Free lunch - Wikipedia
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A lot of old-timey saloons would just put out a lunch buffet and as long as you bought one drink you could take what you like. Pretty good food by some accounts.

I talked to my Dad and he claimed this was still a thing in a few places as late as the early-80s, there were places with “happy hour” where they would put out a small buffet like once a week. He said in college he’d go to them and buy one beer and fill up.

  • BodyBySisyphus [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    58·
    2 months ago

    The nearly indigent “free lunch fiend” was a recognized social type. An 1872 New York Times story about “loafers and free-lunch men” who “toil not, neither do they spin, yet they ‘get along’”, visiting saloons, trying to bum drinks from strangers: “Should this inexplicable lunch-fiend not happen to be called to drink, he devours whatever he can, and, while the bartender is occupied, tries to escape unnoticed.”

    FreeLunchFiend sounds like a fun username.