Localization of the restaurant business in Stockholm 1930-2010
In recent years the interest in the restaurant business has grown in Sweden, maybe due to an
increasing consumption of food away from home in urban regions. However the knowledge of the
role of the restaurant business in the Swedish food-system has not been getting a lot of attention in
contemporary social science research. In this paper I will examine the localization of the restaurant
business in Stockholm during the period 1930-2010, and discuss how a changing social-, economic-,
technological- and institutional environment has affected the localization of restaurants.
International research in restaurant localization generally lacks an historical perspective, which limits
the possibilities to make conclusions about the effects of innovations in food-distribution systems on
the localization of restaurants, which will be a main focus in this paper. Geocoded data from trade
journals and telephone directories will be used to perform spatial as well as more traditional
quantitative and qualitative analysis. The scope of the paper touches upon economic geography,
business history, consumption history and the history of trade. The results from this paper will
hopefully contribute to research in restaurant and retail localization as well as research in the
development of the urban food-system in the 20th century.
This paper will be incorporated into my future dissertation project about the restaurant business in
Stockholm during the 20th century. The aim of my dissertation is to get an understanding of if, how
and why the role of the restaurant business in the urban food-system has changed during the 20th
century.