The first individuals to mass-produce these “oyster pails” were the Bloomer Brothers of New York, who started their container manufacturing business in 1900. Many city restaurants offered “take-home specials” that included items like “ Scallops Fry in a Box to Take Home,” which could be purchased for 25 cents at Chas’ Bradely’s Oyster Room, or “ Oyster Stew in a Can to Take Home” from 30 cents at the Sagamore Restaurant and Lunch Room.Īlthough pollution and overfishing have since destroyed the street-side oyster trade, the containers that these bivalves could be taken away with in fact linger on as familiar “Chinese Take-Out” containers. Amongst the most popular take-away foods in east coast urban centers like New York at this time were oysters, scallops and other steamed, stewed or chowdered sea creatures. Industrialization meant people were laboring further from home, but they still wanted something hot and delicious to eat during the workday. Take-out lunches were also an unavoidable part of life for the urban working classes of all races in the early 20th century. Blacks on a long journey or simply looking for a bite to eat away from home anywhere in the Jim Crow South were often forced to order their food as take-away in segregated restaurants if they wanted to eat at all. Since even before Emancipation, overt racism meant that selling take-away like this was one of the few options for entrepreneurial African Americans looking to support their families.Īnd for African American consumers, take-out was often less of a convenience than a necessity. “It took me several days to learn the secret,” he continued, “but I found at last that the surest way of satisfying the appetite, and also the cheapest, is to patronize the colored women who throng around the cars at the principal stations with nicely cooked chicken, eggs, and sometimes hot coffee.” Although their food often received high marks - travelers on the east coast would change their routes just for a chance to grab lunch in a town called Gordonsville, Va., which was famous for its fried chicken - the reason behind the trend was a sinister one. “The eating houses on the railways in the South are, almost without exception, abominable,” wrote one Yankee making his way from Washington to Mobile, Ala., via train in 1868. In the United States, African-American women were the most group most associated with the take-out business at such locations. Though servant-delivered restaurant dishes were the province of the wealthy, this kind of eating on the go was more likely to be part of a laborer’s life. Finding fully cooked meals to go in these locales was not only typical in the United States, but a common practice across the globe as well American soldiers traveling in the Far East in the late 19th and early 20th centuries often wrote of the “ little lunches put up in flat boxes” they purchased on trains in Japan and China.
Until the middle of the 20th century, the most common places to find take-out were major transit hubs, like train stations or the intersections of well-traveled highways.
Butchers in 14th century Paris would frequently send their wares directly from the butcher’s block to the homes of the city’s well-to-do families, while cohorts of dabbawalla in Mumbai continue to deliver home-cooked lunches to hungry workers across the city as they have since at least the 19th century. And the delicious twin of take-out cuisine, delivery food, has existed for nearly as long and across just as many cultures. The ruins of Pompeii in Italy are filled with thermopolia, “cook-shops” that slung hot foods for hungry Romans in a hurry, while vendors in ancient Aztec markets sold a multitude of tamales to eaters just passing through. In fact, for as long as there have been advanced societies, humans have been buying food to go. But a jaunt through culinary history quickly reveals that there’s nothing new about the concept of take-out.
Whether it’s ordered with a touch on an app, a few clicks on a website or a quick phone call to the neighborhood pizza joint, delivery food can seem like just another modern convenience. On any given day in the United States, 6% of the entire country will be eating take-out for one meal or another.