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Counter Narratives: American and Canadian Feminist Restaurants from 1972 to Present Alex D. Ketchum Karen's Kitchen, 729 West

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Counter Narratives: American and Canadian Feminist Restaurants from 1972 to Present Alex D. Ketchum Karen's Kitchen, 729 West Counter Narratives: American and Canadian Feminist Restaurants from 1972 to Present Alex D. Ketchum Karen’s Kitchen, 729 West Brompton, tel 525 7785. Wed nights only at 7 p.m. – it really is Karen’s own kitchen so be sure to ring up first. Feminist. – Gaia’s Guides (1976)1 The women’s and lesbian travel guidebook, Gaia’s Guide, listed Karen’s Kitchen in the restaurant section for the Chicago area in the 1976 through 1984 annual editions. This short entry speaks to the larger themes and central analytical questions of my paper. In these few, short phrases, the reader was told that Karen’s Kitchen was ‘feminist’, that it existed in a non- traditional space of trade that blurred public and private spheres, that the business was run by a woman named Karen, and that customer practices would differ from those in a typical, mainstream restaurant. This entry in Gaia’s Guide also raises a number of important questions. Why would Karen call her restaurant ‘feminist’? What was a feminist restaurant? What kind of food was served? Other than through guidebooks, how did potential clients find out about the space? Was this space unique? The fact that Karen’s Kitchen was listed in a travel guide demonstrates the need that women had for finding these sorts of spaces. Why Call a Restaurant ‘Feminist’? Karen’s decision to manage a food business out of her home demonstrates that some feminists during the 1970s and the 1980s used food as a way to support themselves financially, socially, and politically. The above entry likewise shows that, despite facing a political and economic system that was hostile to women’s business ownership (particularly for women of colour and lesbians and especially prior to the passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act in 1974 and the Canadian Human Rights Act of 1977), the owners of feminist restaurants and cafés crafted creative solutions to make the kinds of spaces they wanted. The owners founded these establishments even if it meant having to bend the laws, such as skirting health codes or manipulating tax statuses to their own advantage. The history of feminist restaurants and cafés in the United States and Canada in the 1970s and 1980s provides a history of feminist, food, and environmental movements, while also being relevant to today’s debates around the need, or lack thereof, of single gender spaces, feminist consumption, and the relationship between feminist movements and other social justice movements, particularly food justice movements. Definition Feminist restaurants and cafés of the 1970s and 1980s in the United States and Canada acted as spaces that challenged the status quo around cooking and consumption through their creation of feminist food. These restaurants were ‘feminist’ due to their approach to workplace dynamics, supply sourcing, wage structures, and the ability to foster and support community. They could be ‘breakfast joints’ or specialize in meeting the needs of the lunch or dinner crowd. For the purposes of this research, in order to avoid policing who can call themselves feminist and to make the project the most manageable, I decided that a restaurant must be identified as feminist in its title, in flyers, in interviews, or in descriptions in restaurant reviews, magazines, or periodicals. Within these parameters, a central tenet of the restaurant owners’ philosophy was a focus on the needs of women and feminists above all other goals. This paper further speaks to contemporary restaurant discussions around gender, feminism, and labour. Feminist restaurant owners produced advertisements, business cards, and flyers for special events like concerts, poetry presentations, lectures, guest talks by feminists, and other forms of entertainment. In addition, restaurant owners wrote menus and cookbooks. In these documents, owners also identified their space as feminist, which could be important if the name was not explicit, such as Ms. Purdy’s Social Club Coffeehouse and Restaurant of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Apart from self-definition, it can be difficult to categorize these businesses. Many, but not all of them, were either women-only spaces or had women-only hours at some point during their operation. Collectives ran many of the spaces, and radical lesbian separatist, socialist feminist, or ecofeminist ideologies influenced many of the owners. Most restaurants held events with feminist and lesbian poets, musicians, artists, and political speakers because creating a community space was important to many of the owners. However, the most important factor for this study was whether or not the restaurant was