now prices need to be raised again. Death spiraling themselves.
Insurance is not a fixed cost. Property and auto insurance are, but liability is a percentage of sales, its fixed for a year then adjusted for next years planned sales.
Unfortunately no mention of prices, so increase in portion sizes might be below inflation; and I suspect the former could be a strategy of compensation for inflation by making it seem less drastic ("yes it costs more, but we also made it bigger!")
One time when I was a kid and my dad and I were in line at Fuddruckers, we overhead someone else in line say "I don't think I could eat a third of a pound, so I'll have to get a half a pound instead. It's still a reference we laugh about over two decades later.
These prices adjusted for today's value seem off though. I'm guessing you'd be hard pressed to find a diner burger for $5.14 anywhere. No, fast food joints are not the same here and not part of this discussion.
Where is the discrepancy? I've never really trusted these "adjusted for inflation" type numbers. I'm not an economist so I have no idea how they are calculated, but they've always just felt off to me. Usually, the numbers are for something esoteric to me, but these are about something I have some familiarity. In my experience, the adjusted burger price is about half the actual cost of today.
A good rule of thumb is to ask "are you paying mostly for human labor or for machine labor"? The former is likely to be more expensive now than it was in the past and the latter is likely to be less expensive, all relative to general inflation prices.
A hot dog / hamburger at a diner is mostly human labor, so you'd expect it to be cheaper in the past.
Labor is typically around 30% of the final cost of prepared food in a restaurant.
Remaining 70% is 30% food costs (which has dropped drastically since the 50s), then 20-30% operations. Profit is whatever is left.
So a diner burger is not mostly labor but I honestly have no idea what these costs were 70 years ago. I'd love to know, seems like something is missing.
Food cost hasn't dropped because you can't even get the food they used to have. You have something that costs less now, but is worth even less than what it costs. And now that Sysco has completed it's eradication of all variety and competition, it doesn't even cost less any more.
Things just don’t really convert neatly because the shape of what people spend money on in life hasn’t evolved uniformly.
Food appears somewhat cheaper, housing much cheaper; but clothing and tools/appliances were much more expensive. Things like student debt and healthcare costs are also interesting to compare and wildly differ over time & place.
Also common for the average middle class person to spend a sizable percentage of their income on travel/vacation today; as I understand it that was quite uncommon before the mid 20th century.
Travel and vacation were much rarer. Many jobs gave only 2 weeks a year of vacation. Many jobs didn't include travel. That's changed with the invention of cheap airlines. Alas, some like SWA have changed their business model.
Well, the $5.14 figure is using the generalized inflation number derived by tracking the price of a specific basket of goods over time, across the entire country. This is a reasonable number to pick.
If you narrow down to Food for all Urban Consumers[1], it shifts to more like $5.24. If you look at "Food away from home in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA, urban wage earners and clerical workers, not seasonally adjusted" that number moves to $7.60. Which confirms your intuition: restaurant prices are way higher than the overall inflation rate predicts.
How do we explain the difference? A variety of ways. Maybe the burgers you get are "better" in some way. Bigger. Better cut of meat. More veggies and toppings. I wasn't around in 1959 and never ate at that specific diner, but it's a real possibility. In fact, this is explicitly called out in the FAQ[3]:
> Specifically, in constructing the "headline" CPI-U and CPI-W, the BLS is not assuming that consumers substitute hamburgers for steak. Substitution is only assumed to occur within basic CPI index categories, such as among types of ground beef in Chicago. Hamburger and steak are in different CPI item categories, so no substitution between them is built into the CPI-U or CPI-W.
There's also some other complicating factors to account for, like coupons and bundling. Like consider Applebee's Really Big Meal Deal deal. "NEW Big Bangin’ Burger with unlimited fries & soda, still just $9.99" Or you can order just the burger for... $15.99[4]. I don't even know how BLS copes with that and am sorta guessing they just take the a la carte prices for consistency, even though that likely overstates price levels consumers actually pay?
There are two diners near me (in NYC) where a burger is $5.25/$5.50 respectively.
(I don’t disagree with you directionally though; I think a nontrivial aspect of this is shifting expectations/norms around what passes for food service. Americans broadly want their food - even diner food - to be upclassed beyond a plain hamburger on a white bread bun.)
The Market Basket used to calculate the BLS CPI changes over time, which can make long range comparisons difficult.
I’ve read of political influence on the market basket to lower the reported rate of inflation by the incumbent party, but I’m not educated enough on the topic to give an opinion on if it happens.
Counter service family joints absolutely in the $5 area for standard ol' boring 1/4/lb. Maybe your definition of diner is different? There's a place by me with diner in the name that has a burger for $4.99.
> Simple inflation adjustment gives us x but the real price is more or less than x. Why is that?
Restaurant economics are a function of ingredient costs and labour. I suspect ingredient costs are close to OP's estimated multiples. But real wages are way up since the 1950s. Anything with a large labour component of costs will have tended to rise faster than inflation, which is an average of goods and services.
(There are specialised metrics if you actually wanted to dig into this question.)
Are you saying the prices listed were just for the ingredients and not the actual cost to the person ordering? They mentioned they saw the price in a photo which suggest it is what the person would be charged. I get that labor costs would cause an increase of raw ingredient price comparisons for total prices. But if you could pay buy a burger for a nickel but now need $10, there is a definite issue in just a "simple" adjustment that suggests you'd only need $5. If the numbers are that far off because the simple needs to be more advanced, what's the point of the simple numbers? Bad data is worse than no data.
That may be true, but I suspect that it’s also hard to compare apples to apples. A burger in 1959 is hard to compare to a burger today. Today’s burger almost certainly has twice as much meat. The invention of (and ubiquitous advertising of) the quarter–pounder means that everyone had to make their burgers larger to match. Sides are larger, drinks are larger, etc, etc.
Inflation is a measure of change in overall purchasing power.
What a specific purchase costs is highly dependant on the inputs, the cost of its labour (which might grow faster or slower than the average wage), and a lot of other factors.
Food is way more expensive today than it was 50 years ago. Airplane tickets are way cheaper. Everyone has a cellphone now, and middle class families have multiple cars, but a trip to the doctor will mean that ~15% of the population will be on the verge of not paying their bills. On the other hand, I have access to ~every major piece of music ever made for ~$15/month, so that's something.
