A short history of a great industryA short history of a great industry

Sullivision.com chief executive Jim Sullivan

“If you don’t know history, you don’t know anything. You’re like a leaf that doesn’t know it’s part of a tree.” –Author Michael Crichton

I live in Appleton Wisconsin, a town so deep in Dairyland, that if baby Superman crash-landed here, the local townspeople would raise him to be a cheese farmer. Recently USA Today labeled Appleton “America’s Drunkest City” based on stretchy truth sketchy data.  All I’ll say on the matter is that I’ll have another.  So from this local bar stool perch, let’s step back in time this month and briefly examine our industry’s interesting past and its promising future.

The word restaurant is a familiar one to people the world over.  It is pronounced basically the same in English, French, German, Portuguese and Sp...