Free lunch

A free lunch is a sales enticement that offers a meal at no cost in order to attract customers and increase revenues from other
offerings. It was a tradition once common in saloons in many places in the United States, with the phrase appearing in U.S. literature
from about 1870 to the 1920s. These establishments included a "free" lunch, varying from rudimentary to quite elaborate, with the
purchase of at least one drink. These free lunches were typically worth far more than the price of a single drink.[1] The saloon-keeper
relied on the expectation that most customers would buy more than one drink, and that the practice would build patronage for other
times of day.

Free food or drink is sometimes supplied in contemporary times, often bygambling establishments such ascasinos.

The saying "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch" refers to this custom, meaning that things which appear to be free are always
paid for in some way.

Contents
History
Free-lunch fiend
Controversies
See also
References

History
In 1875, The New York Times wrote of elaborate free lunches as a "custom peculiar to the Crescent City" (New Orleans), saying, "In
every one of the drinking saloons which fill the city a meal of some sort is served free every day. The custom appears to have
prevailed long before the war.... I am informed that there are thousands of men in this city who live entirely on the meals obtained in
this way." As described by this reporter,

A free lunch-counter is a great leveler ofclasses, and when a man takes up a position before one of them he must give
up all hope of appearing either dignified or consequential. In New-Orleans all classes of the people can be seen
partaking of these free meals and pushing and scrambling to be helped a second time. [At one saloon] six men were
engaged in preparing drinks for the crowd that stood in front of the counter. I noticed that the price charged for every
kind of liquor was fifteen cents, punches and cobblers costing no more than a glass ofale.

The repast included "immense dishes of butter," large baskets of bread, "a monster silver boiler filled with a most excellent oyster
soup," "a round of beef that must have weighed at least forty pounds," vessels filled with potatoes, stewed mutton, stewed tomatoes,
and macaroni à la Français. The proprietor said that the patrons included "at least a dozen old fellows who come here every day, take
one fifteen cent drink, eat a dinner which would have cost them $1 in a restaurant, and then complain that the beef is tough or the
potatoes watery."[1] ($0.15 in 1875 is equivalent to $3.34 in 2017; $1 in 1875 is equivalent to $22.28 in 2017)

Free-lunch fiend
The nearly indigent "free-lunch fiend" was a recognized social type. An 1872 New York Times story about "loafers and free-lunch
men" who "toil not, neither do they spin, yet they 'get along,'" visiting saloons, trying to bum drinks from strangers; "should this
inexplicable lunch-fiend not happen to be called to drink, he devours whatever he can, and, while the bartender is occupied, tries to
escape unnoticed."[2]

In American saloon bars from the late 19th century until Prohibition, bouncers had, in addition to their role of removing drunks who
were too intoxicated to keep buying drinks, fighters, and troublemakers, the unusual role of protecting the saloon's free buffet. To
attract business, "...many saloons lured customers with offers of a "free lunch"—usually well salted to inspire drinking, and the
[3]
saloon "bouncer" was generally on hand to discourage [those with too] hearty appetites".

The custom was well-developed in San Francisco. An 1886 story on the fading of the days of the 1849 California Gold Rush calls
"the free lunch fiend the only landmark of the past." It asks "How do all these idle people live" and asserts, "It is the free lunch
system that keeps them alive. Take away that peculiarly California institution and they would all starve."[4] Rudyard Kipling, writing
in 1891, noted how he

came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food
from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you
wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even
[5]
though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts.

A 1919 novel compared a war zone to the free lunch experience by saying "the shells and shrapnels was flyin round and over our
heads thicker than hungrybums around a free lunch counter."[6]

Controversies
The temperance movement opposed the free lunch as promoting the consumption of alcohol. An 1874 history of the movement
writes:

In the cities, there are prominent rooms on fashionable streets that hold out the sign "Free Lunch." Does it mean that
some [philanthropist]... has gone systematically to work setting out tables... placing about them a score of the most
beautiful and winning young ladies... hiring a band of music? Ah, no!... there are men who do all this in order to hide
the main feature of their peculiar institution. Out of sight is a well-filled bar, which is the centre about which all these
other things are made to revolve. All the gathered fascinations and attractions are as so many baits to allure men into
the net that is spread for them. Thus consummate art plies the work of death, and virtue, reputation, and every good
are sacrificed at these worse thanMoloch shrines.[7]

A number of writers, however, suggest that the free lunch actually performed a social relief function. Reformer William T. Stead
commented that in winter in 1894 the suffering of the poor in need of food

would have been very much greater had it not been for the help given by the labor unions to their members and for an
agency which, without pretending to be of much account from a charitable point of view, nevertheless fed more
hungry people in Chicago than all the other agencies, religious, charitable, and municipal, put together. I refer to the
Free Lunch of the saloons. There are from six to seven thousand saloons in Chicago. In one half of these a free lunch
is provided every day of the week.

He states that "in many cases the free lunch is really a free lunch," citing an example of a saloon which did not insist on a drink
purchase, although commenting that this saloon was "better than its neighbors." Stead cites a newspaper's estimate that the saloon
keepers fed 60,000 people a day and that this represented a contribution of about $18,000 a week toward the relief of the destitute in
Chicago.[8]
In 1896, the New York State legislature passed the Raines law which was intended to regulate liquor traffic. Among its many
provisions, one forbade the sale of liquor unless accompanied by food; another outlawed the free lunch. In 1897, however, it was
amended to allow free lunches again.[9]

See also
Buffet
Happy hour
National School Lunch Act
No Free Lunch (organization)
No free lunch in search and optimization
Oslo breakfast, the free breakfast that replaced a free lunch
Pending Meal
Potluck
TANSTAAFL
The Free Lunch Is Over (computing)
Western saloon

References
1. "Free Lunch in the South." The New Y ork Times, Feb 20, 1875, p. 4. Re value of the lunch,this source speaks of
patrons who "take one fifteen cent drink [and] eat a dinner which would have cost them $1 in a restaurant."
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1875/02/20/82755928.pdf
2. "The Loafer and Free-Lunch Men;" The New Y
ork Times, June 30, 1872, p. 6
3. Drinking in America: A History - Search for Consensus: Drinking and the W
ar Against Pluralism, 1860-1920(http://w
ww.hoboes.com/Politics/Prohibition/Notes/Drinking/) – Lender, Mark Edward & Martin, James Kirby, The Free Press,
New York, 1982
4. "Old Things Passing Away," The New York Times, March 5, 1886, p. 2
5. Kipling, Rudyard (1930).American Notes. Standard Book Company. (published in book form in 1930, based on
essays which appeared in periodicals in 1891)
American Notes by Rudyard Kiplingat Project Gutenberg
6. Barney Stone (1919). Love Letters of a Rookie to Julie. The Sherwood Company.
Love Letters of a Rookie to Julie by Barney Stoneat Project Gutenberg
7. Stebbins, Jane E.; T. A. H. Brown (1874). Fifty Years History of the Temperance Cause: Intemperance the Great
National Curse. Hartford, Connecticut: L. Stebbins., p. 133 (https://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC04396205&id
=u8dQFo3yQzwC&pg=RA3-PA133&vq=%22free+lunch%22&as_brr=1)
8. Stead, William T. (1894). If Christ Came to Chicago. Laird & Lee., pp. 139–140 (https://books.google.com/books?vid
=OCLC02495421&id=olqCOpl4SWoC&pg=PA139&as_brr=1)
9. "Revolt in Clubdom; Probability of Passage of Amendments to Raines Law Causes Consternation; Free Lunch to
Come Back." The Boston Globe, April 9, 1897, p. 12

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