I'm shocked that Tops earned #1 -- they did a remodel a few years ago and started taking reservations (and turning people away during busy periods if they didn't have one), and it's much less of a diner and much more of a restaurant nowadays.
Also, the Bendix Diner is closed, likely permanently, because of fire code violations.
Yup! That's what I was thinking about. In fact I did read this right before posting (though I had found it at https://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/utf-8_history) but only to validate that it had been in a NJ diner, so I missed my confusion of UTF-8 with Unicode.
I took a visitor from Finland to a Jim's location in Austin, and they were in awe. "It's just like from the movies!" (because it was - it has been used several times as a filming location).
If you have a classic diner in your town, take your foreign guests there for the experience.
Something you've got to realize is that this form of culture is something that has gone far beyond America's borders. To the European, it is the very pinnacle of "American Food" -- and 50s/60s themed diners are all over the place.
I'd hazard that there are nearly as many of these restaurants outside the US as there are inside of it. Within the US it's "throwback/nostalgia." Outside the US it's "exotic/kitsch."
Maybe your Finnish friend was remarking that the American version somehow felt more "real"? I don't know... I've been to all sorts, and the ones in Europe are truly very similar.
Your first link is a restaurant in a shopping mall. It has the interior facade of being a diner, and it serves...avocado bites, spicy chicken nachos, kimchi burgers, etc. Not really the same!
Every now and again someone will open a "American Diner" here in London, then have normal opening times and serve basically the same food every pub serves, only with more milkshakes.
Like, no. I want my American-style hash browns, over-easy eggs, and country-fried steak, not the same burger every pub on the street is doing.
And (refillable) filter coffee please, not just espresso drinks.
I think there's a difference between the "squeeze-in" style diners and simply American-style diners like the ones you've posted. A lot of the nostalgia comes from the tiny prefab buildings that barely manage to fit a bar and row of booth seats. Those are the ones from the movies that feel more authentic/classic in person, at least to me.
> Something you've got to realize is that this form of culture is something that has gone far beyond America's borders. To the European, it is the very pinnacle of "American Food" -- and 50s/60s themed diners are all over the place.
Burgers, shakes, pancakes, hot dogs, sometimes BLTs and tuna melts. That sort of thing. In Europe, the "American Diner" is usually the only place that'll serve a normal plate of pancakes. (Everywhere else it's crepes, which are completely different...)
At a diner in America, I'd be unsurprised to see some less "diner" offerings. When I go to my local non-chain diner, I order fettucine alfredo. And the article here has a good picture of a diner advertising "American and Korean food". I think part of the core diner concept is a somewhat athematic menu that is meant to cater to local tastes.
So I'm a little surprised at the idea of a diner that only has classic burgers / shakes / pancakes, but I'd have to admit those are fairly core dishes.
Yes, absolutely. They talk to you the way I expect to be talked to in a diner (lotsa “huns”), the coffee never ends, and sometimes you get to watch UFC live. The food is so easy to eat, too.
Fried chicken, liver and onions, biscuits and gravy - the breakfast options are my jam, but not really the other entrees. You can order dessert regardless though!
Fun to see all that, but curious why I haven't seen any on any of my trips across the UK and Ireland. I even asked some locals and they did not know of any diners anywhere in the country. I would've thought they would've been all over it.
Eddie Rocket's is an Irish chain of American diners. I've eaten there in Dublin. Although at least that location is downtown, and in a bigger building, not a classic diner style building. The inside is very much American Diner themed with vinyl seats, chrome, jukebox controls at the table, and of course the menu of burgers, fries, shakes, etc.
We have an independent one, Herbie's, just down the road from us outside Cambridge. It's pretty good! They have a wide range of imported US fizzy drinks cans too!
Jim's is legit amazing. I end up going very rarely but every time I do it's been a perfect diner experience.
I tried their liver and onions (an aquired taste it turns out I don't really have) and a slice of some meregiune pie and idk, it really transported me, the food is always very real tasting, it's hard to isolate what it is that makes so much food taste manufactured now.
It's like Donns Depot, places that connect us to some wholesome parts in our shared history.
I recently visited my brother in Spokane (we're British, he moved out there a few years ago) and we went to Frank's Diner, still in it's original 1906 railcar. Not my first diner experience, but by far my favourite. Diners are probably my favourite part of American culinary culture.
Also, on my first visit to San Francisco, my mum and I stayed opposite the Pinecrest Diner on the edge of the Tenderloin. Being jetlagged, I woke up at 5am the first morning and went there just as it opened, and having my coffee and huge breakfast as various diner regulars stopped by was just fantastic.
I was really sad to learn recently an old diner I went to often in Venice Beach (Cafe' 50'S, on Lincoln and Lake) burned at some point and the building is just an empty husk now.
> Not all diners look like train cars, but many do because they were fabricated to look that way, […] features a corrugated metal surface
Article would do well to mention that this particular style comes from cars manufactured by Budd Company, who developed the necessary process of welding the stainless steel, first seen on Burlington's “Zephyr”:
Don't know about "classic". But diners used to be my weekly jaunt here in South Bay for almost a decade. Not any more because with age you realize the quantity is too much and my drive to work changed (WFH). There's something special about going to your regular place, seeing the same servers, and them knowing your order before you say it. Probably the same in dinner restaurants but we don't repeat restaurants as often whereas the breakfast / lunch diner was weekly so very familiar (to both sides). Tried to switch places a couple of times just for experience but it never felt the same ... but you can make it work.
When I lived in NJ over 20 years ago, I'd stop by a random diner on the turnpike and order 2 sunny side up and a cup of coffee. Or a Greek place mid-town, a sloppy gyro. It wasn't ambrosia, but it was "perfectly cromulent" and the gritty surroundings added to the taste. I'd do the same in Brooklyn under a random industrial street in Bensonhurst or Sheepshead Bay. That era is just gone. I don't remember seeing an avocado on the menu back then.
