cost of a meal in 1880s

[The Shoer 27979]

So I am on babysitting detail, watching one of our granddaughters for the whole week. I just finished making breakfast for both of us and was thinking ( I know just like everybody else on this forum thinking is dangerous) if I walk into a cafe in 1880 and sat down for breakfast what could I expect to have for breakfast and what would the cost be?I know a lot of it would depend on where I was but I was thinking in general.

[Gunner Gatlin, SASS 10274L]

This was kinda interesting:

 

http://oldrecipebook.com/1800s-livingcost.shtml

 

GG ~

[Black Angus McPherson]

Interesting question. It reminds me of a recipie we found in my grandmother's recipie box.

It began:

 

"Start with .50 cents of Roast Beef..."

 

Ended with: "Feeds six"

 

We never did figure out just how much beef she was getting for .50 that would feed six people.

 

Angus

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

I'm thinking two bits. Not thinking of eating in any high falootin' place either. I went looking for some data that might support my price.

 

These days, if I'm not in some place expensive I would frequent a place where I could get what I want for about 8 bucks. I don't eat high on the hog. Today's CPI is 226.230. The earliest available CPI is Jan 1913 which is 9.8 which would make the average bag of the same stuff about 35 cents in 1913. I would say that two bits would be plausible for 1880.

 

I bet some of Louis L'Amour's novels would have a typical cowboy breakfast hidden in the text somewhere.

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

Interesting question. It reminds me of a recipie we found in my grandmother's recipie box.

It began:

 

"Start with .50 cents of Roast Beef..."

 

Ended with: "Feeds six"

 

We never did figure out just how much beef she was getting for .50 that would feed six people.

 

Angus

 

Don't know about yours but my grandma's family ate a little less in the depression than mine did in the 80s.

[Garrison Joe, SASS #60708]

In Deadwood,. SD, newspaper, a couple of articles show cost of a meal was agreed to by several of the restaurant owners:

 

Restaurant owners vow not to sell meals under $.75

Apr 01 1878

 

Restaurant proprietors agreed on prices

Apr 02 1878

 

A square meal for .75 cents washed down with a lager beer for .05 cents

 

But within a year, folks were undercutting that.

 

Advertising "square meals for 25 cents" on a sign

Jan 17 1879

In regard to: Salt Lake House, Lower Main St

 

 

These prices would have been at the high end, as Deadwood was in the middle of the wilderness in the 70's, and a mining town flush with gold.

 

Good luck, GJ

 

 

From: http://deadwoodpione...r.blogspot.com/

 

 

And this link: http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodpioneer.html

has a great section on Old West Saloon fare. Tasty.

[Buffalo Creek Law Dog]

In the late 1950's my Dad owned a resturant in Calgary and for .90 cents you got a slice of roast beef, mashed potatoes with gravy, peas, a bun and a cup of coffee, dessert was extra. Slice of pie was .15 cents. In 1960 he raised the price of a meal to $1.00.

 

Sure sounds like the 1880's.

[Subdeacon Joe]

Taken from The Food Timeline

 

 

FINER DINING OPTIONS

 

Although historians tell us the "grand hotels" of the west were not established in the 1870s there is evidence of "grand dining" in western mining regions prior to this time. The larger the city, the more elegant the dining options. In 1849, however, most Gold Rush towns were just springing onto the map. Saloons, boarding house meals, and crude camp cooking were the norm.

 

"Hotels and resorts sprang up, crude at first, but by the 1880's such elaborate affairs as the Del Monte in Monterey, the Raymond in Pasadena, and Coronado in San Diego, all models of Atlantic elegance. This transition began sometime in the early 1870's, although there were traces of it a half-decade before."

