SavorIn this type of restaurant, you select your entire meal from walls of elaborate vending machines. Anney and Lauren peek into the history and retro-futurist culture of Horn & Hardart automats.
Hello, and welcome to Savor production of iHeartRadio. I'm Annie Reese.
And I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. And today we're talking about automats, and really specifically about this one American automat company, Horn and Hardart.
Yes, yes, well, was there any particular reason this was on your mind? Lord?
Oh no, you keep asking me that question.
The hot seed.
Every time I was looking for some kind of technology related topic, and I've had on our kind of on my like shortlist for to do, like a vending machine update, and then I was looking at the vending machine outline, and then I was like, automats, What the heck is up with those? So, yeah, here we are.
I was going to ask if.
You'd heard of them before, I guess, oh yeah, absolutely definitely like a cultural standpoint in my like minor obsession with mid century modern design and fashion.
Automats feature in there somewhere.
I guess.
Speaking of there's like a really good automat scene in the film Dark City, really beautiful film. I fall asleep every time watching it. It's like one of my favorite movies up there with like Brazil, that I always fall asleep during.
Interesting.
Yeah, I don't know something about the pacing is just soothing.
Oh man. This reminds me of the time I was sharing a room with a friend and she was like, do you mind if I watch Midsommar? It helps me sleep? And I was like, I absolutely not, we cannot do that. I'm sorry. I don't say no often, but in this case, oh wow.
See, I felt like those two choices were like some of the least soothing films that you could passably choose to try to fall asleep too. But I think Midsomar has them beat.
Yeah. Yeah, she said it so like innocently, as if I won't have any questions about it, right, yeah, all right. I mean I get comfort out of horror movies too, but I usually don't sure all asleep.
I guess I've fallen asleep to like horror type media for a very long time, Like my current one is just reruns of Supernatural, So yeah, if.
I've seen it enough, I could do it. But anyway, anyway, I haven't heard of automats before. But interestingly, when we were doing this research, when people were describing these Asian h's, it was such a clear description and it painted such a vivid picture. I was like, oh, my gosh, I've seen this in Marvelous Missus masl.
Because okay, there you go.
I and it was in the final episode they go to one of these restaurants. And when I was watching it, I was like, what is this because this isn't the type of show that's gonna like have a fictional restaurant urge something. But it felt so out of time and place to me. It was so like clean and bright. I was very like, I don't know what this is. But right when I was reading this, I was like, oh, my gosh, that's what it was, and I loocked it up. Yep.
I never got to the end of Miss Maisel, but yep, no, that's that's what it is. This like very retro futuristic sort of sort of thing that.
Yeah, so many windows, oh my goodness.
Yeah.
I will also say I think there are similar things happening in other countries, but those are gonna have to be other episodes because I got overwhelmed. It's too much.
Yeah, that's that's really fair. I sort of got overwhelmed just talking about this one chain.
So yes, so future futures problem, yeah, yeah, or something to look forward to.
Oh, there you go. That's a much nicer way of putting it. Absolutely Okay, Well, all of that being said, you can see our prior episode on vending machines. We do mention automats like a couple times in there and talk a little bit about like vending machine technology and the history thereof. So all that is related.
Yes, yes it is, which I guess brings us to our question. Yeah, automats, what are they?
Well, an automat is a restaurant made of vending machines. It's a mostly extinct type of quick service restaurant or cafeteria where instead of interacting with a cashier or a server to or and receive your meal, you instead have access to all of the items on the menu via these walls of self service vending cubbies, where each item is kept to the appropriate temperature behind a little glass door and stalked from behind the wall. So you browse the cubbies, select what you want, and pay for each item individually via like a coin slot or other device, which then lets you open the door and take the item, and then you can then usually like on a tray or something, take your items to a table to eat. If you want anything else, you get up and get it. The fair is typically meant to be fairly affordable and quick, the sort of thing you could snag on a lunch break, like sandwiches, salads, soups, a slice of cake or pie, something like that. They have a sterile sort of futurism to them that feels a tiny bit dystopian in its orderliness, like in gaming terms, if a buffet is a chaotic choose your own lunch, and automat is like a lawful choose your own lunch. It really takes the visible service out of the service industry. I mean it sounds great for days when you like do not have the capacity to speak to another human person. And I have days like that, so I get that. But yeah, it's sort of like it's sort of like an arcade game, but you just perceive food and then you eat it.
Yes, And Lauren and I were discussing before this. I would have loved it as a kid. I would have loved it.
Oh yeah, yeah, there's something very right fun game gamified about getting to put the little the little money in the little slots and getting to operate a little door and yeah, yeah.
And you can see everything in like the whole all the walls inside.
