Even Bums Get Hungry - The Chauncey Wright Story

Published: June 18, 2023, 11:47 p.m.

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#095: Chauncey Wright turned his Klondike gold rush grub stake into a profitable Seattle restaurant empire despite being known to never deny a broke, hungry man a free meal. He pioneered the eight hour restaurant shift and paid his staff the same rate as they had been earning for a ten hour day. He died young, his widow Annie married a drunkard, and the Chauncey Wright Restaurants Company was taken over by Hazen J. Titus - a marketing guy from the Northern Pacific Railroad who promoted giant baked potatoes and Wright-branded fruitcakes. Annie continued to maintain the Wright restaurant in the Smith Tower - at the time the tallest building West of the Mississippi and the tallest building on the West Coast until the space Needle was completed in 1962.

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