---Americans and the California Dream 1850-1915, Kevin Starr [Oxford University Press:New York] 1973 (p. 175)

 

""So completely was California inundated with taverns, boarding houses, etc.," wrote an English lady in 1851, that the Golden State could as aptly have been named "the Hotel State."...A miner who arrived in 1849 remembered that "there were any number of eating houses and hotels" in Coloma, where it all began. Red Dog, a camp of only two hundred people in Nevada County, California, had a restaurant featuring "Choice Meals served up at al hours, day or night, in the best style." Indian Bar's Hotel Humboldt added dinner music...meals of oysters...salmon...roast beef, mince pie and pudding and Madiera, claret, and champagne...At Placerville's Cary House, hangtown fry was invented. At its El Dorado Hotel, the fare included beef under specials species, veal, peas, potatoes, sauerkraut, bacon, and hash...As the gateway to the goldfields, San Francisco established early on its enduring reputation as a restaurant city. Hall McAllister and Sam Ward were so disgusted with ship's food when they disembarked from the steamer Panama on June 4, 1849, that they foreswore digging for gold and instead opened a restaurant on Telegraph Hill. At first pork and beans were the only improvement on the Panama's galley they could manage. By December...nearby competitors at the Ward house...had improvised an ingenious menu from available ingredients that included baked trout with anchovy sauce ($1.50), curried sausages ($1), and bread pudding ($.75). Johann Knocke ran another typical restaurant for miners. He opened at five each morning and closed at eleven at night, featuring fishballs (dried fish and boiled potatoes) and "hot cakes done brown" as his specialties...What Cheer served four thousand meals daily. Each day diners consumed twelve hundred eggs, one hundred pounds of butter, five hundred pounds of potatoes, four hundred quarts of milk...In the mining towns, a fine restaurant was one of the ems by which hosts demonstrated to eastern or European guests...that, despite their geographical isolation, they where thoroughly cosmopolitan."

---Bacon, Beans, and Galantines (p. 138-148)

 

Bill of Fare, What Cheer Restaurant, San Francisco California, mid-19th century

[NOTE: this was a popular & economical dining room]

Boiled mutton with oyster sauce, 10 cents

Roast beef with lima beans, 10 cents

Pig's feet, soused or in batter, 10 cents

Beefsteak and onions, with fried potatoes, 10 cents

Stewed mutton with bread, butter and potatoes, 5 cents

Buckwheat cakes with honey, 5 cents

Clam chowder, 5 cents

Cup of chocolate (hot chocolate), 5 cents

Chicken pot pie, 20 cents

Porterhouse steak, 25 cents,br> Baked apples, 5 cents

Stewed prunes, 5 cents

Mammoth glass of Mason Celebrated Beer, 5 cents

Roast turkey and currant jelly, 25 cents

Hot oatmeal mush, 10 cents."

---Bacon, Beans, and Galantines, (p. 141)

 

Bill of Fare, Ward House (restaurant), San Francisco California, December 27, 1849:

[NOTE: this was an upscale dining facility.]

Ox tail soup, 1.00

Baked trout, white and anchovy sauce, 1.50

Roast beef, Stuffled lamb or mutton, 1.00

Pork & apple sauce, 1.25

Curried sausages, 1.00

Stewed Kidney, Sauce de Champagne, 1.25

Beef stewed with onions, 1.25

Tenderloin lamb, green peas, 1.25

Baked sweet potatotes, boiled Irish (white) potataoes, cabbage, squash, .50 (each)

Bread pudding, mince pie, apple pie, cheese, stewed prunes, .75 (each)

Brandy peach pastry, rum omelette, jelly omelette, 2.00 (each)

Wine (bottle): champagne, 5.00; Pale sherry, 3.00; Old Madeira, 4.00; Claret, 2.00; Champagne

cider, 2.00; Ale, 2.00

 

So a considerable range of prices. I'll keep on digging.

 

Good question.

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

The original question was about breakfast, but don't let that stop you.

[Subdeacon Joe]

The original question was about breakfast, but don't let that stop you.

 

Kind of hard to find menus with pricing.

 

Breakfast Bill of Fare

(use Ctrl+ to embiggen) but it doesn't have prices.

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

Kind of hard to find menus with pricing.

 

Breakfast Bill of Fare

(use Ctrl+ to embiggen) but it doesn't have prices.

 

Not the kind of place where I would order breakfast, however the Hotel Traymore existed from 1879 to 1972. The menu does not indicate what year it was written, but 50 cents for room service would have placed it out of my reach anyway.