intentionally feminist space. The apex of American and Canadian feminist restaurants was from 1976-1985. Most feminist restaurants and cafés closed after only a few years of operation; however, this did not mean that they were failures. Feminist restaurants and cafés allowed for – and indeed fostered – cultural, economic, and social communities that played an important role in the women’s movements. Despite acting as alternatives to hegemonic eatery culture, feminist restaurants, cafés, and coffeehouses were still liable to mainstream economic patterns and governmental regulations, which ultimately curtailed some of the owners’ dreams. The history of feminist restaurants and cafés in the United States and Canada is a history of business practices, political activism, and food politics. Feminist restaurants and cafés promoted women-owned and women-centred businesses and fostered non-capitalist and non- hierarchal business practices and models. Feminist restaurant history reveals the importance of physical space for socializing, activism, economics, and community building. These businesses were not isolated but, instead, were part of a larger economy and society that was not always amenable to their desires. The creation of women’s spaces required innovative financial strategies. Balancing economic needs with feminist philosophies required compromises. This paper speaks to contemporary restaurant discussions around gender, feminism, and labour. Utilizing business records, advertisements, feminist and lesbian periodicals, and original interviews, I examine the ways in which all feminist restaurants and cafés challenged the common contemporary view of cooking as antithetical to women’s liberation and, instead, showed that the kitchen could, in fact, be a space for women’s empowerment rather than an oppressive sphere. This project re-centres feminist entrepreneurialism and challenges narratives of post-war feminism. It focuses on how feminist restaurants challenged restaurant work structure. This paper does not argue that feminist restaurants were the only type of establishment to challenge restaurant hierarchy. Other restaurants also tried to change the role of restaurant management. Moosewood Restaurant, in Ithaca, New York (1973-present), is one of the most famous restaurants that utilized collective management. However, it is not alone, as a variety of restaurants, though still in the minority of the general restaurant population, have attempted non- hierarchical collective management. Many of the participating restaurants have had political reasons for doing so, whether they identified as anarchist, feminist, or were concerned with in some idea of social justice. What made the feminist restaurants different was their emphasis on feminism. For them, it was important to create decidedly feminist spaces. Work Structure In the 1970s, feminists began to critique gender inequity in a variety of workplaces, including restaurants. Feminists believed that the relationships between restaurant managers and waitresses and between waitresses and customers systematically disempowered women.2 However, most restaurants were managed in this hierarchical style, and most were owned and managed by men. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in the 1970s and 1980s far fewer women managed restaurants than in 2017 (ownership was not studied by BLS).3 In 1972, only 32.4 percent of restaurant, cafeteria, and bar managers were women and 8.9 percent were Black men and women.4 In 2017, 46.3 percent of food service managers (the category that has replaced ‘restaurant, cafeteria, and bar managers,’) were women, 9.5 percent were Black, 11.7 percent were Asian, and 16.9 percent were Latino or Hispanic.5 The gender imbalance of who owns restaurants, who are the head chefs, and who gets the praise continues to present day. Traditionally, although women were cooks and waitresses, they have been noticeably absent from decision-making roles. Most feminist restaurants and cafés in the 1970s and 1980s were begun by white, lesbian, English-speaking, radical or socialist feminists, who were working-class or middle-class and had some way to access capital outside of bank loans. Rather than cooking, the primary motivation was creating a woman-centred, feminist space where staff could live as ‘out’ lesbians and financially support themselves in an environment that reflected their values. The general trends among these restaurants were that most were built with sweat equity. Even for restaurants that lasted beyond the first-two-years period, when the majority of restaurants (feminist and not- feminist) fail, finances were always tight. The longer lasting restaurants were highly organized or at least adapted quickly to become so. They had a set idea of how the work would be structured and did not over-extend their programming. Importantly, these spaces had a plan to deal with emotional conflict, especially when operated by
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