Bourgeois Reformers and Social Catering in Belgium, 1868-1914

In Belgium, liberal philanthropists, usually freemasons, started fostering social reform in the 1860s with a stress on social catering. Breaking with older charity models, they strove to create a co-operative type of institution offering “on the spot” or “take-away” consumption of cheap cooked food, where meals were not donated but paid for. The industrial city of Liège offers one of the first and more sustainable cases of this type of philanthropy in Belgium organized not only by bourgeois philanthropists but also (skilled) working-class people. The provision of affordable meals allowed the elites to gain control over the duration of lunch breaks and over workers’ nutrition. Social catering ventures were also an answer to the almost general absence of eating facilities in the factories. The co-operative goals of the initiative remain ambiguous. This Liège social catering eventually disappeared in 1905, after two decades of slow decline coinciding with the changing food-related needs of factories and factory workers.