Edit: hamburgers and hotdogs are pretty standardized though
userbinator 25 minutes ago [-]
Unfortunately no mention of prices, so increase in portion sizes might be below inflation; and I suspect the former could be a strategy of compensation for inflation by making it seem less drastic ("yes it costs more, but we also made it bigger!")
kulahan 1 hours ago [-]
Everyone knows what a quarter pounder is!
2 hours ago [-]
dylan604 5 hours ago [-]
These prices adjusted for today's value seem off though. I'm guessing you'd be hard pressed to find a diner burger for $5.14 anywhere. No, fast food joints are not the same here and not part of this discussion.
Where is the discrepancy? I've never really trusted these "adjusted for inflation" type numbers. I'm not an economist so I have no idea how they are calculated, but they've always just felt off to me. Usually, the numbers are for something esoteric to me, but these are about something I have some familiarity. In my experience, the adjusted burger price is about half the actual cost of today.
bryanlarsen 2 hours ago [-]
A good rule of thumb is to ask "are you paying mostly for human labor or for machine labor"? The former is likely to be more expensive now than it was in the past and the latter is likely to be less expensive, all relative to general inflation prices.
A hot dog / hamburger at a diner is mostly human labor, so you'd expect it to be cheaper in the past.
gyomu 4 hours ago [-]
Things just don’t really convert neatly because the shape of what people spend money on in life hasn’t evolved uniformly.
Food appears somewhat cheaper, housing much cheaper; but clothing and tools/appliances were much more expensive. Things like student debt and healthcare costs are also interesting to compare and wildly differ over time & place.
Also common for the average middle class person to spend a sizable percentage of their income on travel/vacation today; as I understand it that was quite uncommon before the mid 20th century.
trhway 2 hours ago [-]
I use "super-baskets" like say US GDP per capita
>The June 1940 photograph along Hwy 1 in Maryland had $0.05 hotdogs ($1.17) and $0.10 burgers ($2.34).
1940 $779 to today's $94K GDP per capita gives $6 for the 1940 $0.05 hotdog.
2 hours ago [-]
jldugger 3 hours ago [-]
Well, the $5.14 figure is using the generalized inflation number derived by tracking the price of a specific basket of goods over time, across the entire country. This is a reasonable number to pick.
If you narrow down to Food for all Urban Consumers[1], it shifts to more like $5.24. If you look at "Food away from home in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA, urban wage earners and clerical workers, not seasonally adjusted" that number moves to $7.60. Which confirms your intuition: restaurant prices are way higher than the overall inflation rate predicts.
How do we explain the difference? A variety of ways. Maybe the burgers you get are "better" in some way. Bigger. Better cut of meat. More veggies and toppings. I wasn't around in 1959 and never ate at that specific diner, but it's a real possibility. In fact, this is explicitly called out in the FAQ[3]:
> Specifically, in constructing the "headline" CPI-U and CPI-W, the BLS is not assuming that consumers substitute hamburgers for steak. Substitution is only assumed to occur within basic CPI index categories, such as among types of ground beef in Chicago. Hamburger and steak are in different CPI item categories, so no substitution between them is built into the CPI-U or CPI-W.
There's also some other complicating factors to account for, like coupons and bundling. Like consider Applebee's Really Big Meal Deal deal. "NEW Big Bangin’ Burger with unlimited fries & soda, still just $9.99" Or you can order just the burger for... $15.99[4]. I don't even know how BLS copes with that and am sorta guessing they just take the a la carte prices for consistency, even though that likely overstates price levels consumers actually pay?
Price of good i x Quantity of good i. Quantity is fixed year to year. So a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk, a TV, etc.
Sum those up across a reasonably representative basket, then compare that sum to the same quantity and new prices in a future year.
sum(P_i_new year x Q_i) / sum(P_i base year x Q_i) - 1 --> change in CPI
Hamburgers might be more expensive, but TVs, toilet paper, and dog kibble might not be.
peterbecich 3 hours ago [-]
Agreed completely. Other examples: long-distance telephone minutes, shoes, clothing, air travel... probably all cheaper.
1 hours ago [-]
woodruffw 3 hours ago [-]
There are two diners near me (in NYC) where a burger is $5.25/$5.50 respectively.
