I never heard the mill story either. Always heard it was for the truckers, which makes more sense. My dad worked in the mill and my mom packed his lunch. All the mill workers I ever saw brought their lunches from home. There was nowhere to actually go eat (I think there was a small shop for sodas and coffee where my dad was) and no one’s lunch time was long enough to actually walk all the way to the parking lot off site, and drive somewhere to go eat, and get back in time. In fact “lunch” was pretty much whenever one had some down time between tasks to go to the shanty and eat.
Millennials sounds about right. It had to be someone who didn’t remember Pittsburgh as a mill town.
I agree that servicing mill workers makes no sense. How could a mill worker make it to the strip district, eat at a restaurant and then get back to work on time?