Blue Boar Cafeterias

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Blue Boar Cafeterias was a chain of cafeteria-style restaurants based in Louisville, Kentucky. The first Blue Boar was opened in 1931. [1] Once a major presence in metro Louisville, it is still remembered for its old downtown location on Fourth Avenue near Broadway. During the 1930s, Guion (Guyon) Clement Earle (1870–1940) served as advertising manager. He was the brother-in-law of Frank Kennicott Reilly (1863–1932) owner of the Reilly & Lee publishing firm of Chicago. Mr. Earle was well known to the customers of the Blue Boar Restaurant through the witty jottings he created which appeared on the Blue Boar's menus. A decade earlier, Mr. Earle had served as the Superintendent of Loveman, Joseph & Loeb in Birmingham, Alabama, where he published a literary review entitled "The Bookworm".

Louisville, Kentucky City in Kentucky

Louisville is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 29th most-populous city in the United States. It is one of two cities in Kentucky designated as first-class, the other being Lexington, the state's second-largest city. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border.

Louisville metropolitan area Geographic region surrounding Louisville, KY, USA

The Louisville metropolitan area or Kentuckiana, also known as the Louisville–Jefferson County, Kentucky–Indiana, metropolitan statistical area, is the 45th largest metropolitan statistical area (MSA) in the United States. The principal city is Louisville, Kentucky.

Downtown Louisville central business district of Louisville, Kentucky

Downtown Louisville is the largest central business district in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the urban hub of the Louisville, Kentucky Metropolitan Area. Its boundaries are the Ohio River to the north, Hancock Street to the east, York and Jacob Streets to the south, and 9th Street to the west. As of 2015, the population of Downtown Louisville was 4,700, although this does not include directly surrounding areas such as Old Louisville, Butchertown, NuLu,and Phoenix Hill.

Contents

Early history

The Blue Boar chain shared common ownership with Britling Cafeterias in Birmingham and Memphis, and B&W Cafeterias in Nashville. Blue Boar was the last of these chains to close. At one point, there were 21 open Blue Boar locations in Louisville, Lexington, Memphis, Nashville, Little Rock, and Cleveland. [2]

Memphis, Tennessee City in Tennessee, United States

Memphis is a city located along the Mississippi River in southwestern Shelby County, Tennessee, United States. The 2017 city population was 652,236, making Memphis the largest city on the Mississippi River, the second most populous city in Tennessee, as well as the 26th largest city in the United States. Greater Memphis is the 42nd largest metropolitan area in the United States, with a population of 1,348,260 in 2017. The city is the anchor of West Tennessee and the greater Mid-South region, which includes portions of neighboring Arkansas and Mississippi. Memphis is the seat of Shelby County, the most populous county in Tennessee. As one of the most historic and cultural cities of the southern United States, the city features a wide variety of landscapes and distinct neighborhoods.

Lexington, Kentucky Consolidated city-county in Kentucky, United States

Lexington, consolidated with Fayette County and often denoted as Lexington-Fayette, is the second-largest city in Kentucky and the 60th-largest city in the United States. By land area, Lexington is the 28th largest city in the United States. Known as the "Horse Capital of the World," it is the heart of the state's Bluegrass region. It has a nonpartisan mayor-council form of government, with 12 council districts and three members elected at large, with the highest vote-getter designated vice mayor. In the 2018 U.S. Census Estimate, the city's population was 323,780 anchoring a metropolitan area of 516,697 people and a combined statistical area of 760,528 people.

Cleveland City in Ohio

Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio, and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. The city proper has a population of 383,793, making it the 52nd-largest city in the United States and the second-largest city in Ohio. Greater Cleveland is ranked as the 33rd-largest metropolitan area in the U.S., with 2,057,009 people in 2018. A Gamma + city, Cleveland anchors the Cleveland–Akron–Canton Combined Statistical Area, which had a population of 3,515,646 in 2010 and is ranked 15th in the United States.

As with its corporate siblings, Blue Boar was a Louisville institution, best known for its flagship location downtown. Its heyday was the 1930s through the 1950s. The company expanded into suburban locations in the 1960s and 1970s, including a location in "The Mall", now called the Mall St. Matthews, which was the first enclosed shopping mall in the state. (This cafeteria later moved to Oxmoor Center, a newer mall just across the Watterson Expressway.)

Mall St. Matthews

Mall St. Matthews is a Louisville, Kentucky shopping mall located at 5000 Shelbyville Road in the eastern suburb of St. Matthews.

Oxmoor Center

Oxmoor Center is a Louisville, Kentucky shopping mall located at 7900 Shelbyville Road in eastern Louisville.