(I don’t disagree with you directionally though; I think a nontrivial aspect of this is shifting expectations/norms around what passes for food service. Americans broadly want their food - even diner food - to be upclassed beyond a plain hamburger on a white bread bun.)
goosejuice 1 hours ago [-]
Counter service family joints absolutely in the $5 area for standard ol' boring 1/4/lb. Maybe your definition of diner is different? There's a place by me with diner in the name that has a burger for $4.99.
gwerbin 4 hours ago [-]
That's the point. Burgers are more expensive (relative to "all" other goods) compared to back then.
bdunks 4 hours ago [-]
The Market Basket used to calculate the BLS CPI changes over time, which can make long range comparisons difficult.
I’ve read of political influence on the market basket to lower the reported rate of inflation by the incumbent party, but I’m not educated enough on the topic to give an opinion on if it happens.
plemer 5 hours ago [-]
That may be the point. Simple inflation adjustment gives us x but the real price is more or less than x. Why is that?
JumpCrisscross 4 hours ago [-]
> Simple inflation adjustment gives us x but the real price is more or less than x. Why is that?
Restaurant economics are a function of ingredient costs and labour. I suspect ingredient costs are close to OP's estimated multiples. But real wages are way up since the 1950s. Anything with a large labour component of costs will have tended to rise faster than inflation, which is an average of goods and services.
(There are specialised metrics if you actually wanted to dig into this question.)
dylan604 4 hours ago [-]
Are you saying the prices listed were just for the ingredients and not the actual cost to the person ordering? They mentioned they saw the price in a photo which suggest it is what the person would be charged. I get that labor costs would cause an increase of raw ingredient price comparisons for total prices. But if you could pay buy a burger for a nickel but now need $10, there is a definite issue in just a "simple" adjustment that suggests you'd only need $5. If the numbers are that far off because the simple needs to be more advanced, what's the point of the simple numbers? Bad data is worse than no data.
JumpCrisscross 3 hours ago [-]
> Are you saying the prices listed were just for the ingredients and not the actual cost to the person ordering?
Sorry, no. I'm saying labour is probably a larger fraction of the burger's costs today than it was in the 1950s. (I'd naively guess profits are, too.)
db48x 2 hours ago [-]
That may be true, but I suspect that it’s also hard to compare apples to apples. A burger in 1959 is hard to compare to a burger today. Today’s burger almost certainly has twice as much meat. The invention of (and ubiquitous advertising of) the quarter–pounder means that everyone had to make their burgers larger to match. Sides are larger, drinks are larger, etc, etc.
But labor costs certainly have gone up too.
JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago [-]
This would be a genuinly-interesting bit of analysis for someone to do. (Also do the patty melt!)
vkou 4 hours ago [-]
Inflation is a measure of change in overall purchasing power.
What a specific purchase costs is highly dependant on the inputs, the cost of its labour (which might grow faster or slower than the average wage), and a lot of other factors.
Food is way more expensive today than it was 50 years ago. Airplane tickets are way cheaper. Everyone has a cellphone now, and middle class families have multiple cars, but a trip to the doctor will mean that ~15% of the population will be on the verge of not paying their bills. On the other hand, I have access to ~every major piece of music ever made for ~$15/month, so that's something.
Yup! That's what I was thinking about. In fact I did read this right before posting (though I had found it at https://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/utf-8_history) but only to validate that it had been in a NJ diner, so I missed my confusion of UTF-8 with Unicode.
I would not make a good fact-checker :(
penguin_booze 13 minutes ago [-]
It feels weird that you sit on a counter and face the staff while you eat or drink (while do their job).
chiph 6 hours ago [-]
I took a visitor from Finland to a Jim's location in Austin, and they were in awe. "It's just like from the movies!" (because it was - it has been used several times as a filming location).
If you have a classic diner in your town, take your foreign guests there for the experience.
Something you've got to realize is that this form of culture is something that has gone far beyond America's borders. To the European, it is the very pinnacle of "American Food" -- and 50s/60s themed diners are all over the place.
I'd hazard that there are nearly as many of these restaurants outside the US as there are inside of it. Within the US it's "throwback/nostalgia." Outside the US it's "exotic/kitsch."
