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The Classic American Diner

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Re: The Classic American Diner

#71

Post by woodruffw »

dylan604 wrote: post #44
hackingonempty wrote: post #22

One of my hobbies is looking up old prices in the BLS CPI calculator to see what they would cost today (March 2026 is the latest data.) The June 1940 photograph along Hwy 1 in Maryland had $0.05 hotdogs ($1.17) and $0.10 burgers ($2.34). The Feb 1959 photograph from the NYC diner advertises a $0.45 burger ($5.14) and probably a $0.75 steak sandwich ($8.57)

These prices adjusted for today's value seem off though. I'm guessing you'd be hard pressed to find a diner burger for $5.14 anywhere. No, fast food joints are not the same here and not part of this discussion. Where is the discrepancy? I've never really trusted these "adjusted for inflation" type numbers. I'm not an economist so I have no idea how they are calculated, but they've always just felt off to me. Usually,…

There are two diners near me (in NYC) where a burger is $5.25/$5.50 respectively.

(I don’t disagree with you directionally though; I think a nontrivial aspect of this is shifting expectations/norms around what passes for food service. Americans broadly want their food - even diner food - to be upclassed beyond a plain hamburger on a white bread bun.)

Re: The Classic American Diner

#73

Post by gdulli »

neves wrote: post #25

The photos does not display what I hate the most: the fixed 2 double seats tables. It is completely antisocial. You can't arrive with your group of six friends and "join tables" so everybody can seat together. What Americans have against a big group of friends?

Their absence supports that it's not an omnipresent American pattern after all.

Re: The Classic American Diner

#74

Post by traderj0e »

_doctor_love wrote: post #16
eaggsg wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Can nothing seriously be done about this kind of obvious bot account? There's so many of them on HN these days.

Idk, this one might just be a real angry person. The bot is the other one saying some generic paragraph about American diners.

Re: The Classic American Diner

#75

Post by traderj0e »

kube-system wrote: post #37
cogman10 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tastes have changed and I think people have been highly exposed to tastier dishes. There's also the "Denny's" problem. Classic diners tend to be pretty much the same as a Denny's in terms of quality.

Yeah, chain restaurants have dominated most of the market everywhere out through and including the exurbs. But if you go to somewhere deeply rural you can still find cheap crappy diner food.

Some of the random non-chain diners in the middle of some forested area are super nice and somehow not expensive, like the kind you stop at on the way to a ski trip. I'd think they'd be pricey cause of tourism or difficulty getting supplies.

Re: The Classic American Diner

#76

Post by buildbot »

dylan604 wrote: post #44
hackingonempty wrote: post #22

One of my hobbies is looking up old prices in the BLS CPI calculator to see what they would cost today (March 2026 is the latest data.) The June 1940 photograph along Hwy 1 in Maryland had $0.05 hotdogs ($1.17) and $0.10 burgers ($2.34). The Feb 1959 photograph from the NYC diner advertises a $0.45 burger ($5.14) and probably a $0.75 steak sandwich ($8.57)

These prices adjusted for today's value seem off though. I'm guessing you'd be hard pressed to find a diner burger for $5.14 anywhere. No, fast food joints are not the same here and not part of this discussion. Where is the discrepancy? I've never really trusted these "adjusted for inflation" type numbers. I'm not an economist so I have no idea how they are calculated, but they've always just felt off to me. Usually,…

Dicks in Seattle is currently only 5.75 for the deluxe; everything else is less! And IMO, very good for the money.

https://ddir.com/menu

Re: The Classic American Diner

#77

Post by trhway »

gyomu wrote: post #52
dylan604 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These prices adjusted for today's value seem off though. I'm guessing you'd be hard pressed to find a diner burger for $5.14 anywhere. No, fast food joints are not the same here and not part of this discussion. Where is the discrepancy? I've never really trusted these "adjusted for inflation" type numbers. I'm not an economist so I have no idea how they are calculated, but they've always just felt off to me. Usually,…

Things just don’t really convert neatly because the shape of what people spend money on in life hasn’t evolved uniformly. Food appears somewhat cheaper, housing much cheaper; but clothing and tools/appliances were much more expensive. Things like student debt and healthcare costs are also interesting to compare and wildly differ over time & place. Also common for the average middle class person to spend a sizable per…

I use "super-baskets" like say US GDP per capita

>The June 1940 photograph along Hwy 1 in Maryland had $0.05 hotdogs ($1.17) and $0.10 burgers ($2.34).

1940 $779 to today's $94K GDP per capita gives $6 for the 1940 $0.05 hotdog.

Re: The Classic American Diner

#78

Post by db48x »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #68
dylan604 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying the prices listed were just for the ingredients and not the actual cost to the person ordering? They mentioned they saw the price in a photo which suggest it is what the person would be charged. I get that labor costs would cause an increase of raw ingredient price comparisons for total prices. But if you could pay buy a burger for a nickel but now need $10, there is a definite issue in just a "simple"…

> Are you saying the prices listed were just for the ingredients and not the actual cost to the person ordering? Sorry, no. I'm saying labour is probably a larger fraction of the burger's costs today than it was in the 1950s. (I'd naively guess profits are, too.)

That may be true, but I suspect that it’s also hard to compare apples to apples. A burger in 1959 is hard to compare to a burger today. Today’s burger almost certainly has twice as much meat. The invention of (and ubiquitous advertising of) the quarter–pounder means that everyone had to make their burgers larger to match. Sides are larger, drinks are larger, etc, etc.

But labor costs certainly have gone up too.

Re: The Classic American Diner

#79

Post by dlivingston »

I love diners. The late nights of undergrad was spent in diner booths, with textbooks and laptops splayed, and cups of coffee that never ran dry.

New Mexico has lots of great dinners scattered all around the state. I'm in Massachusetts now and enjoying those I can find here.

Re: The Classic American Diner

#80

Post by bryanlarsen »

dylan604 wrote: post #44
hackingonempty wrote: post #22

One of my hobbies is looking up old prices in the BLS CPI calculator to see what they would cost today (March 2026 is the latest data.) The June 1940 photograph along Hwy 1 in Maryland had $0.05 hotdogs ($1.17) and $0.10 burgers ($2.34). The Feb 1959 photograph from the NYC diner advertises a $0.45 burger ($5.14) and probably a $0.75 steak sandwich ($8.57)

These prices adjusted for today's value seem off though. I'm guessing you'd be hard pressed to find a diner burger for $5.14 anywhere. No, fast food joints are not the same here and not part of this discussion. Where is the discrepancy? I've never really trusted these "adjusted for inflation" type numbers. I'm not an economist so I have no idea how they are calculated, but they've always just felt off to me. Usually,…

A good rule of thumb is to ask "are you paying mostly for human labor or for machine labor"? The former is likely to be more expensive now than it was in the past and the latter is likely to be less expensive, all relative to general inflation prices.

A hot dog / hamburger at a diner is mostly human labor, so you'd expect it to be cheaper in the past.

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