Missouri (MO)

The Missouri Restaurant Association (MRA) represents restaurant and hospitality purveyors in Missouri and adjacent states.

The restaurant trade association movement traces its roots to Missouri. The forerunner of the restaurant movement in America was the Kansas City Business Men’s Association, when in 1916, local operators banded together to resist encroachment on their own businesses.

In this group were early industry leaders such as Myron Green and George Fowler, father-in-law of Joseph Gilbert, Sr. of Gilbert/Robinson, who went on to establish both the Missouri and the National Restaurant Associations.

In 1919, on a heatless Monday” during World War I, these same individuals gathered other restaurateurs from around the nation to form the National Restaurant Association. The NRA was headquartered in Kansas City until 1926, when the office was moved to Chicago.

Though there is little resemblance between the organization as it exists today and that of those early years, two things that have remained the same are MRA’s organizational activities and its focus on the member. MRA’s effectiveness derives from its unity and action of members.