[Subdeacon Joe]

Not the kind of place where I would order breakfast, however the Hotel Traymore existed from 1879 to 1972. The menu does not indicate what year it was written, but 50 cents for room service would have placed it out of my reach anyway.

 

That one is from 1900, a bit later than the original question. But it gives an idea of the foods that were available.

 

Here is the site I found it through: https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/carlin/www/food2010.menus.htm

[Subdeacon Joe]

Knox & Co Horticultural Dining Room, Boston, Feb. 1869

[Apache Hawk 60642]

Now fellers, I don't have any documantation to support this, but my Great GrandFather said he could get this for two bits....

 

Fryed chicken eggs

Elk or bear bacon.....hog bacon was extra.

Some kind of grits

Buscuits

Coffee with molasses.

 

 

 

(I'm glad memorie allows me to remember that........Now to remember the wife's birthday ! )

[Subdeacon Joe]

Now fellers, I don't have any documantation to support this, but my Great GrandFather said he could get this for two bits....

 

Fryed chicken eggs

Elk or bear bacon.....hog bacon was extra.

Some kind of grits

Buscuits

Coffee with molasses.

 

 

 

(I'm glad memorie allows me to remember that........Now to remember the wife's birthday ! )

 

Sounds in line with the stuff I have found. That would be at a working mans diner. Of course, that two bits would have been about a quarter of a days wages, too.

 

Oh...don't worry about remembering her birthday. She'll remind you of it.

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

Oh...don't worry about remembering her birthday. She'll remind you of it.

 

When it's too late to recover.

[Dog Ears Wilson, SASS #77948]

This is a bit earlier than the 1880s.

 

http://www.calgoldrush.com/part2/02food.html

 

Exorbitant food prices often associated with the Gold Rush -- $1 for a slice of bread in Placerville, $2 if it was buttered -- were common early on, and subsequently shot up during sporadic periods of high demand and low supply. According to Gold Rush lore, a farmer at Coloma sold her pears when they still were blossoms, tagging each flower with the name of the purchaser; at the time, ripe pears sold for $2.50 each.

[Driftwood Johnson, SASS #38283]

Howdy

 

Amazing what you can find.

 

Here is a menu from a Denver restaurant in 1892. Click on the link near the top of the page to see the entire menu.

 

Menu

 

Apparently the New York Public Library has a huge collection of old menus.

 

Link

[Subdeacon Joe]

Howdy

 

Amazing what you can find.

 

Here is a menu from a Denver restaurant in 1892. Click on the link near the top of the page to see the entire menu.

 

Menu

 

Apparently the New York Public Library has a huge collection of old menus.

 

Link

 

Those are some great links, thanks for posting them. What did you enter for your search?

[Barkeep Casey]

[A square meal for .75 cents washed down with a lager beer for .05 cents

 

Good luck, GJ

 

 

So I could get 15 beers or a square meal for .75 cents? Man the price of beer has really skyrocketed!

Barkeep

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

[A square meal for .75 cents washed down with a lager beer for .05 cents

 

Good luck, GJ

 

 

So I could get 15 beers or a square meal for .75 cents? Man the price of beer has really skyrocketed!

Barkeep

 

The 75 cents was set via price fixing. I guess beer was allowed to float with the market

[Yellowhouse Sam # 25171]

I suppose that cheap beer then, as now, is a way to get people in the door.

[Rye Miles #13621]

Heck in the 60's you could get a McDonalds hamburger fer 15 cents and fries for a dime! Can't remember what the drink was but I'm thinkin it was about a dime too. That's 35 cents for a well balanced meal for breakfast, lunch or dinner! Rye

[Sgt. C.J. Sabre, SASS #46770]

Heck in the 60's you could get a McDonalds hamburger fer 15 cents and fries for a dime! Can't remember what the drink was but I'm thinkin it was about a dime too. That's 35 cents for a well balanced meal for breakfast, lunch or dinner! Rye

 

 

Just to stray completely off topic, around the same time, a kid, (under 12), could take a dollar to the Saturday movie matinée and get in for $.50, popcorn for $.15, a soda for $.10, and a candy bar for $.10. And that's a double feature WITH a cartoon!

