The hotel and restaurant industry was shifting geographically. In the 1940s and 1950s, the center of the industry moved away from its traditional urbanized core to new unorganized, hostile territories: the Deep South, the Southwest, and into the suburbs.7 With the lower and middle classes relying as never before on eating out, the restaurant sector also burgeoned at a dizzying rate. Low-priced, quick-style eateries opened by the thousands, scattered haphazardly over the new decentralized landscape and drawing in a rash of young new recruits with little experience or understanding of unionism. The union found it virtually impossible to keep control over such a rapidly expanding, geographically dispersed work force.

Perhaps the most significant structural change, however, was the transformation of countless small independent proprietorships into chain outlets under the control of national and international conglomerates.8 In 1931, fewer than 3 percent of the nation's restaurants were chain-operated; in the 1980s, McDonald's alone accounted for 17 percent of all restaurant visits. From the family-style chains (Howard Johnson's, Denny's, Sambo's) to the fast-food empires (McDonald's, Burger King, and Pizza Hut), the species proved almost invulnerable to organizing.9