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Andrew F. Smith

Diners

Appears in
Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America
Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America

By Andrew F. Smith

Published 2004

  • About

In 1872, a street vendor from Providence, Rhode Island, named Walter Scott converted a horse-drawn freight wagon into a self-contained food-service facility. Noting that most restaurants closed in the early evening, Scott parked his wagon outside the offices of the Providence Journal, dispensing simple hot meals, sandwiches, pie, and hot coffee. His immediate success sparked a growing number of competitors and an industry of constructing such wagons for operation by others.

Observing Scott’s operation on a rainy evening in 1880 inspired Samuel Messer Jones of Worcester, Massachusetts, to start his own business building larger wagons that provided indoor seating, thus also establishing that city as the birthplace of the diner-building industry. His new business constructed and operated a small fleet of wagons serving late-night shift workers, agricultural fairs, and other public events. Subsequent Worcester entrepreneurs Charles H. Palmer and T. H. Buckley, Charlie Gemme, and others constructed larger and increasingly ornate wagons for sale to others to operate.

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