Interstate 264 is a partial loop around the city of Louisville, Kentucky, south of the Ohio River. A child route of I-64, it is signed as the Georgia Davis Powers Expressway for its first eight miles from its western terminus at I-64/US-150 to US-31W/US-60; and as the Watterson Expressway for the remainder of its length from US-31W/US-60 to its northeastern terminus at I-71. It is 22.93 miles (36.90 km) in length, and runs an open circle around central Louisville, Kentucky. The highway begins four miles (6 km) west of downtown at I-64 just east of the Sherman Minton Bridge which links Southern Indiana with Kentucky as it crosses the Ohio River. The interstate ends approximately six miles northeast of downtown Louisville, where it connects to I-71.

There was also a Blue Boar cafeteria located on Euclid Avenue in downtown Cleveland in the 1930s. It is unclear whether there was any connection between that location and the Louisville company. According to one source, it was patterned after Louisville's Blue Boar. [3]

Euclid Avenue (Cleveland) street in Ohio, United States of America

Euclid Avenue is a major street in Cleveland, Ohio. It runs northeasterly from Public Square in Downtown Cleveland, through the cities of East Cleveland, Euclid and Wickliffe, to the suburb of Willoughby as a part of U.S. Route 20 and U.S. Route 6. The street passes Playhouse Square, University Circle, Cleveland State University, the Cleveland Clinic, Severance Hall, Case Western Reserve University’s Maltz Performing Arts Center, Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals Case Medical Center. The HealthLine bus rapid transit line runs in designated bus lanes in the median of Euclid Avenue from Public Square to Louis Stokes Station at Windermere in East Cleveland.

Decline

Facing increased competition from fast food outlets and changing lifestyles, the chain went into decline, and gradually closed down. Many of its locations were near locally owned department stores, and faltered after those stores closed. In 1995, the chain closed its last remaining location outside of Louisville, in Lexington's Turfland Mall and in Clarksville, Indiana. It also closed its Gardiner Lane Shopping Center store in 1995, which had been open since 1959. After 1995, only four locations remained open. [4] One of the final locations, in a shopping center at the intersection of Eastern Parkway and Preston Highway, closed in 1999. [2]

Fast food food prepared and served in a small amount of time

Fast food is a type of mass-produced food designed for commercial resale and with a strong priority placed on "speed of service" versus other relevant factors involved in culinary science. Fast food was originally created as a commercial strategy to accommodate the larger numbers of busy commuters, travelers and wage workers who often did not have the time to sit down at a public house or diner and wait for their meal. By making speed of service the priority, this ensured that customers with strictly limited time were not inconvenienced by waiting for their food to be cooked on-the-spot. For those with no time to spare, fast food became a multibillion-dollar industry. In 2018, the fast food industry was worth an estimated $570 billion globally.

Turfland Mall was an enclosed shopping mall located in Lexington, Kentucky, United States. Opened in 1967 as the first shopping mall in Lexington, the mall closed in 2008.

Clarksville, Indiana Town in Indiana, United States

Clarksville is a town in Clark County, Indiana, United States, along the Ohio River and is a part of the Louisville Metropolitan area. The population was 21,724 at the 2010 census. The town was founded in 1783 by early resident George Rogers Clark at the only seasonal rapids on the entire Ohio River, it is the oldest American town in the former Northwest Territory. The town is home to the Colgate clock, one of the largest clocks in the world and the Falls of the Ohio State Park, home to the world's largest exposed Devonian period fossil bed.

The last location in Louisville, in the Southland Terrace shopping center, closed in 2003. [5] Unlike Britling, it had stayed with the cafeteria format rather than converting to an all-you-can-eat buffet format.

Buffet system of serving meals in which food is placed in a public area where the diners generally serve themselves

A buffet is 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.

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Britling Cafeterias was a chain of cafeteria-style restaurants, originating in Birmingham, Alabama. During the late 1920s, Britling opened three cafeterias in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. The Britling chain in Memphis, along with B&W Cafeterias in Nashville, Tennessee and Blue Boar Cafeterias in Louisville, Kentucky, were under common ownership in their latter years. All have now closed.

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References

  1. Encyclopedia of Louisville; ed. John E. Kleber; p. 98
  2. 1 2 Pike, Bill (1999-01-15). "Patrons, workers saddened by closing of Blue Boar on Eastern Parkway". Courier-Journal. pp. 3B.
  3. "Blue Boar Cafeteria - Main Dining Room :: Postcards of Cleveland".
  4. Wade, Scott (1995-09-26). "Blue Boar at Gardiner Lane Closes". Courier-Journal. pp. B8.
  5. After 72 years, Blue Boar name will disappear; Owner switches cafeteria to Gilley's Grill; The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY); July 24, 2003