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Appetite for America: Fred Harvey and the Business of Civilizing the Wild West--One Meal at a Time, by Stephen Fried
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Review
“Part business story, part social history, part family saga, Appetite for America gives us the winning of the West in a whole new mouthwatering way.”—Hampton Sides, author of Blood and Thunder“Appetite for America is the kind of superb non-fiction you don't see anymore—marvelously reported, fluidly written and a remarkable story about a remarkable man who influenced American culture perhaps more than anyone alive past or present. Today he is a footnote, but Stephen Fried brings him alive in a true story as brilliant as it is meticulous as it is compulsively readable.”—Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night LightsFrom the Hardcover edition.
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About the Author
Stephen Fried is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author, and an adjunct professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is the author of Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia (the inspiration for the Emmy-winning film Gia), Appetite for America: Fred Harvey and the Business of Civilizing the Wild West—One Meal at a Time (a New York Times bestseller featured in the PBS documentary The Harvey Girls: Opportunity Bound), Bitter Pills: Inside the Hazardous World of Legal Drugs, The New Rabbi, and the essay collection Husbandry. He is also co-author, with Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy, of A Common Struggle: A Personal Journey through the Past and Future of Mental Illness and Addiction. A two-time winner of the National Magazine Award, Fried has written frequently for Vanity Fair, GQ, The Washington Post Magazine, Rolling Stone, Glamour, and Philadelphia magazine. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, author Diane Ayres.From the Hardcover edition.
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Product details
Paperback: 544 pages
Publisher: Bantam (May 3, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0553383485
ISBN-13: 978-0553383485
Product Dimensions:
6.1 x 1.1 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.7 out of 5 stars
208 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#6,573 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
“Appetite For America†is that rare book that combines the best of a history book and a business book. It’s the story of Fred Harvey, a sickly but iron-willed Englishman who built the first retail empire in America, and the story of the company he founded, also called Fred Harvey (not Fred Harvey, Inc.—just plain Fred Harvey). It’s all fascinating, and offers the reader many accurate business insights as well (although they are not billed as business insights—this is not a navel-gazing self-help “business bookâ€).Fred Harvey arrived in New York in 1853, seeking his fortune, starting as a dishwasher at a New York restaurant. He quickly moved to St. Louis, in many ways then the epicenter of development in the country, running a restaurant with a partner, but the Civil War (and a lazy and thieving partner, the bane of many a businessman) killed his business. He then worked in postal sorting, in the new method of sorting on moving rail cars, then became a ticket agent for a Missouri railroad. And then the railroad asked him to move to Leavenworth, the end of the line—and the jumping-off place for future rail expansion, after the end of the Civil War.Many men sought their fortune and took opportunistic jobs in the growing America of the mid-19th Century. But Fred Harvey was a man who got things done, more than the usual person. Not only did he successfully sell tickets, in a town that initially lacked a railroad, he aggressively expanded his employer’s business. And he expanded into his own side business of selling newspaper ads while he sold tickets. He worked constantly, he improved himself constantly by reading, and he accomplished what he set out to do, unlike most people. All this took a toll on his health, which was not good to begin with. But in those days, even aside from Fred Harvey’s personality, the country was organized around the salutary principle “he who does not work, neither shall he eat.†So he persevered, from necessity, and from his own drive to succeed.He worked his way up, becoming a major freight agent for a larger railroad, based in Chicago. And then, when he was already forty, he saw his opportunity—improving restaurants dedicated to rail passengers, who before dining cars had either had no food, or atrocious food at railroad-run “eating†establishments spaced roughly every 100 miles. Fred Harvey kept his day job, but started a management company with a partner, agreeing with the Kansas Pacific, and then the Santa Fe, railroads to manage food service at their restaurants.What he didn’t do was merely run the same awful restaurants. Instead, from the ground up, he re-invented not just railroad food, but American restaurant food, at a time when chain restaurants did not exist and eating out was never done except when necessity demanded it. He made restaurant food attractive and enviable. Fred Harvey provided the freshest, highest-quality