Like the lunch menus of the 1960s, breakfast menus on the California Zephyr were printed on cards. Here is a blank card featuring the Zephyr logo. No doubt the commissaries printed thousands of these blanks, and later printed the menus themselves in a second printing monthly or quarterly. At 6-1/2″x10-1/2″, the breakfast cards are slightly smaller than the lunch cards, which are 8-3/8″x11″.
Click image to download this menu blank.
Here’s a breakfast menu dated October, 1968, the same as yesterday’s lunch menu. The breakfast menu offers “club breakfasts” that include juice, fruit, or cereal; bread; and a beverage along with one of seven entrées (plus an eighth one with no entrée). The entrées range from pancakes or French toast to a breakfast steak and eggs. The a la carte portion includes only three entrées, so someone who wants a breakfast steak or shired eggs has to order a complete meal.
Click image to download a PDF of this menu.
The breakfast steak is $2.85, or nearly $20 in today’s money. Oatmeal or another breakfast cereal is $0.65, or about $4.50 today. Ham, bacon, or sausage and eggs, with toast and coffee, are $1.95 or about $13 today. Myron Hayden has a nearly identical menu, but with many prices five or ten cents lower, dated nine months earlier than this one on his Water Level web site.