Free lunch

In the United States, the financial hardships of the Great Depression marked the virtual end of the free lunch for reasons of economy and it never really returned.

[citation needed] In contemporary times, many taverns and lounges offer free food during Happy Hour, along with low-priced drinks and other menu items.

As described by this reporter, A free lunch-counter is a great leveler of classes, and when a man takes up a position before one of them he must give up all hope of appearing either dignified or consequential.

I noticed that the price charged for every kind of liquor was fifteen cents, punches and cobblers costing no more than a glass of ale.The repast included "immense dishes of butter", "large baskets of bread", "a monster silver boiler filled with a most excellent oyster soup", "a round of beef that must have weighed at least forty pounds", "vessels filled with potatoes, stewed mutton, stewed tomatoes, and macaroni à la Français".

The proprietor said the patrons included "at least a dozen old fellows who come here every day, take one fifteen cent drink, eat a dinner which would have cost them $1 in a restaurant, and then complain that the beef is tough or the potatoes watery".

An 1886 story on the fading of the days of the 1849 California Gold Rush calls the free lunch fiend the "only landmark of the past".

"[5] Rudyard Kipling, writing in 1891, noted how he came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter.

An 1874 history of the movement writes: In the cities, there are prominent rooms on fashionable streets that hold out the sign "Free Lunch."

Does it mean that some [philanthropist] ... has gone systematically to work setting out tables ... placing about them a score of the most beautiful and winning young ladies ... hiring a band of music?

Stead cites a newspaper's estimate that the saloon keepers fed 60,000 people a day and that this represented a contribution of about $18,000 a week toward the relief of the destitute in Chicago.