1950s Restaurant Portion Sizes

Some questions for those old enough to remember visiting restaurants in the 1950s or earlier:

I was reading an article on how food portion sizes have increased over the decades. One example given was McDonalds in the 1950s when the only burger on their menu was what is now considered their small hamburger that has a 1.6 ounce beef patty and is mostly sold to children as part of a Happy Meal. (The quarter pounder, which today is the starting size for most fast food burgers, did not appear on McDonald's menu until 1972). In the 1950s the only size of french fries McDonalds offered is what is now the small size. The only size soda that McDonalds offered in the 1950s was 7 ounces - verses 12 ounces today for their small size and 32 ounces for the large.

For those who remember that period - was this hamburger size typically of most fast food/drive-type places? Or were McDonalds hamburgers smaller that most other places? Does anybody recall what an adult would have typically ordered at a McDonalds or similar place? Would they have only ordered one burger - or would they have ordered multiple burgers as people do with White Castle where the burgers are tiny?

Also, do you recall what portion sizes at other, non-fast food type restaurants were like back then compared with today?

As someone much younger, the portion sizes of the old McDonalds sounds very foreign to me. Personally, if I ordered a small hamburger, a small french fry and 7 ounces of pop, not only would that NOT satisfy my mealtime appetite, I would probably walk out hungrier than I was when I went in. I am old enough to remember the Quarter Pounder being the largest item on McDonald's menu - and I don't consider that burger to be particularly satisfying if I am at all hungry. That's actually one of the reasons I avoid fast food restaurants - to eat enough to satisfy my appetite would involve a LOT of calories.

Same goes for the old 6 ounce bottles of soda which were once the standard size. If I am thirsty, 6 ounces is NOT going to do it - and all that sugar would likely make me even thirstier. Which makes me curious - did people back then drink soda as a means to actually quench thirst? Or was it more of a treat - in the same way candy is?

By the way, the hamburger at McDonalds was 15 cents - which, comparing 1955 dollars with today's would be about $1.27 in today's money (as determined by this handy tool: [www.aier.org] ) The french fries were 10 cents or 85 cents in today's dollars. And the soda - your choice of orange, Coke or root beer - was also 10 cents.

I grew up in Houston, where a local chain of drive ins "owned" name of McDonalds until about the early '70s. My 1st memory of Mickey Dees is from the late '60s, when I was stationed in California. If I'm remembering right, hamburgers were 19 cents (cheeseburgers 24 cents), fries were 12 or 15 cents & Cokes a dime, or maybe 15 cents - for a 12 ounce cup. Never considered it a real "meal", but usually got two burgers, two fries & a coke was what I'd get.

The Houston McDonalds chain of the '50s & '60s had much bigger (and better) burgers & lots of other food (and beer!) served by car hops. Mickey Dees was a quick, cheap alternative to a real meal - as it still is, in my opinion.

Most burger joints that I remember from the 50s had considerably larger burgers than those originally served at McDonalds, in fact, most served a small and large size burger with the small still being considerably heftier than a McDonalds.

I remember Whataburgers in the very early '60's when I visited my grandparents in Corpus Christi (who lived on Omaha Dr., right around the corner from the first permanent location on Leopard Dr. at Omaha) - they were quite large, larger even than today, I think, and a bit larger than what you got at places like Charco's and the Prince of Hamburgers, which were both right down Garland Rd. from where we lived in Dallas at that time.

I first encountered McD's while in high school (1968-1972) and we frequented the location at NW Hwy/Abrams. The Big Macs of that era were smaller in diameter than the old-fashioned single-patty burgers most places had (actually about the same diameter, IIRC, as the similar concept Kip's Big Boy (which, of course, was a much better burger) but they lacked the good-tasting greasy buns that were actually brushed with butter and put on the grill along with the meat patty. Still, McD's was relatively new, so that's where we went most of the time, and Jack-in-the-Box on NW and Ferndale as well as the one in Casa View.

Can't believe my crowd at the time actually avoided Keller's and the Charco's on NW., as well as the Dairy-Ette on Ferguson. Guess those were the "old" places.

The portions weren't large like they are now but until I was about 5 it wasn't uncommon for my mom to order a cheeseburger and fries, which we'd split. When we lived in East Dallas this most often was at Harold's Drug Store, which my mom always called Doc Harold's. In Oak Cliff there was diner/drive-in on Davis in the Barnett/Ravinia area whose name I don't remember - perhaps Floyd's or Lloyds????