Maybe your Finnish friend was remarking that the American version somehow felt more "real"? I don't know... I've been to all sorts, and the ones in Europe are truly very similar.
chrisco255 5 hours ago [-]
Your first link is a restaurant in a shopping mall. It has the interior facade of being a diner, and it serves...avocado bites, spicy chicken nachos, kimchi burgers, etc. Not really the same!
Vegas has an eiffel tower too...
pimeys 4 hours ago [-]
I was born in Finland and 100% agree.
Diners are something else. In Germany we have "American diners" where you pay for each cup of coffee.
It's not the same.
MrDrMcCoy 5 hours ago [-]
Fun to see all that, but curious why I haven't seen any on any of my trips across the UK and Ireland. I even asked some locals and they did not know of any diners anywhere in the country. I would've thought they would've been all over it.
armadsen 4 hours ago [-]
Eddie Rocket's is an Irish chain of American diners. I've eaten there in Dublin. Although at least that location is downtown, and in a bigger building, not a classic diner style building. The inside is very much American Diner themed with vinyl seats, chrome, jukebox controls at the table, and of course the menu of burgers, fries, shakes, etc.
I thought that the "Elvis Diner" was practically a meme in the UK, actually. Hah.
ericgreveson 5 hours ago [-]
We have an independent one, Herbie's, just down the road from us outside Cambridge. It's pretty good! They have a wide range of imported US fizzy drinks cans too!
thaumasiotes 5 hours ago [-]
> Something you've got to realize is that this form of culture is something that has gone far beyond America's borders. To the European, it is the very pinnacle of "American Food" -- and 50s/60s themed diners are all over the place.
What do they serve?
lotsofpulp 31 minutes ago [-]
High carb, high sat fat, high salt, high sugar food. No spices other than black pepper shakers. Their popularity befuddles me. I would take almost any other type of restaurant over a diner.
A_D_E_P_T 5 hours ago [-]
Burgers, shakes, pancakes, hot dogs, sometimes BLTs and tuna melts. That sort of thing. In Europe, the "American Diner" is usually the only place that'll serve a normal plate of pancakes. (Everywhere else it's crepes, which are completely different...)
andrew_lettuce 5 hours ago [-]
Fried chicken, liver and onions, biscuits and gravy - the breakfast options are my jam, but not really the other entrees. You can order dessert regardless though!
xeromal 4 hours ago [-]
Do they serve hashbrowns?
A_D_E_P_T 4 hours ago [-]
Yes, in fact. I was at the one in Belgrade about a year ago, and their hashbrowns are terrific. It's mostly a burger and pancake joint, though.
thaumasiotes 5 hours ago [-]
Sounds pretty reasonable.
Within the US, there are at least two major diner chains:
At a diner in America, I'd be unsurprised to see some less "diner" offerings. When I go to my local non-chain diner, I order fettucine alfredo. And the article here has a good picture of a diner advertising "American and Korean food". I think part of the core diner concept is a somewhat athematic menu that is meant to cater to local tastes.
So I'm a little surprised at the idea of a diner that only has classic burgers / shakes / pancakes, but I'd have to admit those are fairly core dishes.
xeromal 4 hours ago [-]
I'd say a waffle house is a better chain if you're in the lower Southeast. Much closer to a true diner experience
kulahan 55 minutes ago [-]
Yes, absolutely. They talk to you the way I expect to be talked to in a diner (lotsa “huns”), the coffee never ends, and sometimes you get to watch UFC live. The food is so easy to eat, too.
bigyabai 6 hours ago [-]
I think there's a difference between the "squeeze-in" style diners and simply American-style diners like the ones you've posted. A lot of the nostalgia comes from the tiny prefab buildings that barely manage to fit a bar and row of booth seats. Those are the ones from the movies that feel more authentic/classic in person, at least to me.
flutas 4 hours ago [-]
I was really sad to learn recently an old diner I went to often in Venice Beach (Cafe' 50'S, on Lincoln and Lake) burned at some point and the building is just an empty husk now.
That place was great cheap food.
fellowniusmonk 6 hours ago [-]
Jim's is legit amazing. I end up going very rarely but every time I do it's been a perfect diner experience.
I tried their liver and onions (an aquired taste it turns out I don't really have) and a slice of some meregiune pie and idk, it really transported me, the food is always very real tasting, it's hard to isolate what it is that makes so much food taste manufactured now.
