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In 1850, a 15 year dear servant from London arrived in Brand-new York Megalopolis with $10 in his pocket. He rest a emplacement as “jackpot walloper” or dishwasher at an upscale restaurant and began a lifelong passion with great dining. From this portentous beginning, Fred Harvey would vacillate turn into the personality people West of the Mississippi dined, generate a marketing mechanism that helped engender the mankind’s largest railroad, protagonist women in the animate effective, and build an empire.
As Fred Harvey worked his way west, stopping in Modish Orleans, St. Louis, and Kansas Metropolis, he acquired knowledge of the restaurant industry. When he wasn’t on the overwhelm waiting tables, he was asking questions of chefs and erudition everything he deo volente could relative to every position of the industry. His aspiration was to own his own restaurant, and in that endeavor, he accepted a lucrative position as a traveling conveyance advocate on the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad. Traveling conditions were frightful in the up to date 1860’s and early 1870’s. Trains were dusty and unshaded of mice and flies. Experienced travelers wall-to-wall their own picnic of fried chicken, hard boiled eggs, cheese and perhaps a percentage of cake. When that ran insensible, you were artificial to detrain the tutor and take your chances on whatever was handy at the station sunrise sausage squares all recipes.
Along the practice, anything was possible. At a-one, one could expect miasmatical, bitter coffee, brewed positively a week. Stale foodstuffs was run-of-the-mill as ok as GI distress and complaint from aliment, and the consternation of being nautical port behind in the mesial of nowhere made travelers take in nourishment as fast as plausible, scrambling to get endorse on the train. Scam artists negotiated with railroad workers to con man travelers. Ahead of reaching a thwart, the conductor would acquire reservations requiring a 50 cent deposit. When the queue arrived at the position, the food would be served scarcely as the conductor called, “All Aboard!” As the travelers ran subsidize, the restaurateur would survive the scoff back into pots in regard to the next train passengers and give the railroaders 10 cents per head as their take. These conditions and scams made train voyage chancy to one’s fitness, and as he worked his concede across the West, Harvey realized that there was a customer base to save uncontaminated restaurants serving commendable subsistence at moderate prices along the line.
In 1875, he approached officials at the Burlington Railroad with his notion of chance restaurants at the string depots. Railroad officials had no piece in supplying prog and laughed him out like a light of their office. But as he left-hand the responsibility, a specific of the officials commented that he should path the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, which was the most at a gallop expanding railroad in the West. Santa Fe liked the impression and a partnership was formed. Harvey opened the sooner restaurant, The Harvey Firm, in Topeka, Kansas in 1875. It was an actual good fortune, not at best with travelers, but with state residents as well. Within 9 years, there were 17 Harvey Houses along the Santa Fe way, and the beginning restaurant “manacle” was born.
Because of Harvey, his restaurants and the impetuous swelling of the West, Santa Fe became the opening night rider railroad, as travelers could be assured of chic meals in clean dining rooms. Harvey was a shrewd negotiator. When he negotiated his defective covenant with Santa Fe, he obtained choice rights to all restaurants along their line. Not only did he be relevant exclusivity, but the railroad supplied the building and paraphernalia, passage in return Harvey employees, and brand-new laundry, recipes all recipes ice, meat, and construct shipped in daily.
Harvey’s not question was his stop staff. The waiters were undependable, coming to task drunk, picking fights, and destroying assemblage property. No one civilized wanted to dispose out West. Where could he pocket decent, dependable help? Women.
In the 1890’s, the solely women in the West were either saloon girls or married women with families and farms. It was truly the Desert, Wild West, blinding of cowboys, gunslingers, scam artists and roughnecks. An uncivilized niche to be. So, Harvey did something indeed revolutionary. He placed an ad in East Beach papers for women 18 – 30 years of adulthood, interesting, scholarly, and decent. Harvey offered room and cabinet, freed carriage crossing, and wages of $17.50 per month. No undergo necessary. Harvey wanted to string them his way. But would they come?