This would have been around 1959-60.

The first time I saw a hamburger comparable in size to what we have now was at Jamie's Gourmet Hamburgers circa 1970.

Fountain drinks probably averaged 8 ounces prior to the 1970s too.

My father, speaking of the period of the late 1920s, said that in his home town the local cafe sold hamburgers for a dime or two for fifteen cents. Most people, he said, opted for the latter. My own unscientific belief is that "french fries" were a fairly late addition to the menu in cafes in this part of the world. I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Dearmore didn't even offer fried potatoes.

When my dad managed a number of Dairy Queens back in the early 1970's, my grandma worked for him and came up with the idea of selling a meatless burger. Just a bun, lettuce, tomato, onions and dressing for 5cents.Tthey were selling like crazy till my dad sussed out that the competitor was buying them up, adding his own beef patties, and making a tidy profit!

Hope

I don't remember ever seeing a McDonalds until sometime in the early 70's. We would often go to the Burger King on Davis (which had the most wonderful neon sign) because it was on the way to the Bronco Bowl , so it wasn't until they built the McD on Jefferson that I started going there regularly. When I was in high school (Adamson, class of '76), we would sneak off campus for lunch and McD was a favorite spot. I would always get a cheeseburger, small fries and small coke. It cost less than a dollar so it was a pretty good deal. I also remember many of my friends singing the Big Mac jingle (Two all-beef patties...) to get free lunch. If you recited the jingle in a certain number of seconds, they gave you a free Big Mac. My favorite burgers were from several drive-ins and, yes, they were much larger than McDonald's basic burger. Mr. Hamburger was a drive-in on Industrial that has big burgers on poppy seed buns - a personal favorite. There was an A & W Root Beer stand out in Grand Prairie on Main that had big, terrific burgers and frozen mug root beer. Rockefellers and the Kresge's lunch counter both had big, toasted bun burgers that were quite large compared to McD.

Interestingly, Krystal Hamburgers opened a shop on Westmoreland at Illinois sometime in the late 60's-early 70's. Of course, their hamburgers were SUPPOSED to be small but my dad was mystified as to why anyone would want to spend money on a burger that tiny. I clearly remember him fuming in the car about a place that expected him to buy a whole bag of hambugers just to have a meal. I'm guessing my dad wasn't the only one unclear on the concept and they didn't last too long.

As for the 6 oz Cokes in the glass bottles, they were and still are my favorite. My mama did not encourage us to drink sodas as a thirst quencher when I was growing up and, as a treat, that small size was just right for me. When Coke started being sold in the "king size" bottles, my mama would buy them but make my sister and I split them when we drank one. My sister always tried to cheat and give me the "smaller" half



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/21/2012 03:34PM by altozwei.

A thought on "how big is a hamburger" question: the usual hamburger sold in the average cafe in north Texas in the second half of the 1950s was a quarter. The earliest hamburgers from McDonalds and similar national chains in the mid-1960s were those small ones at fifteen cents. From this you can form some idea of the relative size of the typical Texas cafe burger and those chain ones. It really is apples and oranges, tho both were probably realistically priced.

According to the CDC sizes for burgers, drinks and fries have essentially tripled:

[grist.org]

This link was shared on a forum primarily about 1950s-era young adult books and the discussion was about how the characters - in addition to three meals a day - usually stopped at a soda fountain on their way home from school for a burger and fries and soft drink or a "malted" and yet none ever had a weight problem.

When I was a child in the late 1950s to mid-1960s I saw this for myself when in drugstoresin the afternoons. Depending upon where we lived this ranged from the Rexall in the Westmorelands Shopping Center in Oak Cliff to Harold's and Beacon's in East Dallas and I don't recall seeing any of the teens who ate like this being overweight.

The change in the size of people has been thought to be related to hormones and other things being added to the food during processing in addition the sedentary lifestyle most folks lead now.

Hope

[[b]b]two all beef patties,special sauce,lettuce pickles cheese onions on a sesame seed bun correct me if i am wrong[/b][/b]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/07/2012 06:28PM by rojinks.

Absolutely correct! BUT can you say it in 10 seconds or less? I think that was the requirement to get the free burger.

The video!

[www.youtube.com]