Thanks I have thought about that, but somehow it does not work with me. Fresh food is something else (and my assumption is the food is fresh, even if it is just heating/grilling)
My favorite is Holders Country Inn. I used to go to the one in Cupertino before it burnt down. They moved, this was on Deanza long time back, and the one on Wolfe does not have the same old diner feeling, it is for the next gen :) Now I go to the one on Saratoga. And while I do not go as often to other places, I have been to and liked Hobees, then there is one Joe's near Half Moon Bay. We go there as a family when we hike at Cowell Purisima trail nearby. And while I am rambling about places to eat, a recent non-diner discovery has been El Caminito on El Camino Real.
Not OP but I'd recommend the Peninsula Fountain Grill in Palo Alto. Peter's Cafe isn't bad either if you've got time to kill near the Millbrae CalTrain station.
I love diners but they aren't affordable anymore! I want a cheap simple meal and bad coffee. The diners that seem to survive in this market end up up-scaling their menus. : (
I desperately miss the 90's and the middle class we used to have. I also miss basic cheap eats. If someone tried to make an authentic type of diner today, it would immediately become swamped with influencers.
How can I get away from all this? Is there a town somewhere where everyone is over 45 and there is no cell service and a full meal is $5?
Heck I would settle for a small NorCal town that doesn't have gangs or meth.
I miss pre-COVID prices. Our local diner is now $20+ for a simple breakfast (eggs, toast, bacon, coffee/tea) for two people. Pre-COVID is was ~$10 with tip.
Some of the random non-chain diners in the middle of some forested area are super nice and somehow not expensive, like the kind you stop at on the way to a ski trip. I'd think they'd be pricey cause of tourism or difficulty getting supplies.
I'd be hard pressed to find one anywhere near a major urban area thats not in the south. They do exist sporadically in rural areas and along highways in many other areas
I suspect that people want a theoretical cheap, simple meal, but what makes things cheap now is less the simplicity of ingredients, but really lowering the labour effort. So, something like the free breakfast at a cheap motel: bulk egg mixture, sausages that might as well be 50% cardboard pulp, big tubs of factory waffle batter, churned out onto disposable plates. Unless that's exactly what you have in mind, of course!
I’ve got a place by me that does 2 eggs, 2 pancakes (or French toast), 2 sausages and toast for $4 before 8 AM.
And I don’t go there. The spots that get twice (or more) as much for that meal really are quite a bit better. And their coffee is truly foul. Classic diner coffee is fine, but if I’ve had better coffee on an airplane I’m not prone to going back.
Especially today. I used to go to a place where every time I ate, my wife would roll her eyes as I talked about how good the prices were. Even they’re expensive now. Still cheaper, but damn. I don’t eat out nearly as much anymore. It’s sad. Diners are my favorite.
Visited Portland, Maine recently and ate at Becky’s Diner there. What a wonderful place, the food was just what you would expect when walking in (and I mean that in the best way).
It made me lament the lack of old school diners where I live. Sometimes you just need a perfectly cooked breakfast and some solid coffee!
In SF/LA there's Mel's which has been around since 1947. Unfortunately I've had some pretty bad meals there (the one a across from the Metreon). In SoCal there's also Ruby's. It not "classic" (started in 1982), but their original location is on the Balboa Pier which is pretty great (https://maps.app.goo.gl/WoWrLEmGwPbVaumq5)
I did a lot of research in to the evolution of US fast food culture recently, from a technology angle. If anyone would be interested in a run-down I might put together a video starting ~19th century and moving to present.
I think "diner" should be a protected term that has to meet certain criteria, like Kentucky Strait Bourbon.
A diner should only be able to legally call itself a diner if it's open 24/7, has a glass case showing slices of its desserts, offers breakfast, lunch and dinner all day, and if you order spaghetti, your server yells back to the kitchen for "a mile of rope".
I would be frequenting the diner I pass by every day on the way home, but for some reason they think it's good business to stop serving eggs after the morning. To me, a proper diner should keep the griddle on and be serving eggs any time of the day.
Personally, I learned that some diners were mass-produced to look like train cars and fit conveniently on a train car, which I hadn't known.
And if I weren't American and thus very familiar with classic American diners, I expect there would have been a lot that is new and interesting in this article & photo collection.
First, the patrons never put the tables and chairs back where they're supposed to be (even if they try, they get it wrong), so the minimum-wage waitress/busboy is stuck with the job of rearranging furniture, and cleaning up the floors. This is one reason that large groups get the "mandatory gratuity" treatment.
Turnover: every restaurant needs to turn over tables on the regular. If a large group is sort of lingering even after being decimated, and the diner can't reclaim those 4-tops for another party, that's potential lost revenue.
[Hmm, is that how "The Four Tops" got their name?]
Wait staff are often assigned "stations" based on a group of table numbers, so if you shove together enough tables for 12 patrons, you may have a conflict of 2-3 waitresses, but only one "main" can be allocated.
Any table or chair that can be lifted or moved by a patron becomes a potential melee weapon. Diners are occupied by rough crowds and after-club drunks who are trying to sober up. This is also why you're lucky to get a butter knife with your sirloin.
Booths feel more comfy, and offer a better feeling of privacy than tables. A table's more flexible if you have a family and toddlers, a wheelchair, or something, but booths are for lovers to cuddle.
All rational reasons for the configuration, but it is still antisocial. Remember that your reasons are valid all around the world but just USA has this table/chair configuration.
You can fit at least 6 in one of those booths. Get closer with your friends! You can also play musical chairs and lean over the divider (or could before covid)
There's a well run diner here beside the courts and because they have booths which are a little more private than tables it's always full of lawyers with clients or architects with builders that need space to lay out plans. It's always some professionals utilizing the whole table. Many armed sheriffs too so there is always security. It's run like a Michelin star restaurant the second you are out of water someone is there to refill. You will never come in and not be acknowledged immediately no matter how busy inside the staff have magical training to be able to multitask. There is tight windows for court staff they have to return on time and can't be waiting around trying to pay a bill with no staff in sight.
Beside it is a row of various hyper trendy restaurants that I never see similar patrons inside because they have terrible service and seating. The worst of them requires you to stand in a huge line and prepay then they bring the food out to you. This means watching idiot after idiot fumbling around with their phone or taking forever to find their card to pay while you stand in this line and burn up your lunch time. The clientele here is much different it's mostly tourists so is dead in the off season as no locals go.