It's like Donns Depot, places that connect us to some wholesome parts in our shared history.
Lammy 6 hours ago [-]
> Not all diners look like train cars, but many do because they were fabricated to look that way, […] features a corrugated metal surface
Article would do well to mention that this particular style comes from cars manufactured by Budd Company, who developed the necessary process of welding the stainless steel, first seen on Burlington's “Zephyr”:
Don't know about "classic". But diners used to be my weekly jaunt here in South Bay for almost a decade. Not any more because with age you realize the quantity is too much and my drive to work changed (WFH). There's something special about going to your regular place, seeing the same servers, and them knowing your order before you say it. Probably the same in dinner restaurants but we don't repeat restaurants as often whereas the breakfast / lunch diner was weekly so very familiar (to both sides). Tried to switch places a couple of times just for experience but it never felt the same ... but you can make it work.
stasomatic 2 hours ago [-]
When I lived in NJ over 20 years ago, I'd stop by a random diner on the turnpike and order 2 sunny side up and a cup of coffee. Or a Greek place mid-town, a sloppy gyro. It wasn't ambrosia, but it was "perfectly cromulent" and the gritty surroundings added to the taste. I'd do the same in Brooklyn under a random industrial street in Bensonhurst or Sheepshead Bay. That era is just gone. I don't remember seeing an avocado on the menu back then.
b00ty4breakfast 5 hours ago [-]
>...the quantity is too much...
Leftovers for a later meal. Unless there is something about work involved and not having a place to put the leftovers in the fridge.
kshacker 5 hours ago [-]
Thanks I have thought about that, but somehow it does not work with me. Fresh food is something else (and my assumption is the food is fresh, even if it is just heating/grilling)
yumraj 6 hours ago [-]
which one(s) in South Bay? any recommendations?
traderj0e 3 hours ago [-]
I used to love Alice's Restaurant in 2014-2019, but moved away, so idk what it's like today.
kshacker 6 hours ago [-]
My favorite is Holders Country Inn. I used to go to the one in Cupertino before it burnt down. They moved, this was on Deanza long time back, and the one on Wolfe does not have the same old diner feeling, it is for the next gen :) Now I go to the one on Saratoga. And while I do not go as often to other places, I have been to and liked Hobees, then there is one Joe's near Half Moon Bay. We go there as a family when we hike at Cowell Purisima trail nearby. And while I am rambling about places to eat, a recent non-diner discovery has been El Caminito on El Camino Real.
yumraj 2 hours ago [-]
Thanks, haven’t been to a diner in ages but have been meaning to go try out for old time time’s sake.
Used to go to Peppermill in Santa Clara, and Dennys many years ago.
Thanks for suggesting El Caminito, looks good. Our usual Mexican for many years has been La Milpa in Milpitas, haven’t found a good equivalent yet.
HoldOnAMinute 4 hours ago [-]
I wouldn't call it a diner but if you like these other places you might like Los Gatos Cafe
kshacker 3 hours ago [-]
Lol thanks I will check it out, and I guess I was using the word diner way too loose - if it serves burgers, eggs and coffee, it hit my benchmark.
dinerdude 6 hours ago [-]
Not OP but I'd recommend the Peninsula Fountain Grill in Palo Alto. Peter's Cafe isn't bad either if you've got time to kill near the Millbrae CalTrain station.
dlivingston 2 hours ago [-]
I love diners. The late nights of undergrad was spent in diner booths, with textbooks and laptops splayed, and cups of coffee that never ran dry.
New Mexico has lots of great dinners scattered all around the state. I'm in Massachusetts now and enjoying those I can find here.
socalgal2 1 hours ago [-]
In SF/LA there's Mel's which has been around since 1947. Unfortunately I've had some pretty bad meals there (the one a across from the Metreon). In SoCal there's also Ruby's. It not "classic" (started in 1982), but their original location is on the Balboa Pier which is pretty great (https://maps.app.goo.gl/WoWrLEmGwPbVaumq5)
This is incredible. For only $380k I can have someone ship me a diner.
solomonb 6 hours ago [-]
I love diners but they aren't affordable anymore! I want a cheap simple meal and bad coffee. The diners that seem to survive in this market end up up-scaling their menus. : (
HoldOnAMinute 3 hours ago [-]
I desperately miss the 90's and the middle class we used to have. I also miss basic cheap eats. If someone tried to make an authentic type of diner today, it would immediately become swamped with influencers.
