A restaurant is a business that prepares and serves food and drinks to customers. Meals are generally served and eaten on the premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and food delivery services. Restaurants vary greatly in appearance and offerings, including a wide variety of cuisines and service models ranging from inexpensive fast-food restaurants and cafeterias to mid-priced family restaurants, to high-priced luxury establishments.
A fast-food restaurant, also known as a quick-service restaurant (QSR) within the industry, is a specific type of restaurant that serves fast-food cuisine and has minimal table service. The food served in fast-food restaurants is typically part of a "meat-sweet diet", offered from a limited menu, cooked in bulk in advance and kept hot, finished and packaged to order, and usually available for take away, though seating may be provided. Fast-food restaurants are typically part of a restaurant chain or franchise operation that provides standardized ingredients and/or partially prepared foods and supplies to each restaurant through controlled supply channels. The term "fast food" was recognized in a dictionary by Merriam–Webster in 1951.
A sandwich is a food typically consisting of vegetables, sliced cheese or meat, placed on or between slices of bread, or more generally any dish wherein bread serves as a container or wrapper for another food type. The sandwich began as a portable, convenient finger food in the Western world, though over time it has become prevalent worldwide.
A cafeteria, sometimes called a canteen outside the U.S. and Canada, is a type of food service location in which there is little or no waiting staff table service, whether a restaurant or within an institution such as a large office building or school; a school dining location is also referred to as a dining hall or lunchroom. Cafeterias are different from coffeehouses, although the English term came from the Spanish term cafetería, which carries the same meaning.
Panera Bread is an American chain store of bakery-café fast casual restaurants with over 2,000 locations, all of which are in the United States and Canada. Its headquarters are in Sunset Hills, Missouri.
A buffet can be either a sideboard or a system of serving meals in which food is placed in a public area where the diners serve themselves. A form of service à la française, buffets are offered at various places including hotels, restaurants, and many social events. Buffet restaurants normally offer all-you-can-eat food for a set price, but some measure prices by weight or by number of dishes. Buffets usually have some or mostly hot dishes, so the term cold buffet has been developed to describe formats lacking hot food. Hot or cold buffets usually involve dishware and utensils, but a finger buffet is an array of foods that are designed to be small and easily consumed only by hand, such as cupcakes, slices of pizza, foods on cocktail sticks, etc.
A lobster roll is a dish native to New England. It is made of lobster meat served on a grilled hot dog-style bun. The filling may also contain butter, lemon juice, salt, and black pepper, with variants made in some parts of New England replacing the butter with mayonnaise. Other versions may contain diced celery or scallion. Potato chips or French fries are the typical side dishes.
A hot dog bun is a type of soft bun shaped specifically to contain a hot dog or another type of sausage.
"Dine and dash" is a popular American phrase for the illegal act of "defrauding an innkeeper" or failing to pay for services with the intent to defraud the owner of a hotel, restaurant, campground, or any other establishment that serves food and/or beverages. In the US, to dine and dash is a form of theft, typically in which a patron or patrons order and consume food and/or beverages from a restaurant or similar establishment with the intent not to pay. The act usually involves the client placing an order for a meal, consuming the meal, and then exiting the establishment before or after being presented with the bill.
McDonald's has been involved in a number of lawsuits and other legal cases in the course of the fast food chain's 70-year history. Many of these have involved trademark issues, but McDonald's has also launched a defamation suit which has been described as "the biggest corporate PR disaster in history".
Restaurants fall into several industry classifications, based upon menu style, preparation methods and pricing, as well as the means by which the food is served to the customer. This article mainly describes the situation in the US, while categorisation differs widely around the world.
Interstate 55 (I-55) in the US state of Missouri runs from the Arkansas state line to the Poplar Street Bridge over the Mississippi River in St. Louis.
McDonald's Corporation is the world's largest chain of fast food restaurants, serving around 68 million customers daily in 119 countries. McDonald's traces its origins to a 1940 restaurant in San Bernardino, California. After expanding within the United States, McDonald's became an international corporation in 1967, when it opened a location in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada. By the end of the 1970s, McDonald's restaurants existed in five of the Earth's seven continents; an African location came in 1992 in Casablanca, Morocco.
Lucy's Cafe was an Italian restaurant located in Hershey, Pennsylvania that was family-owned and operated for more than 75 years. The restaurant's meatballs were from a homemade recipe and were popular throughout the state; they were at one time sold at Hershey Bears hockey games.
Joan's on Third is a specialty food marketplace and restaurant located on Third Street in Los Angeles, California, USA. Joan's is situated in an area popular with Angelenos for its eating and shopping establishments, located between the Beverly Center on La Cienega Boulevard and Farmer's Market at the Grove on Fairfax Avenue.
A suspended meal or pending meal is a meal which people pay for in advance, to be provided to those that request it later. The extra meal that they purchase is suspended; that is, the restaurant will mark down the sum of money and ‘suspend’ the additional meal for the poor. Suspended meals today range from a cup of coffee to a meal set.
Retail food delivery is a courier service in which a restaurant, store, or independent food-delivery company delivers food to a customer. An order is typically made either through a restaurant or grocer's website or mobile app, or through a food ordering company. The delivered items can include entrees, sides, drinks, desserts, or grocery items and are typically delivered in boxes or bags. The delivery person will normally drive a car, but in bigger cities where homes and restaurants are closer together, they may use bikes or motorized scooters.
Uber Eats is an online food ordering and delivery platform launched by Uber in 2014. Couriers deliver meals using cars, scooters, bikes, or on foot. It is operational in over 6,000 cities across 45 countries as of 2021.
The Republic Cafe and Ming Lounge are a Chinese restaurant and bar in Portland, Oregon's Old Town Chinatown, in the United States. The restaurant is one of Portland's oldest, established in 1922, and continues to operate under the Mui family's ownership. Serving Chinese cuisine such as Mongolian beef, General Tso's chicken, chop suey, and egg foo young, the Republic Cafe has been described as a "staple" of the neighborhood and the city's Chinese American history. Celebrities have visited the restaurant which has also seen several longtime employees. Ming Lounge is among the city's oldest bars and has been characterized as "seedy".
