Restaurant service in tourism

    Franchising was introduced in 1921 by A&W Root Beer, which franchised its distinctive syrup. Howard Johnson's first franchised the restaurant concept in the mid-1930s, formally standardizing menus, signage and advertising.

    Curb service was introduced in the late 1920s and was mobilized in the 1940s when carhops strapped on roller skates.

    The United States has the largest fast food industry in the world, and American fast food restaurants are located in over 100 countries. Approximately 2 million U.S. workers are employed in the areas of food preparation and food servicing including fast food in the USA.

    Fast Casual

    Fast casual restaurants do not offer table service, but may offer non-disposable plates and cutlery. The quality of food, and price point, are higher than those of a conventional fast food restaurant.

    Fine dining

    Fine dining restaurants are full service restaurants with specific dedicated meal courses. Décor of such restaurants feature higher quality materials with an eye towards the "atmosphere" desired by the restaurateur. The wait staff is usually highly trained and often wears more formal attire. Fine-dining restaurants are almost always small businesses and are generally either single-location operations or have just a few locations. Food portions are smaller but more visually appealing. Fine dining restaurants have certain rules of dining which must be followed by visitors.

    Bistro and brasserie

    In France, a brasserie is a café doubling as a restaurant and serving single dishes and other meals in a relaxed setting. A bistro is a familiar name for a café serving moderately priced simple meals in an unpretentious setting, especially in Paris; bistros have become increasingly popular with tourists. When used in English, the term bistro usually indicates either a fast casual dining restaurant with a European-influenced menu or a cafés with a larger menu of food.

    Buffet and smörgåsbord

    Buffets and smörgåsbord offer patrons a selection of food at a fixed price. Food is served on trays around bars, from which customers with plates serve themselves. The selection can be modest or very extensive, with the more elaborate menus divided into categories such as salad, soup, appetizers, hot entrées, cold entrées, and dessert and fruit. Often the range of cuisine can be eclectic, while other restaurants focus on a specific type, such as home-cooking, Chinese, Indian, or Swedish. The role of the waiter or waitress in this case is relegated to removal of finished plates, and sometimes the ordering and refill of drinks.

    Types of buffet

    One form of buffet is to have a table filled with plates containing fixed portions of food; customers select plates containing whatever food items they want as they walk along. This form is most commonly seen in cafeterias. A variation occurs in a sum house, where the patrons make their selections from a wheeled trolley containing the plates of food that circulates through the restaurant. Another derivative of this type of buffet occurs where patrons choose food from a buffet style layout and then pay based on what was chosen.

    Another form, known as the all-you-can-eat buffet, is more free-form: customers pay a fixed fee and can then help themselves to as much food as they wish to eat in a single meal. This form is found often in restaurants, especially in hotels.

    A third type of buffet commonly offered in delicatessens and supermarkets is a salad bar, in which customers help themselves to lettuce and other salad ingredients, then pay by weight.

    A fourth type of buffet is associated with a celebration of some sort.

    As a compromise between self-service and full table service, a staffed buffet may be offered: diners bring their own plate along the buffet line and are given a portion from a server at each station. This method is prevalent at catered meetings where diners are not paying specifically for their meal.

    Home Buffets

    Buffets are effective for serving large numbers of people at once. For this reason, they are prevalent in institutional settings, such as business conventions or large parties. Another advantage of buffets compared to table service is that diners have a great deal of choice and the ability to closely inspect food before selecting it. Since a buffet involves diners serving themselves, it has in the past been considered an informal form of dining, less formal than table service. In recent years, however, buffet dinners are increasingly popular among hosts of home dinner parties, especially in homes where limited space complicates the serving of individual places.