How can I get away from all this? Is there a town somewhere where everyone is over 45 and there is no cell service and a full meal is $5?
Heck I would settle for a small NorCal town that doesn't have gangs or meth.
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 2 hours ago [-]
> Is there a town somewhere where everyone is over 45 and there is no cell service and a full meal is $5?
Yes, but they're suspicious of outsiders and newcomers. They're afraid the newbies will vote away everything that makes that town feel like home.
prawn 2 hours ago [-]
I suspect that people want a theoretical cheap, simple meal, but what makes things cheap now is less the simplicity of ingredients, but really lowering the labour effort. So, something like the free breakfast at a cheap motel: bulk egg mixture, sausages that might as well be 50% cardboard pulp, big tubs of factory waffle batter, churned out onto disposable plates. Unless that's exactly what you have in mind, of course!
uxp100 2 hours ago [-]
I’ve got a place by me that does 2 eggs, 2 pancakes (or French toast), 2 sausages and toast for $4 before 8 AM.
And I don’t go there. The spots that get twice (or more) as much for that meal really are quite a bit better. And their coffee is truly foul. Classic diner coffee is fine, but if I’ve had better coffee on an airplane I’m not prone to going back.
cogman10 5 hours ago [-]
Tastes have changed and I think people have been highly exposed to tastier dishes.
There's also the "Denny's" problem. Classic diners tend to be pretty much the same as a Denny's in terms of quality.
kube-system 5 hours ago [-]
Yeah, chain restaurants have dominated most of the market everywhere out through and including the exurbs.
But if you go to somewhere deeply rural you can still find cheap crappy diner food.
traderj0e 3 hours ago [-]
Some of the random non-chain diners in the middle of some forested area are super nice and somehow not expensive, like the kind you stop at on the way to a ski trip. I'd think they'd be pricey cause of tourism or difficulty getting supplies.
SJC_Hacker 5 hours ago [-]
Waffle House is your jam.
Only in the southern US unfortunately
kulahan 48 minutes ago [-]
WH is all over the place in the US. I live in CO and go regularly. I’m 90% sure I saw one when I was in Utah.
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 2 hours ago [-]
Bonus, there's a solid chance of being ringside to an epic local MMA fight.
kulahan 51 minutes ago [-]
Especially today. I used to go to a place where every time I ate, my wife would roll her eyes as I talked about how good the prices were. Even they’re expensive now. Still cheaper, but damn. I don’t eat out nearly as much anymore. It’s sad. Diners are my favorite.
traderj0e 3 hours ago [-]
IHOP and Denny's fit that. They're quiet about the value menu.
tuvix 7 hours ago [-]
Visited Portland, Maine recently and ate at Becky’s Diner there. What a wonderful place, the food was just what you would expect when walking in (and I mean that in the best way).
It made me lament the lack of old school diners where I live. Sometimes you just need a perfectly cooked breakfast and some solid coffee!
JSR_FDED 54 minutes ago [-]
The lack and white photo “row of truck drivers sitting at a Maryland diner counter” has an amazing sense of place.
I think "diner" should be a protected term that has to meet certain criteria, like Kentucky Strait Bourbon.
A diner should only be able to legally call itself a diner if it's open 24/7, has a glass case showing slices of its desserts, offers breakfast, lunch and dinner all day, and if you order spaghetti, your server yells back to the kitchen for "a mile of rope".
contingencies 5 hours ago [-]
I did a lot of research in to the evolution of US fast food culture recently, from a technology angle. If anyone would be interested in a run-down I might put together a video starting ~19th century and moving to present.
My intellectual curiosity was gratified, hence I think it's good.
eaggsg 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
magneticnorth 6 hours ago [-]
Personally, I learned that some diners were mass-produced to look like train cars and fit conveniently on a train car, which I hadn't known.
And if I weren't American and thus very familiar with classic American diners, I expect there would have been a lot that is new and interesting in this article & photo collection.
_doctor_love 6 hours ago [-]
Can nothing seriously be done about this kind of obvious bot account?