I'm always interested in seeing how service industry runs things and it's usually just doing the basics better than everyone else that makes all the difference
Im convinced that real estate costs are whats confining restaurants to more confined service. In lower cost areas booths seem to be much more common.
One of my hobbies is looking up old prices in the BLS CPI calculator to see what they would cost today (March 2026 is the latest data.)
The June 1940 photograph along Hwy 1 in Maryland had $0.05 hotdogs ($1.17) and $0.10 burgers ($2.34).
The Feb 1959 photograph from the NYC diner advertises a $0.45 burger ($5.14) and probably a $0.75 steak sandwich ($8.57)
I wonder if portion size is comparable.
We may have inflation in more than one sense: prices have gone up, and perhaps the size of burgers and hot dogs have also increased.
No doubt I can find portion size clues if I look around. Haven't done so yet.
Restaurant portion sizes have definitely increased - a lot - since the 1940s-50s. Maybe some minor pullback the last few years but still way larger than back then. A McDonald's Quarter-pounder was considered very large, that was in 1971, many sit-down restaurant burgers today are 5-8 oz.
One other thing to compare is business and health regulations. Compliance with that is certainly more involved and costly today than in 1940 and would account for part of the price.
I'd love someone to build a tool that shows the price of that burger, say, and breaks it down to the input cost.
The problem with this model is that the staff and insurance are essentially fixed costs, so if they sell 500 burgers on Saturday but only 250 on Tuesday, then the insurance cost-per-burger on Tues is double what it is on Sat. Staffing might increase by an extra body or two on the busy days but won't double, so it also has a much higher cost-per-burger on Tues.
I am not a restauranteur, just a customer (and observer) but I dont think many restaurant operators understand this concept either. Many seem to be raising prices to cover higher costs-per-item due to fewer customers to spread the fixed costs over. And then the higher prices turn more people off, now prices need to be raised again. Death spiraling themselves.
Insurance is not a fixed cost. Property and auto insurance are, but liability is a percentage of sales, its fixed for a year then adjusted for next years planned sales.
"its fixed for a year"
I've heard the rule of thumb in a well run restaurant business is 30/30/30/10:
Right. But how much of that 30% food cost is insurance that the farmer paid?
It's insurance all the way down.
That’s a good rule of thumb, minus the profit margin.
If anything, I think they've probably decreased ("shrinkflation").
Not in the US. See "portion distortion".
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1447051/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8667835/
Edit: hamburgers and hotdogs are pretty standardized though
Unfortunately no mention of prices, so increase in portion sizes might be below inflation; and I suspect the former could be a strategy of compensation for inflation by making it seem less drastic ("yes it costs more, but we also made it bigger!")
The cost of labor has gone up faster than the cost of food ingredients so portion size inflation is a rational response by restaurants.
Everyone knows what a quarter pounder is!
One time when I was a kid and my dad and I were in line at Fuddruckers, we overhead someone else in line say "I don't think I could eat a third of a pound, so I'll have to get a half a pound instead. It's still a reference we laugh about over two decades later.
Or do they? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMNqJQaf08E
Clearly, you've never seen Pulp Fiction.
One neat inflation calculation I stumbled on is that inflation since 1945 to today is ~20x, so, from the film-noir era to today,
5¢ = $1
25¢ = $5
$1 = $20
$5 = $100
These prices adjusted for today's value seem off though. I'm guessing you'd be hard pressed to find a diner burger for $5.14 anywhere. No, fast food joints are not the same here and not part of this discussion.
Where is the discrepancy? I've never really trusted these "adjusted for inflation" type numbers. I'm not an economist so I have no idea how they are calculated, but they've always just felt off to me. Usually, the numbers are for something esoteric to me, but these are about something I have some familiarity. In my experience, the adjusted burger price is about half the actual cost of today.
A good rule of thumb is to ask "are you paying mostly for human labor or for machine labor"? The former is likely to be more expensive now than it was in the past and the latter is likely to be less expensive, all relative to general inflation prices.
A hot dog / hamburger at a diner is mostly human labor, so you'd expect it to be cheaper in the past.
Labor is typically around 30% of the final cost of prepared food in a restaurant.
Remaining 70% is 30% food costs (which has dropped drastically since the 50s), then 20-30% operations. Profit is whatever is left.
So a diner burger is not mostly labor but I honestly have no idea what these costs were 70 years ago. I'd love to know, seems like something is missing.
Likely everything in the chain going up 1-10%.
Food cost hasn't dropped because you can't even get the food they used to have. You have something that costs less now, but is worth even less than what it costs. And now that Sysco has completed it's eradication of all variety and competition, it doesn't even cost less any more.
Much of the 30% food costs is labour further up the chain, and much of the 20-30% operations is also labour.
Things just don’t really convert neatly because the shape of what people spend money on in life hasn’t evolved uniformly.
Food appears somewhat cheaper, housing much cheaper; but clothing and tools/appliances were much more expensive. Things like student debt and healthcare costs are also interesting to compare and wildly differ over time & place.
Also common for the average middle class person to spend a sizable percentage of their income on travel/vacation today; as I understand it that was quite uncommon before the mid 20th century.
Travel and vacation were much rarer. Many jobs gave only 2 weeks a year of vacation. Many jobs didn't include travel. That's changed with the invention of cheap airlines. Alas, some like SWA have changed their business model.
I use "super-baskets" like say US GDP per capita
>The June 1940 photograph along Hwy 1 in Maryland had $0.05 hotdogs ($1.17) and $0.10 burgers ($2.34).
1940 $779 to today's $94K GDP per capita gives $6 for the 1940 $0.05 hotdog.
GDP is not distributed equally by any means, so meaningless as a per capita figure in this context
94K GDP/Capita for US is wildly off it’s around 66K.
IMF 94K
https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPDPC@WEO/USA/DEU
you're probably still in 2020 when it was 66K :) That is the real inflation here.
Well, the $5.14 figure is using the generalized inflation number derived by tracking the price of a specific basket of goods over time, across the entire country. This is a reasonable number to pick.
If you narrow down to Food for all Urban Consumers[1], it shifts to more like $5.24. If you look at "Food away from home in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA, urban wage earners and clerical workers, not seasonally adjusted" that number moves to $7.60. Which confirms your intuition: restaurant prices are way higher than the overall inflation rate predicts.
