Doggie Bag

Once a week, we dine with a 92 year old neighbor. He doesn't eat much but he likes to have company for dinner and likes to go out, which is unusual for an elderly man, I think. He always gets a "doggie bag" and carries home at least half of what he orders. This gets eaten the next day for lunch.

Lawry's restaurants invented the doggie bag. They noticed that people couldn't finish the large portion of prime rib served in their Prime Rib restaurants and so they started giving their patrons a bag to take home the leftovers. With a nod and wink, it was christened the doggy bag. I believe this was some time in the thirties. The term is more common in California than other parts of the country where you may be asked if you want a "take home" container or a container to go.

Lawry's also invented valet parking, the pre-dinner salad fork, the chilled salad fork and some say, drive-in dining. Richard Frank told me that his "old man" as he always referred to his father, had his servers put a board through the front seat of the car and served dinner on it, with china, glass and silver. Very classy. Cars were a novelty at this time, and people wanted to be seen in them. The Franks are/were a very creative bunch. Richard was responsible for many concepts, such as Casey's Bar in downtown LA, a meadieval chop house in San Francisco and best of all in my opinion, a small Italian eaterie which should have been the Olive Garden. He didn't expand it because they couldn't seem to make the lunch pay off. Richard was responsible for taking the seasoned salt which his father concocted and turning into the Lawry's food company. He developed one of the countries most recognizable logos with Saul Bass, a marketing genius operating in LA in the 50's. He was also the first food person to package in flexible foil. Richard was always on the look out for packaging innovation. A great leader and a wonderful person to work for, I enjoyed my years at Lawry's foods very much. Richard Frank fostered creativity, ingenuity and a spirit of entrepreneurship in all his co-workers - when I was managing the product development lab, he would wander in and tell me that everyone in the lab should have at least 20% of their time free to dream, create and let their minds wander. Can you imagine that philosophy prevailing anywhere today??

Online I read of the British expression "a real dog's dinner" which is not related to the doggy bag but instead describes a mess of some sort. "She showed up looking like a real dog's dinner."

Years ago I worked with a 90 year old coffee taster. He trained me to "cup" coffee and he also taught me how to drink a martini at the Jonathan Club in downtown LA. He loved sushi and I would take him to our local Japanese joint - this was 30 years ago before there was sushi on every corner. He would ask for a doggy bag for the parsley on the plate. A real depression scarred human, he didn't let anything go to waste. I remember a story he told me about purchasing a $1000 whole life insurance policy in the 20's. At the time, people asked him why he would make such an extravagant purchase as $1000 was such a princely sum. Well, he had beat the statistics and lived to see the policy amount because of inflation become almost worthless. We laughed about the fact that the $1000 even thirty years ago wouldn't cover a funeral.

Now that there are more cat owners than dog owners, perhaps the name should be changed to a kitty bag.