Tea Room Management

This little cutie, Cooking for Profit touts itself as being the First Practical Hand-Book for Tea Rooms.  Published in 1922 and written by Alice Bradley, she pulls from her expertise as the Principal of Miss Farmer's School of Cookery in Boston and culinary editor for the "Woman's Home Companion".  In this book, she covers the money-making opportunities to be found in food service where women are shown how to establish and conduct a profitable business.  Original ideas and recipes are included.  Chapters include specialty cooking, cake and cake making, catering for social occasions, special luncheons and suppers and dinner parties.  A complete chapter is dedicated to tea room management, with the beginning statement that interest in opening tea rooms is wide spread, from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Requisites for a successful tea room include good location, unusual or expressive name, distinctive decorations and furnishings, absolute cleanliness, competent hostess or manager, wisely chosen waitresses, effective advertising, food beyond criticism and correctly priced, and care in business management.  All very good advice even now.

Photographs throughout the book feature tea sandwiches (shown here), tables set for formal dinners, and also a tea room in a department store that was designed and managed by one of the author's students.

 This catering and food service management guide was a gift from my mother in 1988, two years before Sweet Remembrances opened.  It has been fun 'rediscovering' the information and advice tucked within these pages.  Recipes for tea sandwiches, menus for formal dinners, and all around useful advice still appropriate now. Although, iced drinks for 25 cents, chocolate fudge cake for 15 cents, and baked lobster cardinal French pastry, and coffee, tea or chocolate for $1.35 might suggest prices of a different era.