History

How Penny Restaurants Gave A Generation Of Diners Respect During The Great Depression By Ellery Weil Oct. 20, 2025 8:00 am EST

If you've studied the Great Depression in school, you may have read about bank runs, unemployment, and even the vast numbers of people who left their homes looking for work. But one thing you may not have learned much about is the Great Depression's restaurant culture. After all, with times so hard, people would have struggled to afford going out to restaurants, right? Well, while conventional and high-end restaurants did struggle to stay open, a new breed of extremely inexpensive restaurants were born, to give people an affordable way to get a hot meal without the stigma of standing in the bread lines: the so-called "penny restaurants."

Penny

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