Cooking the books: Feminist restaurant owners’ relationships with banks, loans and taxes

Alexandra D. Ketchum

Business History, 2022, vol. 64, issue 1, 1-27

Abstract: This article examines how feminist restaurant and café owners in the 1970s and 1980s in the United States and Canada challenged management hierarchies, serving practices, and typical restaurant structure. Despite facing a political and economic system that was hostile to women’s business ownership (particularly for women of colour and lesbians), the owners of feminist restaurants and cafés, crafted creative solutions to create the kinds of spaces they wanted. The owners founded these establishments even if it meant having to bend the laws, such as skirting health codes or manipulating tax statuses to their own advantage. While feminist restaurants and cafés challenged capitalism, they still had to be part of the economy. Bolstered by the oral history and archival analysis, this article re-centres feminist entrepreneurialism and challenges narratives of post-war feminism.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2019.1676233

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