Restaurant ware facts for kids
Restaurant ware, also called hotelware, is a special kind of strong ceramic dish. It's made to be used in busy places like hotels and restaurants. You'll also find this type of tableware on trains, ships, and airplanes!
Many older pieces of hotelware, especially from the early to mid-1900s, were made from tough materials like stoneware or ironstone china. It's fun to collect these old pieces, but ones from the 1800s are harder to find.
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How Hotelware Became Popular
The companies that made dishes for homes also made hotelware. In the late 1800s, more and more people could afford to eat out. This meant more restaurants opened, and trains and ships started offering meals. All these places needed lots of strong dishes!
Stoneware and ironstone were great choices because they could handle a lot of use without breaking. Some restaurants even had their name or logo printed on the dishes. By the early 1900s, hotelware was also used in diners for road travelers and on airplanes for in-flight meals.
Hotelware in the United States
Homer Laughlin, a very large pottery company in the U.S., started making hotelware in 1959. By 1970, they focused only on hotelware. Later, when their popular Fiesta Ware became popular again, they started making it too. Another company, Anchor Hocking, made tough green dishes called Fire King Jadeite from 1950 to 1956, which were also popular with restaurants.
Buffalo Pottery started in Buffalo, New York in 1901. For most of the 1900s, they made custom dishes for restaurants, hotels, railroads, and steamships. They made dishes for famous places like the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway (with their George Washington and Chessie Cat designs), the Greenbrier hotel, and even the U.S. Navy.
Buffalo Pottery changed its name to Buffalo China, Inc. in 1956. It became one of the biggest makers of commercial dishes in the U.S. Oneida Limited bought Buffalo China in 1983, and the company stopped making dishes in 2004.
The hotelware business in the U.S. faced tough times starting in the late 1980s. When the economy slowed down, people ate out less. This meant restaurants needed fewer dishes, and demand for hotelware dropped by 20%. Also, more Americans started eating fast food in disposable containers. By the early 2000s, Syracuse China, a major hotelware maker for many years, stopped making dishes in the U.S. and moved its production to other countries.
How Hotelware is Made
Hotelware is made to be super strong. It needs to resist chipping and cracking because it gets used a lot! The main goal is for it to be useful and durable, not just pretty. Unlike some very delicate dishes, hotelware is not fired at extremely high temperatures that would make it melt. This helps it stay tough.
Who Makes Hotelware?
Many companies around the world make hotelware:
- Colombia - Corona
- Czech Republic - Pirken-Hammer
- Germany - Eschenbash, Hutschenreuther, Villeroy & Boch
- Indonesia - Royal Doulton
- Japan - Noritake
- Luxembourg - Villeroy & Boch
- Sri Lanka - Noritake
- United Arab Emirates - RAK Porcelain
- United Kingdom - Dudson, Royal Doulton, Steelite & Wedgwood
- United States - Syracuse China, Buffalo China, Iroquois China Company, Homer Laughlin & Anchor Hocking
Cool Collectables
Some people also collect old dishes from fast-food restaurants, like the "beehive" glass containers for condiments. You can even find new versions of these vintage styles from some companies and dealers in the United States.
