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 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.
Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc., often known simply as Chipotle, is an American chain of fast casual restaurants in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and France, specializing in tacos and Mission burritos that are made to order in front of the customer. Its name derives from chipotle, the Nahuatl name for a smoked and dried jalapeño chili pepper.
Quiz Holdings, LLC, doing business as Quiznos, is an American franchised fast-food restaurant based in Denver, Colorado, that specializes in offering toasted submarine sandwiches. It was founded in 1981 by Jimmy Lambatos and sold to Rick and Richard Schaden ten years later, before growing to nearly 5,000 restaurants afterwards. As of 2013, Quiznos was the second-largest submarine sandwich shop chain in North America, behind Subway. A 2016 survey indicated that Quiznos was the ninth-largest submarine sandwich shop chain based on sales. The publications Restaurant Business and Mashed.com reported in mid-2018 that Quiznos had only 400 locations remaining by 2017 after a high of 4,700 locations in 2007 just a decade earlier, while Money reported in May 2018 that Quiznos had 1,500 locations across the U.S.
A cafeteria, sometimes called a canteen outside the U.S., 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 Latin American Spanish, where it had and still has the meaning "coffeehouse".
Panera Bread Company 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 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.
Atlanta Bread Company is a privately owned American chain of bakery-café fast casual restaurants with 18 locations in 4 states. Its headquarters are in Smyrna, Georgia, a suburb northwest of Atlanta. Offerings include bakery items, pasta, salads, sandwiches, soups, and specialty drinks.
Casa Bonita is a former chain of Mexican-themed "eatertainment" restaurants which originated in Oklahoma City. The last restaurant in the former chain is located in Lakewood, Colorado, at the JCRS ) Shopping Center, now known as the Lamar Station Plaza. The building is open for tours only, after the State of Colorado ordered all restaurants in the state to close in March 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Einstein Bros. Bagels is an American chain that specializes in bagels and coffee. In 1996, Berkeley-based Noah's Bagels was bought out by Einstein Bros. Manhattan-based New World Coffee, which bought out Manhattan Bagel in 1998, bought out Einstein Bros. in 2000 post-bankruptcy.
Qdoba Mexican Eats ( kew-DOH-bə) is a chain of fast casual restaurants in the United States and Canada serving Mexican-style cuisine. After spending 15 years as a wholly owned subsidiary of Jack in the Box, the company was sold to a consortium of funds led by Apollo Global Management in March 2018. At the time of the sale in 2018, Qdoba had more than 700 locations in 47 states, the District of Columbia and Canada.
Fool's Gold Loaf is a sandwich made by the Colorado Mine Company, a restaurant in Denver, Colorado. It consists of a single warmed, hollowed-out loaf of bread filled with the contents of one jar of creamy peanut butter, one jar of grape jelly, and a pound of bacon.
One World Everybody Eats (OWEE) was a nonprofit community kitchen and is a foundation based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Its motto was "a hand up, not a hand out." The community kitchen concept is a restaurant based on a gift economy, allowing patrons to "pay what they can" and serving all members of the community regardless of their ability to pay. The Cafe incorporated volunteer and common-effort aspects similar to those of a community garden. The organization's stated goal was to provide all who eat high quality, all natural, simple food and to ask patrons to give fairly in exchange so that all could partake.
Pay what you can (PWYC) is a non-profit or for-profit business model which does not depend on set prices for its goods, but instead asks customers to pay what they feel the product or service is worth to them. It is often used as a promotional tactic, but can also be the regular method of doing business. It is a variation on the gift economy and cross-subsidization, in that it depends on reciprocity and trust to succeed.
Pay what you want is a pricing strategy where buyers pay their desired amount for a given commodity. This amount can sometimes include zero. A minimum (floor) price may be set, and/or a suggested price may be indicated as guidance for the buyer. The buyer can select an amount higher or lower than the standard price for the commodity. Many common PWYW models set the price prior to a purchase, but some defer price-setting until after the experience of consumption. PWYW is a buyer-centered form of participatory pricing, also referred to as co-pricing.
Paradise Bakery & Café is a Scottsdale, Arizona-based chain of bakery–café quick casual restaurants predominantly located in the western and southwestern United States. It was independently established in 1976; as of 2009, it is wholly owned by Panera Bread. As of early 2012, it operates 60 stores in 9 states.
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.
A meal is an eating occasion that takes place at a certain time and includes prepared food. The names used for specific meals in English vary, depending on the speaker's culture, the time of day, or the size of the meal.
The soup and sandwich combination meal consists of a soup accompanied by a sandwich. It has been a popular meal in the United States since the 1920s. Some U.S. restaurant chains specialize in the meal, and it has been mass-produced as a prepared frozen meal.