food (particularly coffee, beef, and cigars, delivered by special rail cars). He offered impeccable service, even with the extra complication of intermittent demand as trains came, disgorged hundreds of hungry passengers simultaneously, and went. He was an organizational genius—not because he managed people well, although he did, but because he was a detail man, like the vast majority of successful businesspeople. Fred Harvey demanded perfection from each individual restaurant manager, and he would frequently show up unexpectedly at one of his many restaurants to review performance-and if dissatisfied, he would tear the place settings from a table.Through the 1870s and 1880s he expanded as the Santa Fe expanded, through the entire Southwest, particularly New Mexico and Arizona. His company became very large for the time, and very profitable, and very well known.Gradually, Fred Harvey’s health declined, and he spent much time recuperating in Europe. Daily operation of his business became the task of his son Ford and his chief lieutenant, David Benjamin. Fred Harvey died in 1901, and his son and Benjamin decided to run the business as if Fred Harvey were still alive and at the helm. (That Fred Harvey had set up his will effectively requiring this for ten years probably had something to do with it.) Ford Harvey expanded the company into hotels in the Southwest, including the first hotels around (and in) the Grand Canyon, such as El Tovar. Most of these hotels are still extant today (under the management of the large management company Xanterra). They also got into publishing, selling books and magazines at railroad stations where they had restaurants, and into collecting and displaying large amounts of American Indian art.The family became quite rich, and prominent nationwide (but especially in Kansas City and Chicago). Ford Harvey and David Benjamin faced innumerable obstacles and struggles, which they overcame, from railroad bankruptcies to giant hotel failures to financial panics and depressions to Prohibition. All of these are detailed in “Appetite For America.†Ford, who maintained Fred Harvey’s attention to detail and aggressive competence, kept the family business on track. Ford’s brother, Byron, lived in Chicago and ran the family’s interests there, not particularly well and without charisma or drive. And then Ford died of flu in 1928; Benjamin died in 1933 but had effectively retired years before.Ford’s son Freddy really began the deterioration of the family, prior to Ford’s death, as Freddy became more involved in the business as the heir apparent. No detail man, he preferred womanizing and flying airplanes, and spending the family’s money. Then the Depression, combined with a move to dining cars instead of dining houses, made the Fred Harvey company shutter many restaurant locations. The company struggled further with a lack of leadership after Ford’s death, between Freddy and Byron, and then Freddy managed to kill himself in 1936, by the unwise choice of flying a cutting-edge plane through an ice storm. The family descended into intra-family lawsuits, and Byron presided as caretaker over a declining business.And then, of course, the highways began to eat into the passenger rail business. Howard Johnson was the new restaurant hero of the hungry traveler. World War II gave a bump to the business—but at the fatal cost of ending the quality that had always epitomized the Fred Harvey company. By 1945, the old Fred Harvey was effectively defunct, running a few restaurants in larger train stations, and the Grand Canyon hotels, under the guidance of the Byron Harvey family. Byron Harvey died in 1954, and in 1966 the business was totally divested from the family, with all remnants left becoming effectively unrecognizable. Sic transit.This book isn’t for everyone. It is very detailed and largely based on original historical research. If you want a quick or very light read, or a “business book†with some aphorisms and dubious advice for succeeding in today’s America, this isn’t it.But it is a book that DOES tell you how to succeed in today’s America. Yes, you couldn’t do exactly what Fred Harvey did, even if railroads were still a going concern for passenger traffic. But what Fred Harvey did is what every successful businessperson does. He got things done—endless things, all of them done, and all of them on time. It sounds simple, but most people can’t do it. He was a perfectionist. And he solved endless problems. Then he got up and did it all again. Of course, to succeed in business, you have to have some luck. But success in business requires mostly getting things done, detail work, and solving problems. They seem easy, but they’re not.The other interesting take-away from “Appetite For America†is that it shows what is commonly known and simultaneously always forgotten: the inevitable cycle of every business. Everybody thought railroads would dominate forever, and therefore Fred Harvey would dominate chain restaurants forever. Before Fred Harvey and after Fred Harvey, from steamboat operators to Google and Facebook, every business has seemed mighty and everlasting, until it is not. In the end, they all fall. They fall because times change, they fall because people change, they fall because families change. But in the end, they all fall.