There's so many of them on HN these days.
traderj0e 3 hours ago [-]
Idk, this one might just be a real angry person. The bot is the other one saying some generic paragraph about American diners.
676476476 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
andyfilms1 7 hours ago [-]
It's lunchtime
AnimalMuppet 7 hours ago [-]
Because some people here found it interesting enough to hit the upvote button.
neves 5 hours ago [-]
The photos does not display what I hate the most: the fixed 2 double seats tables. It is completely antisocial.
You can't arrive with your group of six friends and "join tables" so everybody can seat together. What Americans have against a big group of friends?
rconti 5 hours ago [-]
Doesn't fit in a rail car, at least not when paired with a walkway, and a counter/bar, and a kitchen?
gdulli 3 hours ago [-]
Their absence supports that it's not an omnipresent American pattern after all.
allthetime 5 hours ago [-]
You can fit at least 6 in one of those booths. Get closer with your friends! You can also play musical chairs and lean over the divider (or could before covid)
ButlerianJihad 2 hours ago [-]
Couple of things.
First, the patrons never put the tables and chairs back where they're supposed to be (even if they try, they get it wrong), so the minimum-wage waitress/busboy is stuck with the job of rearranging furniture, and cleaning up the floors. This is one reason that large groups get the "mandatory gratuity" treatment.
Turnover: every restaurant needs to turn over tables on the regular. If a large group is sort of lingering even after being decimated, and the diner can't reclaim those 4-tops for another party, that's potential lost revenue.
[Hmm, is that how "The Four Tops" got their name?]
Wait staff are often assigned "stations" based on a group of table numbers, so if you shove together enough tables for 12 patrons, you may have a conflict of 2-3 waitresses, but only one "main" can be allocated.
Any table or chair that can be lifted or moved by a patron becomes a potential melee weapon. Diners are occupied by rough crowds and after-club drunks who are trying to sober up. This is also why you're lucky to get a butter knife with your sirloin.
Booths feel more comfy, and offer a better feeling of privacy than tables. A table's more flexible if you have a family and toddlers, a wheelchair, or something, but booths are for lovers to cuddle.
5 hours ago [-]
Rendered at 02:21:18 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
The June 1940 photograph along Hwy 1 in Maryland had $0.05 hotdogs ($1.17) and $0.10 burgers ($2.34).
The Feb 1959 photograph from the NYC diner advertises a $0.45 burger ($5.14) and probably a $0.75 steak sandwich ($8.57)
We may have inflation in more than one sense: prices have gone up, and perhaps the size of burgers and hot dogs have also increased.
No doubt I can find portion size clues if I look around. Haven't done so yet.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1447051/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8667835/
Edit: hamburgers and hotdogs are pretty standardized though
Where is the discrepancy? I've never really trusted these "adjusted for inflation" type numbers. I'm not an economist so I have no idea how they are calculated, but they've always just felt off to me. Usually, the numbers are for something esoteric to me, but these are about something I have some familiarity. In my experience, the adjusted burger price is about half the actual cost of today.
A hot dog / hamburger at a diner is mostly human labor, so you'd expect it to be cheaper in the past.
Food appears somewhat cheaper, housing much cheaper; but clothing and tools/appliances were much more expensive. Things like student debt and healthcare costs are also interesting to compare and wildly differ over time & place.
Also common for the average middle class person to spend a sizable percentage of their income on travel/vacation today; as I understand it that was quite uncommon before the mid 20th century.
>The June 1940 photograph along Hwy 1 in Maryland had $0.05 hotdogs ($1.17) and $0.10 burgers ($2.34).
1940 $779 to today's $94K GDP per capita gives $6 for the 1940 $0.05 hotdog.
If you narrow down to Food for all Urban Consumers[1], it shifts to more like $5.24. If you look at "Food away from home in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA, urban wage earners and clerical workers, not seasonally adjusted" that number moves to $7.60. Which confirms your intuition: restaurant prices are way higher than the overall inflation rate predicts.
How do we explain the difference? A variety of ways. Maybe the burgers you get are "better" in some way. Bigger. Better cut of meat. More veggies and toppings. I wasn't around in 1959 and never ate at that specific diner, but it's a real possibility. In fact, this is explicitly called out in the FAQ[3]:
> Specifically, in constructing the "headline" CPI-U and CPI-W, the BLS is not assuming that consumers substitute hamburgers for steak. Substitution is only assumed to occur within basic CPI index categories, such as among types of ground beef in Chicago. Hamburger and steak are in different CPI item categories, so no substitution between them is built into the CPI-U or CPI-W.
