History of Food Service Industry
• The history of foodservice is closely associated
with travel.
• Throughout history, merchants have traveled
extensively to trade with other nations or
tribes.
• There were also the religious pilgrimages to
places of worship.
• Invariably, in the different places of
destination, food and lodging have been
provided to the travelers.
• In the Middle Ages, the beginnings of
foodservice was evident in the dining rooms
of posting houses of the Romans, as well as
the inns and taverns of the English people.
• The Canterbury Inn had a kitchen measuring
45 feet in diameter , which provides food not
only for the monks but also for the pilgrims
who came to the abbey to worship.
• In the Royal Households of England where
numerous guests (150 to 200) were received
daily, foodservice became a necessity.
• Thus, a systematic recording of its expenses
was made and compiled in the
Northumberland Household Book which was
considered the first known record book of
scientific food cost accounting.
• Also in England during the industrial revolution, a
certain Robert Owen provided meals at nominal
prices in an effort to improve the working
conditions of the workers in his mill.
• Owen’s feeding program was so successful that it
spread throughout the civilized world. Hence, he
was been known as the father of modern
industrial catering.
Robert Owen
• An English nurse, Florence
Nightingale, pioneered in
hospital foodservice during the
Crimean War.
Florence Nightingale
Alexis Soyer
• She was so efficient in
organizing and managing the
meals for the patients that she
has been called the first
hospital dietitian in the modern
sense. A noted chef named
Alexis Soyer helped her in the
establishment of a hospital diet
kitchen.
• The formal school feeding program was
started in England by an Englishman named
Victor Hugo. The American school feeding
programs were patterned after Hugo’s
program.
• As opportunities for travel increased, so did the
commercial foodservice grow. In the 16th century,
coffeehouses were established in the United States
of America. In Paris, France, however, it was only
sometime in 1765 that the first restaurant was
opened by a Frenchman named Boulanger.
Greece and Rome
In Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome,
thermopolia (singular thermopolium) were
small restaurant-bars that offered food and
drinks to customers.
A typical thermopolium had little L-shaped
counters in which large storage vessels were
sunk, which would contain either hot or cold
food.
Their popularity was linked
to the lack of kitchens in
many dwellings and the
ease with which people
could purchase prepared
foods. Furthermore,
eating out was considered
a very important aspect
of socializing.
• In Pompeii, 158 thermopolia with a service
counter have been identified across the whole
town area. They were concentrated along the
main axis of the town and the public spaces
where they were frequented by the locals.
Food catering establishment which may be
described as restaurant were known since the
12th century in Hangzhou, a cultural, political
and economic center during China’s Song
Dynasty.
Emperor Taizu of Song
Map of Hangzhou, China
Ma Yu Ching’s Bucket Chicken House, was
established in Kaifeng, China, is considered
the world’s oldest operating restaurant, first
opening in 1153 AD during the Jing Dynasty,
and still serving up meals today.
Probably growing out
of the tea houses and
taverns that catered
to travelers.
Hangzhou’s restaurants blossomed into an
industry catering to locals as well. Restaurants
catered to different styles of cuisine, price
brackets, and religious requirements.
In the West, even when inns and taverns were
known from antiquity, these were
establishments aimed at travelers, and in
general locals would rarely eat there.
Restaurants, as businesses dedicated to the
serving of food, and where specific dishes are
ordered by the guest and generally prepared
according to this order emerged only in the
18th century
Since there are no sufficient documents to prove
that the Ma Yu Ching’s Bucket Chicken House
is the oldest restaurant in the world, the
official title was given by Guinness Book
Records to Sobrino de Botín.
This restaurant is located
in Calle de los
Cuchilleros 17, 28005 in
Madrid, Spain.
It was established in 1725
and recognized as the
world’s oldest eatery.
• Part of the restaurant’s folklore has it that a
young Francisco Goya worked there as a
waiter whilst he was waiting to get a place at
Madrid’s.
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828) is regarded
as the most important Spanish artist of the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries.
Source:
http://www.metmuseum.org/TOAH/HD/goya/hd_goya.htm
• Specialty of the Sobrino is cochinillo asado or
roast suckling pig. Other signature dishes
include sopa de ajo, an egg, poached in
chicken broth, and laced with sherry and
garlic, and the favorite pick-me-up with
Madrileño revelers.
The term restaurant (from the French restaurer)
first appeared in the 16th century, meaning “a
food which restores” and referred specifically
to a rich highly flavored soup.
It was first applied to
an eating
establishment at
around 1765
founded by a
Parisian soup-seller
named Boulanger.
The first restaurant in the form that became
standard (customers sitting down with
individual portions at individual tables,
selecting food from menus, during fixed
opening hours) was the Grand Taverne de
Londres (the Great Tavern of London),
• founded in Paris in 1782 by
a man named Antoine
Beauvilliers, a leading
culinary writer and
gastronomic authority who
achieved a reputation as a
successful restaurateur and
later wrote what became a
standard cook book L’ Art
du cuisiner.