    Popular buffets

    In the United States, Buffets, Inc. is a large buffet chain corporation which owns Old Country Buffet, Country Buffet, Fire Mountain, Ryan's Steakhouse, and HomeTown Buffet. HomeTown Buffet popularized the "scatter buffet", which refers to the layout of separate food pavilions. Other American restaurant chains well-known for their buffets include Golden Corral, which features food products presented in pans, Sweet Tomatoes (known in particular for its soups and salads), Gatti's Pizza, Chuck-A-Rama, Cici's Pizza, Fresh Choice (a West Coast competitor of Sweet Tomatoes), Pancho's Mexican Buffet, America's Incredible Pizza Company, Shakey's Pizza, Furr's Family Dining, and Ponderosa Steakhouse. Sizzler is another prominent restaurant offering a buffet.

    Las Vegas is famous for its all-you-can-eat buffets, as depicted in the 2007 documentary film BUFFET: All You Can Eat Las Vegas.

    In Australia, buffet chains like Sizzler serve a large number of patrons with carvery, seafood, salads and desserts. Buffets are also common in Returned and Services League of Australia (RSL) clubs and some motel restaurants.

    In Russia, the chain MooMoo (or МуМу in Russian) serves all its food buffet-style.

    In Brazil, comida à quilo or comida por quilo - literally, "food by the kilo" - restaurants are common. This is a cafeteria style buffet in which diners are billed by the weight of the food selected, excluding the weight of the plate. Brazilian cuisine's rodízio style is all-you-can-eat, having both non-self-service and self-service variations.

    In Japan, a buffet or smorgasbord is known as a viking (バイキング - baikingu). It is said that this originated from the restaurant "Imperial Viking" in the Imperial Hotel, Tokyo, which was the first restaurant in Japan to serve buffet-style meals. Dessert Vikings are very popular in Japan where one can eat from a buffet full of desserts.

    Café

    Cafés are informal restaurants offering a range of hot meals and made-to-order sandwiches. It is important to note that coffee shops, while similar to cafés, are not restaurants due to the fact that they primarily serve beverages and derive the majority of their revenue thusly. Many cafés are open for breakfast and serve full hot breakfasts. In some areas cafés offer outdoor seating. The major difference with a café and most other casual dining establishments is how the guest orders and pays. A café can offer table service, but many times the guest orders at the front, and the food is brought out to the table. Then, while at most casual dining restaurants the guest pays with the server, at a café the guest most often times pays with a single cashier.

    In Europe

    In most European countries, such as Austria, France, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, etc., the term café implies primarily serving coffee, typically accompanied by a slice of cake/tart/pie, a "Danish", a bun, or similar sweet pastry. Many (or most) cafés also serve light meals such as sandwiches. European cafés often have tables on the pavement as well as indoors. Some cafés also serve alcoholic beverages, particularly in Southern European countries.

    In the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland a café (with the acute accent) is similar to those in other European countries, while a cafe (without acute accent) is more likely to be a greasy spoon style eating place, serving mainly fried food, in particular breakfast dishes.

    In the Netherlands and Belgium, a café is the equivalent of a bar, and also sells alcoholic beverages. A coffee shop in the Netherlands sells soft drugs (cannabis and hashish) and is generally not allowed to sell alcoholic beverages.

    In North America

    A café or coffee shop is a restaurant with full-service tables and counters and broad menu offerings over extended periods of the day. In hotels, the coffee shop is a more popular-priced alternative to the formal dining room. Coffee shops often encourage families and provide special menus for children. To establish a family-friendly atmosphere, in many localities they do not serve wine or beer.

    Cafeteria

    A cafeteria is a restaurant serving ready-cooked food arranged behind a food-serving counter. There is little or no table service. Typically, a patron takes a tray and pushes it along a track in front of the counter. Depending on the establishment, servings may be ordered from attendants, selected as ready-made portions already on plates, or self-serve their own portions.

    In the UK, a cafeteria may also offer a large selection of hot food similar to the American fast casual restaurant, and the use of the term cafeteria is deprecated in favor of self-service restaurant.

    Coffeehouse

    Coffeehouses are casual restaurants without table service that emphasize coffee and other beverages; typically a limited selection of cold foods such as pastries and perhaps sandwiches are offered as well. Their distinguishing feature is that they allow patrons to relax and socialize on their premises for long periods of time without pressure to leave promptly after eating, and are thus frequently chosen as sites for meetings.

    A coffeehouse or coffee shop is an establishment which primarily serves prepared coffee or other hot beverages. It shares some of the characteristics of a bar, and some of the characteristics of a restaurant, but it is different from a cafeteria. As the name suggests, coffeehouses focus on providing coffee and tea as well as light snacks. Many coffee houses in the Middle East, and in West Asian immigrant districts in the Western world, offer shisha (nargile in Turkish and Greek), flavored tobacco smoked through a hookah.

    From a cultural standpoint, coffeehouses largely serve as centers of social interaction: the coffeehouse provides social members with a place to congregate, talk, write, read, entertain one another, or pass the time, whether individually or in small groups of 2 or 3.

    In the United States, the French word for coffeehouse (café) means an informal restaurant, offering a range of hot meals.

    In the Middle East, the coffeehouse serves as an important social gathering place for men. Men assemble in coffeehouses to drink coffee (usually Arabic coffee) or tea, listen to music, read books, play chess and backgammon, and in many coffeehouses around the Middle East, hookahis traditionally served as well.

    In Australia, coffee shops are generally called 'cafés'. Since the post-World War II influx of Italian immigrants introduced espresso coffee machines to Australia in the 1950s, there has been a steady rise in café  culture. The past decade has seen a rapid rise in demand for locally (or on-site) roasted specialty coffee, particularly in Melbourne due in part to the hipster, student, or artist population, with the 'Flat-White' (an Auckland, New Zealand invention) a popular coffee drink.

    In the United Kingdom, traditional coffeehouses as gathering places for youths fell out of favor after the 1960s, but the concept has been revived since the 1990s by chains such as Starbucks, Coffee Republic, Costa Coffee, Caffè Nero and Prêt as places for professional workers to meet and eat out or simply to buy beverages and snack foods on their way to and from the workplace.

    In France, a café also serves alcoholic beverages. French cafés often serve simple snacks such as sandwiches. They may have a restaurant section. A brasserie is a café that serves meals, generally single dishes, in a more relaxed setting than a restaurant. A bistro is a café / restaurant, especially in Paris. After the enlightenment era however, coffee houses became increasingly difficult to distinguish from taverns as they ceased to be popular meeting places for scientists and philosophers and were replaced by a growing number of tea gardens which served a drastically different purpose.

    In China, an abundance of recently-started domestic coffeehouse chains may be seen accommodating business people. These coffee houses are more for show and status than anything else, with coffee prices often even higher than in the West.

    In Malaysia and Singapore, traditional breakfast and coffee shops are called kopi tiams. The word is a portmanteau of the Malay word for coffee (as borrowed and altered from the Portuguese) and the Hokkien dialect word for shop. Menus typically feature simple offerings: a variety of foods based on egg, toast, and coconut jam, plus coffee, tea, and Milo, a melted chocolate drink which is extremely popular in Southeast Asia and Australasia, particularly Singapore and Malaysia.

    In parts of the Netherlands where the sale of cannabis is decriminalized, many cannabis shops call themselves coffee shops. Foreign visitors often find themselves quite at a loss when they find that the shop they entered to have a coffee actually has a very different core business. Incidentally, most cannabis shops sell a wide range of (non-alcoholic) beverages.

    In modern Turkey and the Arab World, coffeehouses attract many men and boys to watch TV or play chess and smoke shisha. Coffee houses are called "'ahwah" in the Arab world and combine serving coffee as well as tea and herbal teas. Tea is called "shāy", and coffee is also called "'ahwah". Finally, herbal teas, like hibiscus tea (called karkadeh, or Ennab) are also highly popular.