How do we explain the difference? A variety of ways. Maybe the burgers you get are "better" in some way. Bigger. Better cut of meat. More veggies and toppings. I wasn't around in 1959 and never ate at that specific diner, but it's a real possibility. In fact, this is explicitly called out in the FAQ[3]:
> Specifically, in constructing the "headline" CPI-U and CPI-W, the BLS is not assuming that consumers substitute hamburgers for steak. Substitution is only assumed to occur within basic CPI index categories, such as among types of ground beef in Chicago. Hamburger and steak are in different CPI item categories, so no substitution between them is built into the CPI-U or CPI-W.
There's also some other complicating factors to account for, like coupons and bundling. Like consider Applebee's Really Big Meal Deal deal. "NEW Big Bangin’ Burger with unlimited fries & soda, still just $9.99" Or you can order just the burger for... $15.99[4]. I don't even know how BLS copes with that and am sorta guessing they just take the a la carte prices for consistency, even though that likely overstates price levels consumers actually pay?
[1]: https://data.bls.gov/dataViewer/view;jsessionid=3A241A4C4F0A... [2]: CWURS12ASEFV [3]: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/common-misconceptions-abo... [4]: https://www.applebees.com/en/menu/handcrafted-burgers/big-ba...
Burgers we get today are certainly not better than a 1945 burger in any way.
I wasn't around so I'll have to take your word for it?
Dicks in Seattle is currently only 5.75 for the deluxe; everything else is less! And IMO, very good for the money.
https://ddir.com/menu
Basket goods, basically.
Price of good i x Quantity of good i. Quantity is fixed year to year. So a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk, a TV, etc.
Sum those up across a reasonably representative basket, then compare that sum to the same quantity and new prices in a future year.
sum(P_i_new year x Q_i) / sum(P_i base year x Q_i) - 1 --> change in CPI
Hamburgers might be more expensive, but TVs, toilet paper, and dog kibble might not be.
Agreed completely. Other examples: long-distance telephone minutes, shoes, clothing, air travel... probably all cheaper.
There are two diners near me (in NYC) where a burger is $5.25/$5.50 respectively.
(I don’t disagree with you directionally though; I think a nontrivial aspect of this is shifting expectations/norms around what passes for food service. Americans broadly want their food - even diner food - to be upclassed beyond a plain hamburger on a white bread bun.)
That's the point. Burgers are more expensive (relative to "all" other goods) compared to back then.
Dick's Drive in Seattle (IMHO an expensive city) charges $5.75 for their deluxe burger on Doordash.
https://www.doordash.com/store/dick's-drive-in-seattle-77050...
The Market Basket used to calculate the BLS CPI changes over time, which can make long range comparisons difficult.
I’ve read of political influence on the market basket to lower the reported rate of inflation by the incumbent party, but I’m not educated enough on the topic to give an opinion on if it happens.
Counter service family joints absolutely in the $5 area for standard ol' boring 1/4/lb. Maybe your definition of diner is different? There's a place by me with diner in the name that has a burger for $4.99.
That may be the point. Simple inflation adjustment gives us x but the real price is more or less than x. Why is that?
> Simple inflation adjustment gives us x but the real price is more or less than x. Why is that?
Restaurant economics are a function of ingredient costs and labour. I suspect ingredient costs are close to OP's estimated multiples. But real wages are way up since the 1950s. Anything with a large labour component of costs will have tended to rise faster than inflation, which is an average of goods and services.
(There are specialised metrics if you actually wanted to dig into this question.)
Are you saying the prices listed were just for the ingredients and not the actual cost to the person ordering? They mentioned they saw the price in a photo which suggest it is what the person would be charged. I get that labor costs would cause an increase of raw ingredient price comparisons for total prices. But if you could pay buy a burger for a nickel but now need $10, there is a definite issue in just a "simple" adjustment that suggests you'd only need $5. If the numbers are that far off because the simple needs to be more advanced, what's the point of the simple numbers? Bad data is worse than no data.
> Are you saying the prices listed were just for the ingredients and not the actual cost to the person ordering?
Sorry, no. I'm saying labour is probably a larger fraction of the burger's costs today than it was in the 1950s. (I'd naively guess profits are, too.)
That may be true, but I suspect that it’s also hard to compare apples to apples. A burger in 1959 is hard to compare to a burger today. Today’s burger almost certainly has twice as much meat. The invention of (and ubiquitous advertising of) the quarter–pounder means that everyone had to make their burgers larger to match. Sides are larger, drinks are larger, etc, etc.
But labor costs certainly have gone up too.
This would be a genuinly-interesting bit of analysis for someone to do. (Also do the patty melt!)
Inflation is a measure of change in overall purchasing power.
What a specific purchase costs is highly dependant on the inputs, the cost of its labour (which might grow faster or slower than the average wage), and a lot of other factors.
Food is way more expensive today than it was 50 years ago. Airplane tickets are way cheaper. Everyone has a cellphone now, and middle class families have multiple cars, but a trip to the doctor will mean that ~15% of the population will be on the verge of not paying their bills. On the other hand, I have access to ~every major piece of music ever made for ~$15/month, so that's something.
> $0.05 hotdogs ($1.17)
Costco not that far off.
The Costco dogs are bigger too than the hot dogs from that era. Much bigger.
+$65 too :)
only 65 :)
NJ got snubbed in this submission. We still have tons of independent diners (around 450 according to this article: https://www.npr.org/2024/04/01/1241959475/new-jersey-diners-... )
Yeah, it's weird, NJ is pretty well-known for having iconic Diners. People from many different states will know about NJ diners.
https://www.tastingtable.com/1203923/best-diners-in-new-jers...
I'm shocked that Tops earned #1 -- they did a remodel a few years ago and started taking reservations (and turning people away during busy periods if they didn't have one), and it's much less of a diner and much more of a restaurant nowadays.
Also, the Bendix Diner is closed, likely permanently, because of fire code violations.
And people not even from the states (like me) know about NJ diners because one saw the birth of Unicode :)
> … NJ diners because one saw the birth of Unicode
While it’s possible that Unicode was also conceived at a diner, you’re likely thinking of UTF-8. Unicode was from a decade earlier.
https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/utf-8-history.txt
Yup! That's what I was thinking about. In fact I did read this right before posting (though I had found it at https://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/utf-8_history) but only to validate that it had been in a NJ diner, so I missed my confusion of UTF-8 with Unicode.
