To preface, I live in the US.
I was talking with my friends about day drinking today. I started thinking about how it’s very common in many areas of Europe to have a drink with lunch but it’s not as common in the US. It’s socially acceptable to have a drink when you go out for dinner but having a pint or glass of wine with lunch seems to be considered socially unacceptable or questionable, at the very least. I would assume that since America was colonized by European nations, this was not always the case but I know I could be wrong on this.
Did this shift in American culture occur due to Prohibition or any other event of its nature? Or was this just a gradual change over time that distinguishes us from our European neighbors?
The shift in American perceptions to day drinking can mostly be tied back to the domestic politics of the 1960's, 70's, and 80's. As early as 1961, President John F. Kennedy stated opposition to the extent of tax deductibility of business lunches as business expenses. However, in 1972 the issue came to a more prominent place in American politics thanks to George McGovern. During his presidential campaign, he told blue collar voters that "you pay for half of every $20 martini lunch that a businessman deducts while you can't deduct the price of a bologna sandwich."^(1) While McGovern was annihilated in the election of 1972, this message remained. Four years later, Jimmy Carter took up the torch of lunch deductions again, this time as a form of opposition to corruption in DC, thus also a strike against the incumbent, Gerald Ford.^(2) His administration would push for changes to the tax code on this issue, but ultimately to no avail.^(3) In 1986 however, Ronald Reagan would sign a bill that reduced the deduction from 100 to 80 percent and Bill Clinton would sign a bill in 1993 that reduced it to 50 percent.^(4)
While these bills were aimed more generally at business extravagance than alcohol in particular, I would argue that the evocative imagery of the "three-martini lunch" and its connection to corruption played a significant role in changing the wider public taste for day drinking with lunch. At the same time, American corporate culture began a major shift towards prioritization of productivity. Together, the combination of productivity prioritization, negative public perception, and decreased financial exemption pushed out the business lunch. As Paul Freedman observes in his discussion of the Four Seasons restaurant, "more than two decades later, many publishing offices have moved downtown and expense accounts have been reduced."^(5) Even now op-eds and other pieces come out occasionally which look back fondly at a time of multi-hour expensed lunches, even as they enabled alcoholism and provided dubious financial benefit.^(6)
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