Childs Restaurants was one of the first national dining chains in the United States and Canada, having peaked in the 1920s and 1930s with about 125 locations in dozens of markets, serving over 50,000,000 meals a year, with over $37 million in assets at the time.

[1] The brothers' concept for the establishment was to provide economical meals to the working class, quickly, and with an unusually high emphasis – for the period – on cleanliness and hygiene.

[4] In 1898, the brothers, confident and ready for more aggressive expansion, combined with several investors to legally incorporate the Childs Unique Dairy Company, with capitalization of $1,000,000, and the stated intent to "establish and operate restaurants in New York City and elsewhere".

[5] It was widely speculated, and finally confirmed in 1912, that several officers of the Standard Oil Company were investors in the restaurant chain, including Henry Morgan Tilford and Charles Sweeney.

In 1906, fifteen similar restaurants (called "green doors") which were independently owned and operated by Ellsworth Childs (brother of Samuel and William) were consolidated into the company.

[12] Around 1927, William Childs began to impose his vegetarian dietary preferences on the chain's menu, which generated significant backlash from customers and his fellow managers and investors.

At the following board meeting on January 30, 1929, William attempted to turn the tide by firing several executive officers and company directors, replacing them with family members.

[14][16] A proxy battle ensued, but on March 7, 1929, William and his supporters lost the fight to retain control of the company he co-founded 40 years before, by then valued around $37,000,000.

Nonetheless, it managed to acquire the candy and ice cream maker Louis Sherry Inc., and announced several significant operational changes, including "returning to its old custom of flap-jack making in the windows" and the introduction of prepared meats, to eliminate the need for butchering on-site.

[31] One design critique from 1924 declared that Childs "stands as a milestone marking an enormous advance in the taste of what we are pleased to describe as the 'common people' of America".

In 1929, William Childs purchased a historic property near his home in Franklin Corners, New Jersey and converted it – without making any structural modifications – to an inn and restaurant.

The song "By the Beautiful Sea", written by Harry Carroll and Harold R. Atteridge in 1914, includes the lines: Joe was quite a sport on a Sunday, Though he would eat at Childs on a Monday[126] The song "Manhattan", written by Rodgers and Hart in 1925 for the musical revue Garrick Gaieties, and famously recorded by Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald and others, includes the lines: We'll go to Yonkers – where true love conquers – in the wilds, And starve together dear – in Childs The 1920 novel Main Street, written by Sinclair Lewis, talks of the main characters eating at a Childs restaurant to economize while traveling to Minneapolis.

[127] White wrote a number of other short stories and poems that referenced or featured Childs, likely due to the daily presence of the establishments in his life during the late 1920s and 1930s in New York City.

The opening montage sequence of Neil Simon and Gene Saks' 1968 film The Odd Couple includes a shot of a neon-signed Childs restaurant in New York City, one of several locations Felix Ungar (Jack Lemmon) visits before checking into a fleabag hotel to try to commit suicide.

Main character Travis Bickle takes Betsy, played by Cybill Shepard, to Child's restaurant in Columbus Circle on their first date.

Playwright David Belasco incorporated a complete reproduction of a Childs Restaurant in his 1912 production of Alice Bradley's The Governor's Lady.

The 1936 play You Can't Take It with You by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart features the character The Grand Duchess Olga Katrina, a displaced cousin of the Czar, who works as a waitress at Childs.

Composer George Antheil, who spent part of the 1920s in New York City, selected a Childs Restaurant as one of several iconic American locations (along with the Bowery and the Brooklyn Bridge) for the setting of his 1930 opera Transatlantic.