The Heard Museum in Phoenix currently has a special exhibit which centers on Fred Harvey and his unique "brand name," part of the American culture years before Coca Cola. Westerners are likely to have a better sense of Fred Harvey who, in a brilliant negotiation with the Santa Fe Railroad/Railway, delivered on a promise to serve passengers meals in a timely fashion in what can only be described as elegant for its day. In exchange for transporting fresh and luscious foods, the railroad benefitted by assuring its customers of pleasant stops en route. Rather than wolfing down quick snacks on a railroad journey, Harvey guaranteed formal, sit down dining rooms in which splendid food was served by waitstaff in crisp uniforms (after a certain time, waitstaff were all women who were chosen, trained, and housed by the Harvey enterprise; Judy Garland played a Harvey Girl in a film of the same name). When Wild West cowboys wanted to be rowdy and carry their guns in the restaurants, Harvey held firm and reminded them that they use actually had to wear jackets to dine. In fact, Fred Harvey told them he ran the place, that rowdies weren't welcome: "If you don't behave like gentlemen, you can't stay here and you can't come again. Now put up your guns and take a drink with Fred Harvey." And, after Harvey tossed Red John to the floor, he told him he could not swear in the place either. Word got around: the Harvey restaurants and hotels had a standard. WC Fields once said that the buffalo fed enough westerners to get their picture on the nickel, but Fred Harvey fed them so well that he deserved to have his picture on both sides of the dime.Harvey was an immigrant from England in the 1850's and in his 40's, his visionary network took shape, one elegant building at a time. With the emergence of the Gilded Age, fine dining became an expectation of the well heeled traveler. Perhaps an unanticipated consequence of the "nice girls" Harvey hired, trained, and housed was that Harvey also brought lovely ladies to the West (they couldn't wear make up, they wore uniforms, they stayed in nicely appointed rooms, and they were proud of their work). Fried notes that Harvey's methods are still studied in graduate schools of management and marketing. Given the brilliant legacy established by his innovative father, son Ford continued and expanded the vision after his father's death in 1901. One wonders how the childhood shaped the man---we know that Harvey's own father was a tailor who was called into court for his debts.This book is better than the film---for sure. Fried has skillfully written a remarkable chronicle about a man and his family who together helped shape American culture: the culinary experience, travel experience, patriotism (he fed soldiers for free), social generosity (a vignette about two kids and their impoverished mom being the guests of Fred Harvey will move even the stoniest heart), and entrepreneurship with ethics. Happily, the award winning book is well illustrated and well documented. I think just possibly this book was the best read of the past season. Book groups on the serious side might welcome 400 pages worth reading. When the last of the great Harvey houses was shuttered (at La Posdada in Winslow, Arizona), architect Mary Colter was 87 years old; she had been instrumental in the design and implementation of southwestern design---right down to the textiles used on the trains and the china patterns in the restaurants. We somehow wish Colter could know that La Posada is back up and running and the Turquoise Room serves up splendid food and Harvey hospitality even today.
Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Know the southwest pretty well - travelled there and visit a sister who lives in Santa Fe - so Fred Harvey territory is familiar to me, but I never realized the role he and his company played in the "discovery" of the Southwest.Well-written and exhaustively researched, it's filled with history large and small and helps us to understand the contemporary hospitality business.The ending seems quite abrupt after all of the details of the rise of the Fred Harvey empire, but then it does seem that the company just fell apart as passenger rail service died in what seemed like only a decade. Perhaps the interesting bit is the course of a family business, going from Fred Harvey's passion for the details and his commitment to good food and good service to the increasing bickering of the second and third generations - Fred Harvey lived for his business while his children and grandchildren got caught up in the business of living.The succession of a family business depends on how carefully the older generation plans. Fred Harvey was, in his own quirky way, a bit of a genius when it came to passing along his company. Not so for the next generation.Overall, this is a terrific book that provides a clear and compelling sense of how we got from "there" to "here" - everything from good coffee to Southwest or Santa Fe style. Also, the book is about 3/4 as long as it appears to be with pages and pages of acknowledgments (no one goes unthanked) and most enjoyably, pages of recipes from the Harvey House chefs.
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