Daily AncestorRestaurant keeper
A restaurant keeper owned or ran a restaurant, an eating house serving meals to the public.
Restaurateur is the French word for the same person, from Latin restaurare, to restore. The variant restauranteur, with an n, is recorded in American use from 1837.
The 1900 census instructions name "hotel keeper, boarding-house keeper, restaurant keeper, or saloon keeper or bartender" as separate occupations to be given exactly, and say a clerk in a restaurant must be distinguished from a bartender. Cooks and waiters in restaurants were already to be listed apart from domestic servants in 1880.
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Daily Ancestor. "Restaurant keeper." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/restaurant-keeper. Last checked 2026-10-12.