9. Department store restaurants created signature dishes to compete with major restaurants
Boston’s Filene’s Department Store was an innovative business enterprise in many ways, including the manner in which it treated its employees. Edward Filene used the then somewhat lofty principles of “scientific management” on the sales floor both to increase the quality of work from his employees and to enhance the customer’s experience when visiting the store in Boston. Among the innovations he championed were profit sharing, paid vacations, a health clinic, and a forty-hour work week. He also championed a healthy diet, and Filene’s restaurants featured a menu for customers which touted a “Health Menu”. Among the dishes to be ordered were Kraut juice (presumably the juice from sauerkraut) for twenty-five cents, and potassium broth, for the same price.
Other department stores featured signature items on their menus as well. Woodward & Lothrop offered deviled crab as their main attraction, and it was touted as being among Washington DC’s best. Marshall Field’s, befitting a menu in the City of Big Shoulders, featured corned beef hash. Famous-Barr, based in St Louis, made the most of its city’s French heritage by offering French Onion soup. Baltimore, famous around the world for Chesapeake Bay crabs, was reflected in its Hutzler’s store, which listed Crab Imperial as one of the choice dishes on its menu. And Seattle’s Frederick and Nelson department store offered a Frango dessert, created by its chefs in 1918, the forerunner of Frango mints which remain popular today, though whether Frango is a portmanteau formed from the names Frederick, Nelson, and the chef who created the confection is a matter of some dispute.