A bowl of gold please!

The very first Migros snack bar was built in Zurich after permission for it was denied by authorities in Basel. The cheap snacks were a big hit and the snack bar marked the beginning of Migros’ venture into gastronomy. This new business area grew rapidly and the cooperative is constantly developing new concepts.

When the Migros Cooperative Basel opens the first Migros supermarket in the spring of 1952, it is refused permission for the planned snack bar. Instead, the customers have to settle for a coffee bar. The first snack bar is therefore installed in the Migros at Limmatplatz in Zurich. Here, housewives can order a ‘Schale Gold’ for 25 centimes, hot sausages with bread for 80 centimes or a “beaker of brawn, very popular” for half a franc. Bread rolls and patisserie are delivered from the show bakery next door.
Lifestyle changes help make the snack corner with its modern stand-up bar a success. The introduction of flexible working hours and a shorter lunch break mean that many employees do not go home for lunch; instead, they eat out. According to Migros, this makes “good value eating opportunities in the industrial areas a matter of public interest”.
In 1960, Migros operates 33 snack bars throughout Switzerland, but the Migros Restaurant is already on the horizon. In the new Stockerstrasse branch in Zurich, an eating establishment is created that offers a “very elegant” solution for various requirements: normally, guests sit at a table, but for the ‘rush hour’ between 11am and 2pm, the chairs are removed and the tables are fixed at standing height. At the end of the year, the Migros Market Stadelhofen combines the restaurant and snack bar in a different way: the stand-up bar on the ground floor, and on the first floor “more of a tearoom – with rather higher prices”. Hence, hurried business people are as equally well served as the customers who want to chat over a coffee.