who started great american cookie company

Rouse’s philosophy for all of his work-malls, urban projects, even the entire town of Columbia, Maryland-was based in this idea of community. “Jim Rouse wanted to create what he saw as community picnics,” Robert Rubenkonig, Rouse’s communications director, told Shopping Centers Today in 2004. Rouse was the pioneering developer responsible not only for many suburban shopping centers (he's credited with coining the term ' shopping mall' in the 1950s), but also urban shopping renewal projects like renewing Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall in 1976 or New York City’s South Street Seaport in 1983. While there is some debate about where the first successful food court opened in a mall (some claim it was in Canada at Toronto’s Sherway Gardens others say it is the Paramus Park Mall in Paramus, New Jersey), there is little doubt about the visionary behind the idea: James W. Woolworth’s counter in particular was an early quick-service concept, in today’s restaurant industry parlance, but it does point toward the food courts that were yet to come. The restaurants were more of a convenience to suddenly hungry shoppers rather than their own destination. These malls included restaurants-some in the department stores were similar to their urban counterparts, while others offered choices like a Morrison’s cafeteria, or the food counter at the Woolworth’s Five and Dime. The enclosed suburban mall had to build the retail experience from the ground up since it didn't have the benefit of the existing businesses or infrastructure of the downtown shops. By 1954, when Time published an article called 'Flight To The Suburbs,' 93 suburban shopping malls had been built around the country’s 20 largest cities and another 25 were on the way. When shoppers moved from the urban centers to the suburbs in the post-World War II boom, the retailers followed.

But at some point, meals for the masses became a selling point.

Macy’s Herald Square in New York City offered white tablecloth meals. Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia had a spacious dining room, believed to be the largest in the city, that provided diners a place not just to eat but also to enjoy the store’s enormous pipe organ. Marshall Field's on Chicago's State Street was home to the famous Walnut Room (which now resides in a Macy's). Fast-forward to the early 1900s, and the great department stores that presided over downtown shopping streets in the United States had a variety of full-service restaurants aimed squarely toward the ladies-who-lunch. Sharing a meal in a communal space is nothing new-the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, which is well over 500 years old, is one of the world’s oldest indoor markets. In the days before Wi-Fi or Snapchat, social networking was done in person, at the mall, with an Orange Julius or a Hot Dog On A Stick in hand. The mall food court in the movie, shot in the Sherman Oaks Galleria in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley, represented the '80s teen ideal of community, freedom, and independence. Fast Times At Ridgemont High did more than just guarantee the word awesome entered our permanent collective lexicon.

Who started great american cookie company