Childs Restaurants
Childs' logo of 1907
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Childs Restaurant, Philadelphia, PA, circa 1908
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| Industry | Restaurant |
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| Fate | None in operation since late 1960s |
| Founded | New York, NY, United States (1889) |
| Founder | Samuel Childs, William Childs |
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Number of locations
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107 locations in 29 cities in 1925 |
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Area served
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New York City and other northeastern U.S. cities |
| Products | Pancakes, American cuisine |
Childs Restaurants was one of the first national dining chains in the United States and Canada, having peaked in the 1920s and 1930s with about 125 locations in dozens of markets, serving over 50,000,000 meals a year, with over $37 million in assets at the time. Childs was a pioneer in a number of areas, including design, service, sanitation, and labor relations. It was a contemporary of food service companies such as Horn & Hardart, and a predecessor of companies such as McDonald's.
The first Childs Restaurant was launched in 1889 by brothers Samuel S. Childs and William Childs, on the ground level of the Merchants Hotel (current site of One Liberty Plaza, also previously the Singer Building), at 41 Cortlandt Street (between Broadway and Church), in New York City's Financial District. The brothers' concept for the establishment was to provide economical meals to the working class, quickly, with an unusually high emphasis – for the period – on cleanliness and hygiene. Their novel design format included white tiles, white uniforms, and waitresses instead of then-common waiters. In addition to these signature characteristics, Childs locations also featured their pancake griddles in the front window. Within five years, Childs had grown to five profitable locations. They also are credited as inventors of the "tray line" self-service cafeteria format, which they introduced in 1898 at their 130 Broadway location.
In 1898, the brothers, confident and ready for more aggressive expansion, combined with several investors to legally incorporate The Childs Unique Dairy Company, with capitalization of $1,000,000, and the stated intent to "establish and operate restaurants in New York City and elsewhere". It was widely speculated, and finally confirmed in 1912, that several officers of the Standard Oil Company were investors in the restaurant chain, including Henry Morgan Tilford and Charles Sweeney. At some point, "duPont interests" also gained a significant stock position, which would eventually cause problems for the family owners.
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