Antoine Beauvilliers
• Restaurants became commonplace in French after the French
Revolution broke up catering guilds and forced the aristocracy
to flee, leaving a retinue of servants with the skills to cook
excellent food: while at the same time numerous provincials
arrived in Paris with no family to cook for them. Restaurants
were the means by which these two could be brought
together and the French tradition of dining out was born.
• In this period the star chef, George Auguste
Escoffier, often credited with founding class
French cuisine, flourished, becoming known as
the “Cook of Kings and the Kings of Cooks”.
• Georges Auguste Escoffier was a very
fascinating figure with panache (puh-nash) to
match. (Panache - a grand or flamboyant
manner; verve; style; flair)
• Born in the middle of the 19th century,
Escoffier’s life spanned almost 90 years
though his influence to the cooking world has
remained timeless.
• As a French chef, restaurateur, and culinary
writer who created the methods of what we
now consider traditional French cuisine,
Escoffier notably created the hierarchy of the
kitchen or better known as the “Brigade de
Cuisine. “
• George Auguste Escofier, was a french chef,
restauratuer and culinary writer who
popularized and updated traditional French
cooking methods.
• He is a near-legendary figure among chefs and
gourmets, and was one of the most important
leaders in the development of modern French
cuisine.
• Much of Escoffier’s technique was based on that of
Antoine Careme, the founder of French Grande
Cuisine, but Escoffier’s contributions to cooking was
to elevate it to the status of a respected profession,
and to introduce discipline and sobriety where the
brigade system, with each section run by a chef de
partie.
A chef de partie is a cook who
is in charge of one area of a
restaurant's kitchen.
Antoine Careme
• He also replaced the practice of service ä la
francaise ( serving all dishes at once) with
service ä la russe (serving each dish in the
order printed on the menu).
• Table d’hote menu - menu offering a complete
meal with limited choices at a fixed price
• A la carte menu - A la carte it means that all
the items on the menu are separate, meaning
you have to order it to have it.
• A leading restaurant of the Napoleonic era
was the very which was lavishly decorated,
and boasted a menu with extensive choices of
soups, fish and meat dishes, and scores of side
dishes.
• Although absorbed by a neighboring business
in 1869, the resulting establishment Le Grand
Vefour is still in business in the 21sth century.
• The most illustrious of all those restaurants in
Paris in the 19th century was the Café Anglais
(the “English Coffee Shop”) on the Boulevard
de Italiens, showing for a second time the high
regard that Parisians evidently had for
London, England.
• Restaurants then spread rapidly across the
world, with the first in the United States
(Julien’s Restarator) opening in Boston in
1794.
• Most however continued on the standard
approach (service a la francaise) of providing a
shared meal on the table to which customers
would then help themselves, something which
encouraged them to eat rather quickly.
• The modern formal style of dining, where
customers are given a plate with the food
already arranged on it, is known as Service a
la russe, as it is said to have been introduced
to France by the Russian Prince Kurakin in the
1810s, from where it spread rapidly to
England and beyond.
The Beginnings of Foodservice
in the Philippines
• In the Philippines, foodservice existed as early
as the time of the barangay system.
• The datu had to feed his people including the
slaves or alipin. Hence, it required the service
of food in great quantities.
• The Chinese were the forerunners of the developmental
rudiments of the commercial type of foodservice.
• The earliest recorded date of Chinese-Philippine trade is 982
A.D. Traders with valuable merchandise came to Luzon from
Fookien, Southern China. Though the Chinese peddlers, the
Filipinos came to know of varieties in dining pleasures.
• During the Spanish period, Chinese food
became popular that they were no longer
peddled by ambulant vendors but were served
under more permanent structures.
• A letter of a civil servant to King Philip II of
Spain reported that the Chinese Community,
“the Parian” had many eating houses where
the Sangley’s (Chinese) and the natives
partook of their meals.
• The natives set up eating places usually at the back
of public markets. Here, portions of kari-kari (an
elaborate stew) could be readily bought at cheap
prices.
• Thus, such eating places came to be known as
karihan. No explanation, however, could be obtained
from history books why the Spaniards later called it
as carinderia.
• On the other hand, the Chinese operated
eateries which came to be known as
panciterias since they usually serve pancit
(noodles).
• The Americans modified the foodservice system when they
introduced the concept of cafeteria. It started with the public
school feeding program in 1906 when attempts were made to
remedy the poor nutrition of children.
• The American teachers put up cafeterias to demonstrate the
value of proper diet to the students. The cafeteria was a
laboratory of the home economics courses which also served
meals to both students and the faculty.
• The cafeteria concept was not limited to the
schools. Other types of foodservice such as
the commercial fast food centers, in-plant
feedings, and dining rooms in healthcare
institutions picked up the concept of selfservice.
• From then on, many concepts and practices have
been introduced by other countries which have
contributed to the development of foodservice in the
Philippines. Changes have taken place with
increasing speed due to many factors like modern
technology; new legislations; and urbanization.
• It is expected that with the onset of
globalization and the effect of modern
information technology in the Philippine
foodservice industry will become more
diversified and definitely grow in magnitude.
End of Presentation