Duncan Hines: The Original

Road Warrior Who Shaped

Restaurant History
Duncan Hines, traveling salesman and future purveyor of boxed cake mix, considered himself an authority on a great many things: hot
coffee, Kentucky country-cured ham and how to locate a tasty restaurant meal, in 1935, for under a dollar and a quarter. By the 1950s,
Hines' name would be plastered on boxes of cake mix; housewives would turn to his products for consistent quality and superior taste.
Newspaper photographs featured Hines clad in a white chef's apron, hoisting a neatly frosted cake or thoughtfully dipping a spoon into a
mixing bowl.
But Duncan Hines wasn't a chef in truth, he could barely cook. For most of his career, he had just been a businessman, desperate for a
decent meal on the road. Through his search for the best restaurants across America, he became an accidental gourmand, an unlikely
author and homegrown connoisseur. Although boxed cake mix is the legacy that most people now associate with Duncan Hines (only after
asking, "Was he actually a real person?") the supermarket foods that bear his name are only an epilogue to a storied life traveling America's
back roads.
It was really his book, Adventures in Good Eating, that first
put Duncan Hines on the map. And it was his tireless
pursuit of good food that inspired his book. Hines'
appreciation for a good meal arose out of mere necessity.
From the 1920s through the '40s, he motored across the
country hawking letter openers and paperclips and
subsisting on unreliable road food. It was an era long
before any formal restaurant rating system existed in the
U.S. The names and locations of good restaurants were
conveyed by word of mouth; for an out-of-town traveler,
locating a decent supper was often a daunting and
discouraging mission. And although Europe had relied on
The Michelin Guide since 1900, middle America in the
1920s and '30s was still a land of culinary mystery and
inconsistency.
It was also a time of growing wanderlust. Highways such
as Route 66 were connecting small towns, and eager motorists often embarked on weekend road trips. According to the University of
Michigan, in the '20s "the number of automobiles in America rose from eight million to twenty-three million and along with the increase came
thousands of barbeque shacks, ice cream stands and diners." Many new restaurants were not listed on maps. And they were often hidden
on dusty back roads that health inspectors didn't travel. (Even if they did, there was no standard for restaurant food safety in America at that
time.)
Desperate for a clean place to dine, Hines became an investigative epicurean and self-made restaurant critic. He carried a tiny journal in his
coat pocket, jotting down the precise locations of his favorite places. No restaurant was off limits for the inquisitive Hines. "The kitchen is the
first spot I inspect in an eating place," he wrote. "More people will die from hit or miss eating than from hit and run driving," he joked though
Hines clearly thought food safety was no laughing matter.
He frequently popped into the kitchen to scrutinize how staff handled food and then swung around back to investigate the restaurant's
garbage pile. He meticulously recorded the names of the most pristine diners, the inns with the tastiest prime roast beef, and where to find
the stickiest honey buns. He appreciated regional cuisine, quickly discovering in which part of the country to brake for broiled lobster tail
(New England) and where to stop for fried chicken (Kentucky).
Hines noted whether a restaurant had air conditioning, its hours of operation and its prices for breakfast, lunch and dinner. "His restaurant
notes were extraordinarily accurate," says Louis Hatchett, author of the book, Duncan Hines: How a Traveling Salesman Became the Most
Trusted Name in Food. "As word spread among his family and friends, people were begging him to share the list he had created. There was
nothing out there like it," he says. "In 1935, sick of being pestered, he finally sent out a little blue pamphlet in his Christmas cards, containing
a list of 167 restaurants across 33 states that he could safely recommend." Soon, Hines was receiving postcards from salesmen, newlyweds
and other travelers all over America seeking his recommendations for good, clean restaurants.
In 1936, at 55, Hines self-published his first edition of Adventures in Good Eating and sold them for $1 each. It contained the names and
locations of 475 restaurants from coast to coast that had Hines' rigorous seal of approval. "The books were sold through word of mouth, but
they quickly sold out. The following year he raised the guide's price to $1.50 and that's where the price would stay for the next 25 years,"
explains Hatchett. Each year, until he retired in 1954, Hines broadened his exploration of America's restaurants and published an updated
edition of Adventures in Good Eating. Restaurants fell in and out of Hines' favor if they could not deliver a quality meal or allow a peek into
the kitchen, they were removed from the book. He refused to accept any advertisements or endorsements from restaurants in exchange for
reviews. Millions of discerning travelers kept his book in their glove compartments to guide them as they rumbled down gravelly country
roads in unfamiliar locations.
"Recommended by Duncan Hines" became the gold standard in dining by the 1950s. Restaurants endorsed by Hines tacked up metal signs
in their front windows. As his authority grew, Hines published Lodging for a Night (1938) and Adventures in Good Cooking (Famous
Recipes) and the Art of Carving in the Home (1939). In 1952, when Hines was 72, he partnered with Roy H. Park to form Hines-Park in
Ithaca, N.Y., allowing the Duncan Hines name to appear on everything from cartons of ice cream to the now-famous cake mixes. Two years
before his death in March of 1959, the entire franchise was sold to Procter & Gamble.
Hines often said, "Nearly everyone wants at least one outstanding meal a day." This seems as true now as it did a half-century ago. But long
before Yelp or TripAdvisor offered restaurant reviews with the click of a button, Hines was doing it his own way, by traveling the highway
with his pencil and notebook, changing the way America ate on the open road one adventure at a time.
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