Bickford's (restaurant)

Lunchrooms

Samuel Longley Bickford began his restaurant career in 1902 and was a vice president at the Waldorf System lunchroom chain in New England during the 1910s. In 1921 he established his own quick-lunch Bickford's restaurants in New York, offering modestly priced fare and extended hours. The chain's architect was F. Russell Stuckert, whose father had designed buildings for Horn & Hardart. Bickford's expanded rapidly in the 1920s, with 24 lunchrooms in the New York area and others around Boston, and it acquired Travelers' Lunch, the White Lunch System on the West Coast, and the Hayes Lunch System in Boston, which was renamed Hayes-Bickford.

A company stock offering described the lunchrooms as self-service with a limited bill of fare for maximum equipment use and rapid turnover. A 1964 New York City guidebook noted that breakfast at Bickford's was an old New York custom, serving a torrent of traffic across many shifts.

Expansion

Sam Bickford and his son Harold worked over four decades to expand the cafeteria chain throughout the Northeast, opening branches in New Jersey and Massachusetts. They ultimately opened 85 branches, including drive-in restaurants and locations in Florida, Pennsylvania, and California.

In the 1930s, union conflicts led to vandalism; in 1932 police blamed glaziers union members for damaging plate glass windows at 24 Horn & Hardart and Bickford's restaurants in Manhattan. Harold Bickford was in charge of expanding into Florida and California. By 1959, Bickford's, Inc. had a North-East Coast Division and a South East Coast (M&M Cafeterias, Inc.) and West Coast (Foster's Lunch System, Ltd.) Division.

Evolution

In October 1959, Harold Bickford introduced the Bickford's Pancake House in Peabody, Massachusetts, a specialty family restaurant emphasizing breakfast. Over the next three decades, the Pancake House chain grew to 30 restaurants throughout New England, and by the mid-1990s there were almost 70 Bickford's restaurants in New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. As of 2016, four locations remained in Massachusetts; the Brockton location closed in 2018, the Acton location in 2020, and the Woburn location in October 2024, leaving only the Burlington location in operation as of 2025.

Literary References

Jack Kerouac would sometimes write at Bickford's, a spot he later described in Lonesome Traveler. Allen Ginsberg's Howl captured the Beat Generation's "best minds" sinking all night in the restaurant's submarine light. Herbert Huncke, a key Beat figure, all but lived at the West 42nd Street location.

Photographer Walker Evans shot Bickford's patrons, and Andy Warhol praised its waitresses. The restaurant also turned up in works by Woody Allen and William Styron. Ginsberg, while in San Francisco, frequented a large Foster's cafeteria, where he wrote the first part of Howl in 1954 and made a vow with Peter Orlovsky to be lovers, promising neither would enter heaven without the other.

Did You Know?

• Bickford's and its subsidiaries had trouble staying in business because of rising labor costs, competition from non-union fast food, and rising crime.
• Foster's Cafeterias, a Bickford's subsidiary, were known for Foster's English Muffins, sourdough English muffins sold packaged to take home.
• By 1982, the last two Bickford's in New York were closed.