Fast Food That Won the West

In 1946, when Judy Garland starred in a movie called “The Harvey Girls,” no one had to explain the title to the film-going public. The Harvey Girls were the young women who waited tables at the Fred Harvey restaurant chain, and they were as familiar in their day as Starbucks baristas are today.

In many of the dusty railroad towns out West in the late 1880s and early decades of the 1900s, there was only one place to get a decent meal, one place to take the family for a celebration, one place to eat when the train stopped to load and unload: a Fred Harvey restaurant. And the owner’s decision to import an all-female waitstaff meant that his restaurants offered up one more important and hard-to-find commodity in cowboy country: wives.

It was a brilliant formula, and for a long time Fred Harvey’s name was synonymous in America with good food, efficient service and young women. Today, though, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone aware of the prominent role Harvey played in civilizing the West and raising America’s dining standards. His is one of those household names now stashed somewhere up in the attic.

In “Appetite for America,” Stephen Fried aims to give Fred Harvey his due, making an impressive case for this Horatio Alger tale written in mashed potatoes and gravy. Fred Harvey restaurants grew up with the railroads in the American West beginning in the 1870s, with opulent dining rooms in major train stations and relatively luxurious eating spots at more remote railroad outposts. Eventually, the Fred Harvey brand spread to 65 restaurants and lunch counters, 60 dining cars and a dozen large Harvey-owned hotels. And Harvey understood that the reputation of his brand depended on his own personal standards for excellence—which is why he called his company simply “Fred Harvey,” not Fred Harvey Co. or Harvey Inc.

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