I would not make a good fact-checker :(
It's virtually guaranteed that much of the birth of Unix itself took place at NJ diners.
And a number of restaurants that might as well be diners, but they're just a tad fancier.
I'm thinking of the Chatterbox in Ocean City, NJ, for instance. Grace Kelly used to be a waitress.
I took a visitor from Finland to a Jim's location in Austin, and they were in awe. "It's just like from the movies!" (because it was - it has been used several times as a filming location).
If you have a classic diner in your town, take your foreign guests there for the experience.
Looks like they have them in Helsinki:
> https://maps.app.goo.gl/NCiZgiRjGckp6Jzn6
And if that doesn't appeal, there's another one: https://maps.app.goo.gl/e3ZWtXWEKPvDnded8
Something you've got to realize is that this form of culture is something that has gone far beyond America's borders. To the European, it is the very pinnacle of "American Food" -- and 50s/60s themed diners are all over the place.
From Belgrade, Serbia: https://share.google/qGq9vC7tKgf0ISyLz
To out-of-the-way towns in Austria: https://maps.app.goo.gl/bzHfTAobTRkHpvAN9
Germany's chock full of them. (The Germans are also more obsessed with "Cowboys and Indians" and Western US culture than any nation I've ever seen.)
France has multiple "American Diner" chains e.g.: https://www.happydaysdiner.com/
I'd hazard that there are nearly as many of these restaurants outside the US as there are inside of it. Within the US it's "throwback/nostalgia." Outside the US it's "exotic/kitsch."
Maybe your Finnish friend was remarking that the American version somehow felt more "real"? I don't know... I've been to all sorts, and the ones in Europe are truly very similar.
Your first link is a restaurant in a shopping mall. It has the interior facade of being a diner, and it serves...avocado bites, spicy chicken nachos, kimchi burgers, etc. Not really the same!
Vegas has an eiffel tower too...
I was born in Finland and 100% agree.
Diners are something else. In Germany we have "American diners" where you pay for each cup of coffee.
It's not the same.
Every now and again someone will open a "American Diner" here in London, then have normal opening times and serve basically the same food every pub serves, only with more milkshakes.
Like, no. I want my American-style hash browns, over-easy eggs, and country-fried steak, not the same burger every pub on the street is doing.
And (refillable) filter coffee please, not just espresso drinks.
Pancakes, maple syrup, and bacon... Biscuits and gravy...
We had a place like that in Berlin about ten tears ago. Free coffee refills, free tap water on every table. That place sadly did not survive.
Nalu?? God I miss that place. Run by an American couple but they moved away and I’ve not found anything truly comparable since.
Yes Nalu. Me and my American partner still miss that place...
I think there's a difference between the "squeeze-in" style diners and simply American-style diners like the ones you've posted. A lot of the nostalgia comes from the tiny prefab buildings that barely manage to fit a bar and row of booth seats. Those are the ones from the movies that feel more authentic/classic in person, at least to me.
> Something you've got to realize is that this form of culture is something that has gone far beyond America's borders. To the European, it is the very pinnacle of "American Food" -- and 50s/60s themed diners are all over the place.
What do they serve?
Burgers, shakes, pancakes, hot dogs, sometimes BLTs and tuna melts. That sort of thing. In Europe, the "American Diner" is usually the only place that'll serve a normal plate of pancakes. (Everywhere else it's crepes, which are completely different...)
Sounds pretty reasonable.
Within the US, there are at least two major diner chains:
https://www.dennys.com/
https://www.ihop.com/en
At a diner in America, I'd be unsurprised to see some less "diner" offerings. When I go to my local non-chain diner, I order fettucine alfredo. And the article here has a good picture of a diner advertising "American and Korean food". I think part of the core diner concept is a somewhat athematic menu that is meant to cater to local tastes.
With that in mind, Cheesecake Factory might also be thought of as a diner. https://www.thecheesecakefactory.com/menu
So I'm a little surprised at the idea of a diner that only has classic burgers / shakes / pancakes, but I'd have to admit those are fairly core dishes.
I'd say a waffle house is a better chain if you're in the lower Southeast. Much closer to a true diner experience
Yes, absolutely. They talk to you the way I expect to be talked to in a diner (lotsa “huns”), the coffee never ends, and sometimes you get to watch UFC live. The food is so easy to eat, too.
Fried chicken, liver and onions, biscuits and gravy - the breakfast options are my jam, but not really the other entrees. You can order dessert regardless though!
Do they serve hashbrowns?
Yes, in fact. I was at the one in Belgrade about a year ago, and their hashbrowns are terrific. It's mostly a burger and pancake joint, though.
Fun to see all that, but curious why I haven't seen any on any of my trips across the UK and Ireland. I even asked some locals and they did not know of any diners anywhere in the country. I would've thought they would've been all over it.
Eddie Rocket's is an Irish chain of American diners. I've eaten there in Dublin. Although at least that location is downtown, and in a bigger building, not a classic diner style building. The inside is very much American Diner themed with vinyl seats, chrome, jukebox controls at the table, and of course the menu of burgers, fries, shakes, etc.
https://www.eddierockets.ie
It's reassuring in a vague, indescribable way to know that while the Irish are exporting Irish pubs to the USA, we're exporting diners to Ireland.
Like, maybe they're passing each other somewhere over the Atlantic, and giving each other a friendly nod as they go along their respective journeys.
Today, you're one of the Lucky 10,000 to discover Ireland's thriving Country Music scene!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gl%C3%B3r_T%C3%ADre
https://tg4.ie/en/search/play/?pid=6387807695112&title=Gl%C3...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philomena_Begley
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margo_(singer)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_O%27Donnell
(The Irish have been performing Country Music for more than 50 years)
The UK has these "American Diner" chains too: https://okdiners.com/
I thought that the "Elvis Diner" was practically a meme in the UK, actually. Hah.
Interesting. In my mind (west coast US) our diners are more Nighthawks than Happy Days. Smoking or non-smoking?
We have an independent one, Herbie's, just down the road from us outside Cambridge. It's pretty good! They have a wide range of imported US fizzy drinks cans too!