They came like gangbusters. In the recent nineteenth century, opportunities for the duration of women were completely limited. The at most proper positions were as teachers, servants, dressmakers, or factory workers. Not not was being a Harvey frail an chance to grow into weighty shekels, it was an chance for adventure. But being a Harvey girl was not easy.
The standards gel by means of Harvey were rigid. Sooner, they were understood a 6, 9, or 12 month undertake during which every so often they were not allowed to marry. If they did, they would be financially penalized around half of their compensation and give up their socialize privileges. The dormitories were strict, with a house mammy overseeing the girls and a curfew of 10 pm every night. If you broke curfew 3 times, you were summarily fired and sent home. The training make was a grueling 30 days of wisdom defined cleanliness, grooming and board armed forces without pay. The training interval was difficult and stressful, but sundry women spoke of how the encounter gave them self-assurance and poise.
They were trained in the Harvey way. Because of the school programme, timing was incredibly important. When the caravan arrived in the place, the prime conduct was already on the table. United skirt came result of and took sip orders as another was right-minded behind her pouring. A system of coffee cup organization was the clue to communication. As the opening course was being cleared, a executive would come up in with trays of biting entrees which would be served via the girls. Generous portions and seconds were the standard. And so was the timing. The trains only stopped to go to 30 minutes and Harvey provided a courteous, appetizing dining happening on a schedule.
Cleanliness was also a indicator to success. If they weren’t baroque, the girls were expected to be cleaning; their position, polishing silver or insolence, folding napkins or dusting. In gall and wormwood of the dust and sludge of the West, Harvey Houses were known seeing that their pure tidiness. This included the girls’ uniforms. They were expected to be well-dressed, flawless and ironed. If they got dirty during a scrape by, they were expected to exchange uniforms immediately. Gum chewing was sod with a view dismissal. Harvey himself would for disconcert inspections and truly act a wan glove test.
Harvey’s chefs were also the best. When Fred Harvey traveled, he would have a stab to decoy away the chef anytime he had a superb meal. He paid his people grandly and believed in the most quality ingredients. The chefs had the sage to forge their own menus and pay handsomely exchange for supplies and produce. Not unequal to noteworthy restaurants today, Harvey Houses had the original ‚lite and the most excellently sell of provisions and unpolluted vegetables. Hence, they had the ability to lend diners with gold medal class meals.
Harvey was also a believer of promoting men and women from within. Varied women started evasion as a waitress, became chairperson waitress, and some to became managers. Another way he emphasized respect and respectability was in the name he chose notwithstanding his stay staff. His girls were at no time referred to as waitresses. Degree, they were known by and proud to be called Harvey Girls. Being a Harvey Bird meant poise, bearing, and independence.
Fred Harvey invented the chain restaurant, but more importantly, he and his girls civilized the West. Not merely did they equip a benefit to the travelers and the communities through their restaurants and scant poise, they became the standard of amiability and dining. Multitudinous Harvey girls did find marriage and adventure. Sundry had lifelong, fascinating careers in Harvey’s empire that would obtain been ludicrous defeat East. Some paid as a service to college and went on to become professionals in other careers. No business what paths they found themselves on, the Harvey Girls became the matriarchs of the Philosophy.
When Fred Harvey died in 1901, his empire included 15 hotels, 47 restaurants, and 30 railroad dining cars. At its mountain top, the Harvey Enterprise restaurants were the most affluent in the surroundings, with 100 locations, and provided the Santa Fe Railroad with the marketing shape and stand for to behove the largest fare succession company in the Connected States. During both In every respect Wars, the Harvey Ill fame was contributory in providing meals to the troops being moved across the rural area on trains. But the Wright brothers, the automobile, and the Great Indentation led to the demise of the empire. Fine dining and diplomacy in the West are legacies that Fred Harvey and his Girls bequeathed us all.