Appetite for America was written using a treasure trove of Fred and Ford Harvey’s actual writings, from datebooks and letters discovered in family collections–which offer great insights into how America’s first great hospitality empire was built and maintained for over 70 years, and many lessons that businesspeople still find crucial today.

Here’s a particularly fascinating page from Fred’s datebook covering 1875 and 1876, when he and a partner opened three eating houses on the Kansas Pacific, and then he quickly realized he wanted to have his own company and partner instead with the fledgling Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe–starting with a second-floor lunchroom at the Topeka, KS depot. In January of 1876, he took over the lunchroom, scrubbed it immaculate from top to bottom, and replaced all the dishes, silver, stemware, chairs and kitchen equipment–as well as the cuisine itself. This is his first known hand-written list of the things he bought to transform the Topeka lunchroom into the first great eating house in the West.

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