Have been to both. Apart from the decor there is absolutely nothing diner about it. The first one especially has terrible food.
Jim's is legit amazing. I end up going very rarely but every time I do it's been a perfect diner experience.
I tried their liver and onions (an aquired taste it turns out I don't really have) and a slice of some meregiune pie and idk, it really transported me, the food is always very real tasting, it's hard to isolate what it is that makes so much food taste manufactured now.
It's like Donns Depot, places that connect us to some wholesome parts in our shared history.
I've never had a bad meal there. My favorites are the pancakes and the chicken-fried steak.
I recently visited my brother in Spokane (we're British, he moved out there a few years ago) and we went to Frank's Diner, still in it's original 1906 railcar. Not my first diner experience, but by far my favourite. Diners are probably my favourite part of American culinary culture.
Also, on my first visit to San Francisco, my mum and I stayed opposite the Pinecrest Diner on the edge of the Tenderloin. Being jetlagged, I woke up at 5am the first morning and went there just as it opened, and having my coffee and huge breakfast as various diner regulars stopped by was just fantastic.
I was really sad to learn recently an old diner I went to often in Venice Beach (Cafe' 50'S, on Lincoln and Lake) burned at some point and the building is just an empty husk now.
That place was great cheap food.
> Not all diners look like train cars, but many do because they were fabricated to look that way, […] features a corrugated metal surface
Article would do well to mention that this particular style comes from cars manufactured by Budd Company, who developed the necessary process of welding the stainless steel, first seen on Burlington's “Zephyr”:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_welding
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Zephyr
Don't know about "classic". But diners used to be my weekly jaunt here in South Bay for almost a decade. Not any more because with age you realize the quantity is too much and my drive to work changed (WFH). There's something special about going to your regular place, seeing the same servers, and them knowing your order before you say it. Probably the same in dinner restaurants but we don't repeat restaurants as often whereas the breakfast / lunch diner was weekly so very familiar (to both sides). Tried to switch places a couple of times just for experience but it never felt the same ... but you can make it work.
When I lived in NJ over 20 years ago, I'd stop by a random diner on the turnpike and order 2 sunny side up and a cup of coffee. Or a Greek place mid-town, a sloppy gyro. It wasn't ambrosia, but it was "perfectly cromulent" and the gritty surroundings added to the taste. I'd do the same in Brooklyn under a random industrial street in Bensonhurst or Sheepshead Bay. That era is just gone. I don't remember seeing an avocado on the menu back then.
>...the quantity is too much...
Leftovers for a later meal. Unless there is something about work involved and not having a place to put the leftovers in the fridge.
Thanks I have thought about that, but somehow it does not work with me. Fresh food is something else (and my assumption is the food is fresh, even if it is just heating/grilling)
which one(s) in South Bay? any recommendations?
My favorite is Holders Country Inn. I used to go to the one in Cupertino before it burnt down. They moved, this was on Deanza long time back, and the one on Wolfe does not have the same old diner feeling, it is for the next gen :) Now I go to the one on Saratoga. And while I do not go as often to other places, I have been to and liked Hobees, then there is one Joe's near Half Moon Bay. We go there as a family when we hike at Cowell Purisima trail nearby. And while I am rambling about places to eat, a recent non-diner discovery has been El Caminito on El Camino Real.
Thanks, haven’t been to a diner in ages but have been meaning to go try out for old time time’s sake.
Used to go to Peppermill in Santa Clara, and Dennys many years ago.
Thanks for suggesting El Caminito, looks good. Our usual Mexican for many years has been La Milpa in Milpitas, haven’t found a good equivalent yet.
I wouldn't call it a diner but if you like these other places you might like Los Gatos Cafe
Lol thanks I will check it out, and I guess I was using the word diner way too loose - if it serves burgers, eggs and coffee, it hit my benchmark.
Not OP but I'd recommend the Peninsula Fountain Grill in Palo Alto. Peter's Cafe isn't bad either if you've got time to kill near the Millbrae CalTrain station.
I used to love Alice's Restaurant in 2014-2019, but moved away, so idk what it's like today.
I love diners but they aren't affordable anymore! I want a cheap simple meal and bad coffee. The diners that seem to survive in this market end up up-scaling their menus. : (
I desperately miss the 90's and the middle class we used to have. I also miss basic cheap eats. If someone tried to make an authentic type of diner today, it would immediately become swamped with influencers.
How can I get away from all this? Is there a town somewhere where everyone is over 45 and there is no cell service and a full meal is $5?
Heck I would settle for a small NorCal town that doesn't have gangs or meth.
> Is there a town somewhere where everyone is over 45 and there is no cell service and a full meal is $5?
Yes, but they're suspicious of outsiders and newcomers. They're afraid the newbies will vote away everything that makes that town feel like home.
I miss pre-COVID prices. Our local diner is now $20+ for a simple breakfast (eggs, toast, bacon, coffee/tea) for two people. Pre-COVID is was ~$10 with tip.
Your imagined past was enabled on the back of exploitation poor people and minorities.
That hasn’t gone away, so I don’t think that’s the difference that makes a difference here.
Tastes have changed and I think people have been highly exposed to tastier dishes.
There's also the "Denny's" problem. Classic diners tend to be pretty much the same as a Denny's in terms of quality.
Yeah, chain restaurants have dominated most of the market everywhere out through and including the exurbs.
But if you go to somewhere deeply rural you can still find cheap crappy diner food.
Some of the random non-chain diners in the middle of some forested area are super nice and somehow not expensive, like the kind you stop at on the way to a ski trip. I'd think they'd be pricey cause of tourism or difficulty getting supplies.
Waffle House is your jam.
Only in the southern US unfortunately
WH is all over the place in the US. I live in CO and go regularly. I’m 90% sure I saw one when I was in Utah.
I'd be hard pressed to find one anywhere near a major urban area thats not in the south. They do exist sporadically in rural areas and along highways in many other areas
You guys are two ends of the spectrum; WH exists in more than just the south, but it still doesn’t show up nationwide - e.g no PNW locations.
TIL! I’ve been to PNW, but I was too busy eating clam chowdah to notice.
Bonus, there's a solid chance of being ringside to an epic local MMA fight.