There's also some other complicating factors to account for, like coupons and bundling. Like consider Applebee's Really Big Meal Deal deal. "NEW Big Bangin’ Burger with unlimited fries & soda, still just $9.99" Or you can order just the burger for... $15.99[4]. I don't even know how BLS copes with that and am sorta guessing they just take the a la carte prices for consistency, even though that likely overstates price levels consumers actually pay?
[1]: https://data.bls.gov/dataViewer/view;jsessionid=3A241A4C4F0A... [2]: CWURS12ASEFV [3]: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/common-misconceptions-abo... [4]: https://www.applebees.com/en/menu/handcrafted-burgers/big-ba...
https://ddir.com/menu
Price of good i x Quantity of good i. Quantity is fixed year to year. So a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk, a TV, etc.
Sum those up across a reasonably representative basket, then compare that sum to the same quantity and new prices in a future year.
sum(P_i_new year x Q_i) / sum(P_i base year x Q_i) - 1 --> change in CPI
Hamburgers might be more expensive, but TVs, toilet paper, and dog kibble might not be.
(I don’t disagree with you directionally though; I think a nontrivial aspect of this is shifting expectations/norms around what passes for food service. Americans broadly want their food - even diner food - to be upclassed beyond a plain hamburger on a white bread bun.)
I’ve read of political influence on the market basket to lower the reported rate of inflation by the incumbent party, but I’m not educated enough on the topic to give an opinion on if it happens.
Restaurant economics are a function of ingredient costs and labour. I suspect ingredient costs are close to OP's estimated multiples. But real wages are way up since the 1950s. Anything with a large labour component of costs will have tended to rise faster than inflation, which is an average of goods and services.
(There are specialised metrics if you actually wanted to dig into this question.)
Sorry, no. I'm saying labour is probably a larger fraction of the burger's costs today than it was in the 1950s. (I'd naively guess profits are, too.)
But labor costs certainly have gone up too.
What a specific purchase costs is highly dependant on the inputs, the cost of its labour (which might grow faster or slower than the average wage), and a lot of other factors.
Food is way more expensive today than it was 50 years ago. Airplane tickets are way cheaper. Everyone has a cellphone now, and middle class families have multiple cars, but a trip to the doctor will mean that ~15% of the population will be on the verge of not paying their bills. On the other hand, I have access to ~every major piece of music ever made for ~$15/month, so that's something.
https://www.tastingtable.com/1203923/best-diners-in-new-jers...
While it’s possible that Unicode was also conceived at a diner, you’re likely thinking of UTF-8. Unicode was from a decade earlier.
https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/utf-8-history.txt
I would not make a good fact-checker :(
If you have a classic diner in your town, take your foreign guests there for the experience.
> https://maps.app.goo.gl/NCiZgiRjGckp6Jzn6
And if that doesn't appeal, there's another one: https://maps.app.goo.gl/e3ZWtXWEKPvDnded8
Something you've got to realize is that this form of culture is something that has gone far beyond America's borders. To the European, it is the very pinnacle of "American Food" -- and 50s/60s themed diners are all over the place.
From Belgrade, Serbia: https://share.google/qGq9vC7tKgf0ISyLz
To out-of-the-way towns in Austria: https://maps.app.goo.gl/bzHfTAobTRkHpvAN9
Germany's chock full of them. (The Germans are also more obsessed with "Cowboys and Indians" and Western US culture than any nation I've ever seen.)
France has multiple "American Diner" chains e.g.: https://www.happydaysdiner.com/
I'd hazard that there are nearly as many of these restaurants outside the US as there are inside of it. Within the US it's "throwback/nostalgia." Outside the US it's "exotic/kitsch."
Maybe your Finnish friend was remarking that the American version somehow felt more "real"? I don't know... I've been to all sorts, and the ones in Europe are truly very similar.
Vegas has an eiffel tower too...
Diners are something else. In Germany we have "American diners" where you pay for each cup of coffee.
