Tingles' Cafe (Asheville, North Carolina)

Main-street cafés promoted both quick service, especially at breakfast and at lunch, as well as more leisurely dining, especially in the evening. Usually a wider menu was available than at lunchrooms, and rarely were candies and bakery goods sold. Food—breakfasts, noon lunches, or dinners, and both light and heavy evening meals—were the emphasis. Occupying an ordinary storefront was Tingles' Café in Asheville, North Carolina, pictured about 1935. Although little had changed inside the restaurant since its opening in 1918, the exterior facade displayed a new neon sign configured in the "modern" style. Banks and other sources of finance capital encouraged restaurants in standard retail spaces. Should a restaurant fail, as Tingles' surely had not, its space could be readily occupied by another business, even of a very different kind.

Source: Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age, John A. Jakle, Keith A. Sculle (2002) at 31.

Tingle’s Café (2009): Sazerac owners Jack and Lesley Groetsch will be serving Southern comfort fare in time for New Year’s Eve at Tingle’s Café next door. The all-night diner will mimic the 1930s design of the original Tingle’s Café, which occupied the same building for 32 years. 27 Broadway St.
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