Historians acknowledge that it was the restaurant enterprise that many early Greek immigrants were attracted to during this era. There is no evidence to suggest that the Greeks had any unusual gifts or proclivity to food preparation or creation, but they had what it would take to make for success in such a business. They were enterprising and industrious, willing to work the long hours, and were sufficiently intelligent to learn to operate such businesses. They may have gotten started as dishwashers or busboys, or with more experience as a waiter or cook in a restaurant, or perhaps outside the restaurant as a food peddler, or more likely as a confectioner, but eventually gravitated to owning a restaurant.

Moreover, as they acquired families it became a family affair thus assuring that the family members could all participate in the work that needed to be done. They were also by nature friendly and by custom, philoexeni, "lover of strangers". They aimed to please and to do what they could to encourage their customers to return as it satisfied their honor, philotemia.

The phenomenal growth of restaurant ownership was particularly dramatic in Chicago where there was active discrimination practiced against the Greek-owned restaurant in those early 1900's. However that did not dissuade them. According to Scourby, by 1919 one of out of every three restaurants in Chicago were operated by Greeks even though most of the names were Anglicized not to make it obvious to the client that the owner may have been Greek. According to the account by Moskos, the 1975 census revealed there were 113,000 restaurants and luncheons, and 20% of the names listed in the National Restaurant Association directory were identified as Greek.

Whether the percentage of restaurants owned by Greeks is anywhere near that today is unlikely, but no one will refute that it remains significant.