In Germany, there are two classes of workers: Arbeiter (worker) and Angestellte (Employee). Arbeiter generally have less freedom in the workplace. From the 1870s on, factories started to install cafeterias for their workers. This was meant to improve working condition but has also been interpreted as an attempt to bind the workers, who did to have any alternatives during the short breaks. As in restaurants, social distinctions made themselves felt. The new class of employees insisted on separate refreshment rooms. However, the ideal remained either to eat at home or to be affluent enough to freely where and to eat out.
Whereas in west Germany until today school tend to end around midday with no meals provided, day schools, and with that school cafeterias, used to be the norm in east Germany and are currently on the rise throughout the country. At the end of the 1980s, 85 of East Germany schoolchildren ate lunch with their classmates, whereas their parents ate with work colleagues. Even today there is a marked difference between western Germany, where only 18 of children eat lunch at school, and the eastern regions of Germany, where much numbers eat lunch at school. Free school meals (Schulspeisung) have been controversial in Germany since they began at the end of the nineteenth century; historically, they are closely connected with soup kitchens and similar initiatives school cafeterias were created by official authorities as well as private initiatives to relieve the lot of those children who were not properly fed at home. They were revived by the allied forces in the immediate postwar years. Just as with factory cafeterias, they ran contrary to the ideal of lunch meals prepared at home by a mother or wife. This possibly explains the negative associations that cafeteria food has for Germans up until today.
However, the Studentenwerke (students' administrations) running the Mensas (university cafeteria) in contemporary Germany make a big effort to offer selection of healthy, poppular foods at affordable prices (subsidized by tuition fees). there are often vegetarian and organic option, and the menu tends to be a representative mix of home-style cooking and fast food. Of course, the quality varies from one location to another.