The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-10-12
FEEDING THE MULTITUDE.
HOW FIFE PROPRIETORS OF
 LARGE RESTAURANTS

Manage to Fill Their Orders-Two
 Hundred Dishes Offered Each Day to
 More Than Two Thousand Patrons.
 On the daily bill if fare of first class restaurant in a large city the hun gry diner ordinarily finds from 200 to 250 different ways of satisfying his ap- pstite-to say nothing of the various ways of satisfying his thirst. To con- sume his array of edibles the proprie- tor expects daily from two thousand persons up to more than thrice that number, according to his location and the size of his patronage. Some days there is an unexpected increase in the number of diners, and other days an equally unexpected falling off; the kind of food demanded varies with the weather. On warm day, for example, meats and soups are likely to become drug on the market and the multi ] tude, especially at the noon hour, clam i ors for salads, cold meats and frozen 1 desserts. A cold snap in the late autumn completely upsets the summer dishes. There is, in fact, almost no 1 fixed demand, and yet there must al- ] ways be a sufficiency of whatever hap i pens to be the need of the hour-a com bination of circumstances that makes the life of the restaurant keeper any 1 thing but an existence of dull mo- notony
 l Restaurants which feed thousands of l fy, .nF and many of the problems of their managers were unknown to the keep CTS of the eating houses of twenty five years ago. On the other hand, 1 the man at the head of the twentieth century establishment has facilities for l doing business of which the old-timers had little conception. Cold storage and rapid transit enable the restaurant | keeper of to-day to draw on the gard ems of the South, the woods of the North and the ranges of the west for his supplies. Electric lights and elect ric fans help to make the restaurant attractive and keep it cool. If the building includes the latest architecu- ral wrinkles, the air breathed by the diners is filtered and guaranteed to be as pure as the spring water served on the tables. And the restaurant keep CT has the telephone
 What we would do nowadays with out the telephone said a restaurant keeper the other day, ''is hard to im- agine. Its the one thing in this day of big crowds and long bills of fare that enables us to keep things moving without having either to overstock the larder in advance or try to persuade our patrons to take something else just as good when there's an unusual 1y hard run on some special article And we can't tell when there's going to be such a run. Lobsters, for ex- ample. Sometimes we won't sell a boiled lobster for half a day, and then again we may get calls enough in an hour to make us see the finish of the stock that we procured in the morning
 That's where the telephone comes in
 for it's as good as being next door to the market, and whenever we see any thing running out it's a mere matter of pressing the button, so to speak and the provision dealer does the rest within fifteen or twenty minutes.
 
 this enormous daily table for it's thous ands of guests varies with different restaurant-keepers, the main plan oi campaign is very similar. The restau-
 rant man lays out his bill of fare fol
 a week in advance, very much as ar orderly housekeeper might do for 8
 small family-with the marked differ. 'ence that he considers every seasonablt
 edible, and must lay his plans in ac'
 cordance with market prices and a gen
 eral knowledge of what humanity al
 large will consider tempting. Beef, O
 course, is a standby, one well-knoWr
 restaurant consuming about three tons of beef weekly in summer and more il
 winter. Flour, for bread, cakes, pie! and various other purposes, is, O.
 course, another commodity that i' } readily and periodically provided for.
 But after these and few other sta , pie articles are settled, the restauran
 man is plunged into a maze of possi bilities and probabilities-the who'll
 question of vegetables, fruits and es
 pecially milk, being more or less de
 pendent upon the weather of a. day that has not yet developed. The bil | of fare has been so arranged that i I covers all possible s.conditions, but jus z what part of it will be most seriousl, 5 attacked by the devouring multitud
 is the unknown quantity in the res taurant keepers eqtation-and hi
 profits are very largely based on no t ordering more of any one thing thai
 will be eaten within fixed period. r Aside from the big order twice 8 weel g of food articles that will keep in goot
 condition for several days, the restau . rant man is daily marketer; some . times in fact, doing has entire day I marketing each morning. In some case = he goes to the market in person, ant
 in others he telephones his entire or = der Markets are the first places opel
 for retail business in a large city. An ' the restaurant man is one of the yer. earliest citizens to get downtown t. }, business. Six o'clock finds him start = ing his round of the different depart
 ments of the restaurant, taking stocl - of their different needs and making III
 his market list. Seven o'clock is likel.
 to find him in communication with hi