I suspect that people want a theoretical cheap, simple meal, but what makes things cheap now is less the simplicity of ingredients, but really lowering the labour effort. So, something like the free breakfast at a cheap motel: bulk egg mixture, sausages that might as well be 50% cardboard pulp, big tubs of factory waffle batter, churned out onto disposable plates. Unless that's exactly what you have in mind, of course!
I’ve got a place by me that does 2 eggs, 2 pancakes (or French toast), 2 sausages and toast for $4 before 8 AM.
And I don’t go there. The spots that get twice (or more) as much for that meal really are quite a bit better. And their coffee is truly foul. Classic diner coffee is fine, but if I’ve had better coffee on an airplane I’m not prone to going back.
IHOP and Denny's fit that. They're quiet about the value menu.
Especially today. I used to go to a place where every time I ate, my wife would roll her eyes as I talked about how good the prices were. Even they’re expensive now. Still cheaper, but damn. I don’t eat out nearly as much anymore. It’s sad. Diners are my favorite.
Visited Portland, Maine recently and ate at Becky’s Diner there. What a wonderful place, the food was just what you would expect when walking in (and I mean that in the best way).
It made me lament the lack of old school diners where I live. Sometimes you just need a perfectly cooked breakfast and some solid coffee!
I love diners. The late nights of undergrad was spent in diner booths, with textbooks and laptops splayed, and cups of coffee that never ran dry.
New Mexico has lots of great dinners scattered all around the state. I'm in Massachusetts now and enjoying those I can find here.
I sometimes forget ford used to make cars more than trucks.
the prices in that article shows the diners were cheap enough for a working man to eat daily there - a 10c dinner in 1940 - would be $2.38 today.
you can't find a hot meal for $2.30 anywhere in the states or Western Europe today.
You can buy kits!
http://www.dinermite.com/photos.html
This is incredible. For only $380k I can have someone ship me a diner.
It'll pay for itself!
In SF/LA there's Mel's which has been around since 1947. Unfortunately I've had some pretty bad meals there (the one a across from the Metreon). In SoCal there's also Ruby's. It not "classic" (started in 1982), but their original location is on the Balboa Pier which is pretty great (https://maps.app.goo.gl/WoWrLEmGwPbVaumq5)
What about the one in the park over on the shore by Sunset, did it reopen?
If you want to dine in an actual railcar, visit the Old Spaghetti Factory!
https://www.osf.com/
https://franksdiners.com
just looking at the video makes me hungry.
It feels weird that you sit on a counter and face the staff while you eat or drink (while do their job).
Worcester, MA has several classic old diners still. Some used to be manufactured there, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_Lunch_Car_Company
I did a lot of research in to the evolution of US fast food culture recently, from a technology angle. If anyone would be interested in a run-down I might put together a video starting ~19th century and moving to present.
I think "diner" should be a protected term that has to meet certain criteria, like Kentucky Strait Bourbon.
A diner should only be able to legally call itself a diner if it's open 24/7, has a glass case showing slices of its desserts, offers breakfast, lunch and dinner all day, and if you order spaghetti, your server yells back to the kitchen for "a mile of rope".
I like reading about these classic food cultures. It's fascinating how some traditions stay the same for decades
Oh nice. I remember miss bellows falls from growing up!
yeah - growing up in Claremont NH, right across the connecticut river from Vermont, it was cool to see a few 'local' places in the article
The lack and white photo “row of truck drivers sitting at a Maryland diner counter” has an amazing sense of place.
Not a single picture of a diner in Worcester, MA? For shame.
Probably gave up when the speech to text kept butchering the spelling.
No mention of New Jersey, sacrilege.
if you ever visit Austin do try Kerby Lane Cafe/Magnolia Cafe.
There's few places I've left a 1 star review, and sadly, Kerby was it.
[dead]
I would be frequenting the diner I pass by every day on the way home, but for some reason they think it's good business to stop serving eggs after the morning. To me, a proper diner should keep the griddle on and be serving eggs any time of the day.
Why is this boosted to the front page?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
My intellectual curiosity was gratified, hence I think it's good.
[flagged]
Personally, I learned that some diners were mass-produced to look like train cars and fit conveniently on a train car, which I hadn't known.
And if I weren't American and thus very familiar with classic American diners, I expect there would have been a lot that is new and interesting in this article & photo collection.
Can nothing seriously be done about this kind of obvious bot account?
There's so many of them on HN these days.
Idk, this one might just be a real angry person. The bot is the other one saying some generic paragraph about American diners.
[flagged]
Because some people here found it interesting enough to hit the upvote button.
It's lunchtime
The photos does not display what I hate the most: the fixed 2 double seats tables. It is completely antisocial.
You can't arrive with your group of six friends and "join tables" so everybody can seat together. What Americans have against a big group of friends?
Couple of things.
First, the patrons never put the tables and chairs back where they're supposed to be (even if they try, they get it wrong), so the minimum-wage waitress/busboy is stuck with the job of rearranging furniture, and cleaning up the floors. This is one reason that large groups get the "mandatory gratuity" treatment.
Turnover: every restaurant needs to turn over tables on the regular. If a large group is sort of lingering even after being decimated, and the diner can't reclaim those 4-tops for another party, that's potential lost revenue.
[Hmm, is that how "The Four Tops" got their name?]
Wait staff are often assigned "stations" based on a group of table numbers, so if you shove together enough tables for 12 patrons, you may have a conflict of 2-3 waitresses, but only one "main" can be allocated.
Any table or chair that can be lifted or moved by a patron becomes a potential melee weapon. Diners are occupied by rough crowds and after-club drunks who are trying to sober up. This is also why you're lucky to get a butter knife with your sirloin.
Booths feel more comfy, and offer a better feeling of privacy than tables. A table's more flexible if you have a family and toddlers, a wheelchair, or something, but booths are for lovers to cuddle.
All rational reasons for the configuration, but it is still antisocial. Remember that your reasons are valid all around the world but just USA has this table/chair configuration.
The weapon reason is really funny.
Doesn't fit in a rail car, at least not when paired with a walkway, and a counter/bar, and a kitchen?
You can fit at least 6 in one of those booths. Get closer with your friends! You can also play musical chairs and lean over the divider (or could before covid)
Their absence supports that it's not an omnipresent American pattern after all.