Yeah, yeah, and they're always lit from like inside or behind, and so it's all very very shiny. Yeah, all right. These mostly existed in the United States in like the nineteen teens the nineteen fifties, and mostly put out by this one company, Horn and Hardert and their establishments all had this very characteristically like clinical deco to modern combo vibe, with lots of rounded edges, lots of chrome. They were situated in urban areas with a lot of pedestrian traffic. Some were open twenty four hours a day to accommodate all shifts in classes of workers. I understand. Their wall cases were sometimes all chilled, in which case warm items were available from buffet tables. Other restaurants had different like banks for hot and cold items. The dining areas that the vending walls lined often had a mix of like four top dine at tables and then bar height tables without stools for just standing and eating almost on the go. And perhaps obviously despite not having a lot of staff interaction, there was a lot of staff involved. Like the dining areas were cleaned and food and drinks were rotated out on tightly controlled schedules. Every time someone took a dish from a cubby, it was supposed to be replaced. I heard. I heard that if a cubby labeled with the dish that you wanted was empty, you might like knock on the glass and kind of peer through what was essentially a window and sort of like catch the attention of someone in the back and be like, yo, sandwich, can I get this one? And they might, and they might put one out for you. There were cashiers, like usually ladies, that'd exchange larger currency for the nickels that were required to feed the machines back in the day. And the types of food served were like typical American cafeteria food of the era, cold sandwiches, vegetable side dishes like creamed spinach, maybe fresh salads, things like mac and cheese, salisburry steak, coffee cake, berry crumbles, you know, things that could be ad or simmered and would sort of hold up to being transported and like put on a plate and sat in a little window for a period of time.
Yes, with quite bright light on it. Often mm hmm. Well what about the nutrition?
Don't donate restaurant formats?
M Again, I feel like there's some kind of consumerism metaphor there, But we shall move on. We do have one.
Number for you, all right. So we do have a bunch of numbers in our history section, but I wanted to put something here, so I read a lot of different numbers for how big H and H was in their heyday. Like, it doesn't help that a lot of the sources that I read did not list a date for what they meant by heyday. I understand it to be somewhere between the nineteen forties and the nineteen fifties, so sometime during that period they were serving anywhere from three hundred and fifty thousand to eight hundred thousand people a day from up to about one hundred and eighty restaurant locations.
It's pretty amazing.
Yeah, yeah, this was mostly only in two cities, but it was a phenomenon.
It really really was, and the history of how it got to be such a phenomenon as fascinating it is.
And we will get into that history as soon as we get back from a quick break forward from our sponsors.
We're back, Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you. So in most sources, people list the first automatic restaurant as being opened in Berlin in eighteen ninety five. Apparently in the zoo. I think it was called Kisisana, which is Italian. I had to look it up because I was like, that doesn't sound German speaking. No, no, it isn't a few other similar restaurants popped up across Europe in the following years because this concept kind of caught on. It was a futuristic thing that people were excited about. But yes, here in the US, the automat burned brightly and pretty quickly, and kind of specifically in terms of regionality. It started with a man from Philadelphia named Joe Horn, and he published an ad looking for a business partner. Love it. He got a response from a man from New Orleans with German ancestry named Frank Hardart. They decided to open up a luncheonette together. In eighteen eighty eight, the first Horn and Hardart a restaurant opened in Philadelphia, a small, fifteen stool luncheon The founders, in part wanted to introduce Philadelphia to New Orleans style coffee. It was pretty popular, especially in a time when quick lunch stops like this were convenient for the working class. But okay, the automation part was introduced in nineteen oh two after a sales representative from Kisisana approached Horn and Hardart about using their machinery, and the pair are just Hardart visited the location while in Germany, or possibly they purchased these vending machines from a salesman in the US. It kind of feels like a lot of different versions of the story. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but whatever the case, they got their hands on this tech and they thought that Americans would be into it. Very basically, yes, individual food items were placed behind windows that people could look into and make their decision to purchase an item. Customers would drop a nickel into a slot a very vending machine like nickel throwers. Women in glass booths handed out change for the slots, and the concept really resonated, especially after Prohibition closed saloons and then during the Great Depression when pie and coffee may only cost a few nickels. For many it was fancy elegant despite the price points. The coffee came out of a dolphin shaped fountain.
Yeah. They really worked on making those dining rooms and those like interactive vending pieces really beautiful and very modern looking. For a definition of modern at the time.
Yes, yeah, and like I said, it struck me when I saw that episode of Marvelous Missus MASL so look it up if you haven't seen it. Also, just a note and this could be kind of my horror movie brain. Oh, but getting this machinery to the US was a bit of a hassle. From what I read, the first shipment sank. The second time around, it was damaged in an explosion.
Oh whoa, yes, something, so it was not meant to be perhaps perhaps.
Or perhaps I've seen too many horror movies. Also possible that one, I think, Yeah, that one. