There Was No Place Like Dubrow's

There was no better place to sit, schmooze and enjoy good food than Dubrow's Cafeterias in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Eve, the great granddaughter of the founder of Dubrow's has a blog recounting her family's memories of the people and the places. I left Brooklyn long before the demise of this great cafeteria chain but I always wondered why the concept didn't continue to do well into the 1990s since cafeterias are still popular in Texas and California. Maybe the customer turnover wasn't as quick at Dubrow's as it was in a McDonald's or a Burger King, which could have led to lower profits. Dubrow's was like dining in your Aunt's Ceil's house, except it didn't have furniture covered in plastic. It was comfortable to just sit and eat and maybe that was part of the problem. There's a reason that the seats in fast food restaurants are made of hard plastic. On the other hand, many fast food places are now encouraging people to linger with Wi-Fi internet access and so on. Maybe Dubrow's was just too far ahead of itself.