As a pre-pubescent young girl, my aunt put me on a train in Brooklyn, NY, for my visit to another relative and admonished me “not to take any wooden nickels.” I had no clue what she meant.

I do, however, understand the theory behind “no free lunches.” Consider the foodservice industry, which has spent years beating back the effects of a down economy and fickle consumerism. You gotta wonder why any reasoned entrepreneur would want to go into such a fragile business. My friend started a hot-dog business on the belief that the recipe he loved would translate into cash register rewards.

He lasted less than a year before employee thievery and other business problems forced him to close. Sadly his business investment was money he and his brother, who also invested in the business, inherited after their mother’s death.

Who said this? “There ain’t no free lunches in this country. And don’t go spending your whole life commiserating that you got raw deals. You’ve got to say, ‘I think that if I keep working at this and want it bad enough I can have it.’ Answer: Lee Iacocca, under whose leadership a dying Chrysler Corporation was transformed becoming model of success. Too bad what he said did not work for my friend and his dream of owning, operating and prospering from a hot-dog restaurant.

Free-lunch in these recessionary times has become a survival tactic, however. Consider that kids can eat free on Wednesdays (at least here in Chandler, Ariz.) and, my favorite is free dessert on Thursday at another place. I used a coupon that came in the mail to take my grandson for lunch at one of my favorite eateries featuring Hawaiian BBQ. The portions were twice the size of regularly priced items using my coupon to buy one plate and get the second meal “of equal or lesser value” free. Of course there always seems to be a catch. In this case I had to buy two large drinks at the regular price. Fortunately for me there was ice tea since I don’t consumer soft drinks, but my grandson certainly does. Of course large is always ideal for him. The thing is my bill still was cheaper than if I had bought each item separately.

This is the moral to the story. If you want to ride out the recession and get customer to fill those empty restaurant seats give them something for nothing. That is not madness. It is methodology.

Oh, and about those wooden nickels. I thought it was something my aunt made up.
Turns out they once were in circulation in the United States. According to the home page of the Wooden Nickel Historical Museum in San Antonia, Texas, the Citizen's Bank of Tenino, Washington issued round wooden coins for the first time on December 5, 1931, when the bank failed creating a money shortage. This was critical since area merchants were unable to get the change they needed without traveling “over mountainous roads in automobiles that were designed for travel by horses and mules.” Each wood had an expiration date and generally even a specific final redemption time. Now I understand my aunt’s caution. I could have been left holding some worthless currency, which will be the case concerning the free meal coupon I have if I don’t use it before it expires.