[Rye Miles #13621]

Just to stray completely off topic, around the same time, a kid, (under 12), could take a dollar to the Saturday movie matinée and get in for $.50, popcorn for $.15, a soda for $.10, and a candy bar for $.10. And that's a double feature WITH a cartoon!

 

 

I'm just old enuff to remember them days Sgt., wasn't it great?? Rye

[Alpo]

Just to stray completely off topic, around the same time, a kid, (under 12), could take a dollar to the Saturday movie matinée and get in for $.50, popcorn for $.15, a soda for $.10, and a candy bar for $.10. And that's a double feature WITH a cartoon!

 

The first time I can actually remember going to the movie, and remember the theater and the entire experience, we went to see Bambi, at the Florida Theater in Pensacola, and that would be about 1966.

 

We saw Bambi. No second feature, no newsreel, no cartoon. Bambi. Just the one movie.

 

You sure you're thinking of the 60s?

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

Just to stray completely off topic, around the same time, a kid, (under 12), could take a dollar to the Saturday movie matinée and get in for $.50, popcorn for $.15, a soda for $.10, and a candy bar for $.10. And that's a double feature WITH a cartoon!

 

I recall doing that in '52 and '53. Double features disappeared in the early 60s or earlier.

[Gunner Gatlin, SASS 10274L]

Howdy

 

Amazing what you can find.

 

Here is a menu from a Denver restaurant in 1892. Click on the link near the top of the page to see the entire menu.

 

Menu

 

Apparently the New York Public Library has a huge collection of old menus.

 

Link

 

Great find - thanks for posting...

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR

 

GG ~

[Wolfgang, SASS #53480]

I recall doing that in '52 and '53. Double features disappeared in the early 60s or earlier.

 

When I was first in San Diego in 1972 I could see a tripple feature movie for 75 cents. They were none of them first run movies though.

[Cemetery]

Now fellers, I don't have any documantation to support this, but my Great GrandFather said he could get this for two bits....

 

Fryed chicken eggs

Elk or bear bacon.....hog bacon was extra.

Some kind of grits

Buscuits

Coffee with molasses.

 

 

 

(I'm glad memorie allows me to remember that........Now to remember the wife's birthday ! )

 

Coffee with molasses????

 

Actually sounds interesting.......

[Sgt. C.J. Sabre, SASS #46770]

The first time I can actually remember going to the movie, and remember the theater and the entire experience, we went to see Bambi, at the Florida Theater in Pensacola, and that would be about 1966.

 

We saw Bambi. No second feature, no newsreel, no cartoon. Bambi. Just the one movie.

 

You sure you're thinking of the 60s?

 

Absotivley. This was the Saturday matinée. Usually a couple of monster movies. Frankenstein, Dracula, Mummy, Godzilla, and the like.

[Subdeacon Joe]

Coffee with molasses????

 

Actually sounds interesting.......

 

It's pretty darned good. And pretty period correct.

 

But then, if I'm in the mood for a fancy flavored coffee, I'll take the little packets of orange marmalade and stir them in. Just like a cafe valencia from a coffee shop.

[Subdeacon Joe]

Absotivley. This was the Saturday matinée. Usually a couple of monster movies. Frankenstein, Dracula, Mummy, Godzilla, and the like.

 

In Vista, CA into the late 70s the Avo Theater still ran two features, plus cartoon and coming attractions, for a buck. The Drive In (owned by the same guy) charged, I think, three bucks a head. Two movies. Then run the first one again, and half of the second movie (the theory was that people would have been there for at least half of the second movie so the whole thing wasn't run).

[Rye Miles #13621]

It's pretty darned good. And pretty period correct.

 

But then, if I'm in the mood for a fancy flavored coffee, I'll take the little packets of orange marmalade and stir them in. Just like a cafe valencia from a coffee shop.

 

 

If'n ya add a shot of whiskey to that coffee and molasses I bet that would be good! I'm sure that's period correct too. Rye

[Wolfgang, SASS #53480]

If'n ya add a shot of whiskey to that coffee and molasses I bet that would be good! I'm sure that's period correct too. Rye

 

 

Common price for whiskey was 12 1/2 cents. ( ie one "bit")