It's not the same.
https://www.eddierockets.ie
I thought that the "Elvis Diner" was practically a meme in the UK, actually. Hah.
What do they serve?
Within the US, there are at least two major diner chains:
https://www.dennys.com/
https://www.ihop.com/en
At a diner in America, I'd be unsurprised to see some less "diner" offerings. When I go to my local non-chain diner, I order fettucine alfredo. And the article here has a good picture of a diner advertising "American and Korean food". I think part of the core diner concept is a somewhat athematic menu that is meant to cater to local tastes.
With that in mind, Cheesecake Factory might also be thought of as a diner. https://www.thecheesecakefactory.com/menu
So I'm a little surprised at the idea of a diner that only has classic burgers / shakes / pancakes, but I'd have to admit those are fairly core dishes.
That place was great cheap food.
I tried their liver and onions (an aquired taste it turns out I don't really have) and a slice of some meregiune pie and idk, it really transported me, the food is always very real tasting, it's hard to isolate what it is that makes so much food taste manufactured now.
It's like Donns Depot, places that connect us to some wholesome parts in our shared history.
Article would do well to mention that this particular style comes from cars manufactured by Budd Company, who developed the necessary process of welding the stainless steel, first seen on Burlington's “Zephyr”:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_welding
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Zephyr
Leftovers for a later meal. Unless there is something about work involved and not having a place to put the leftovers in the fridge.
Used to go to Peppermill in Santa Clara, and Dennys many years ago.
Thanks for suggesting El Caminito, looks good. Our usual Mexican for many years has been La Milpa in Milpitas, haven’t found a good equivalent yet.
New Mexico has lots of great dinners scattered all around the state. I'm in Massachusetts now and enjoying those I can find here.
http://www.dinermite.com/photos.html
How can I get away from all this? Is there a town somewhere where everyone is over 45 and there is no cell service and a full meal is $5?
Heck I would settle for a small NorCal town that doesn't have gangs or meth.
Yes, but they're suspicious of outsiders and newcomers. They're afraid the newbies will vote away everything that makes that town feel like home.
And I don’t go there. The spots that get twice (or more) as much for that meal really are quite a bit better. And their coffee is truly foul. Classic diner coffee is fine, but if I’ve had better coffee on an airplane I’m not prone to going back.
There's also the "Denny's" problem. Classic diners tend to be pretty much the same as a Denny's in terms of quality.
But if you go to somewhere deeply rural you can still find cheap crappy diner food.
Only in the southern US unfortunately
It made me lament the lack of old school diners where I live. Sometimes you just need a perfectly cooked breakfast and some solid coffee!
just looking at the video makes me hungry.
https://www.osf.com/
A diner should only be able to legally call itself a diner if it's open 24/7, has a glass case showing slices of its desserts, offers breakfast, lunch and dinner all day, and if you order spaghetti, your server yells back to the kitchen for "a mile of rope".
My intellectual curiosity was gratified, hence I think it's good.
And if I weren't American and thus very familiar with classic American diners, I expect there would have been a lot that is new and interesting in this article & photo collection.
There's so many of them on HN these days.
You can't arrive with your group of six friends and "join tables" so everybody can seat together. What Americans have against a big group of friends?
First, the patrons never put the tables and chairs back where they're supposed to be (even if they try, they get it wrong), so the minimum-wage waitress/busboy is stuck with the job of rearranging furniture, and cleaning up the floors. This is one reason that large groups get the "mandatory gratuity" treatment.
Turnover: every restaurant needs to turn over tables on the regular. If a large group is sort of lingering even after being decimated, and the diner can't reclaim those 4-tops for another party, that's potential lost revenue.
[Hmm, is that how "The Four Tops" got their name?]
Wait staff are often assigned "stations" based on a group of table numbers, so if you shove together enough tables for 12 patrons, you may have a conflict of 2-3 waitresses, but only one "main" can be allocated.
Any table or chair that can be lifted or moved by a patron becomes a potential melee weapon. Diners are occupied by rough crowds and after-club drunks who are trying to sober up. This is also why you're lucky to get a butter knife with your sirloin.
Booths feel more comfy, and offer a better feeling of privacy than tables. A table's more flexible if you have a family and toddlers, a wheelchair, or something, but booths are for lovers to cuddle.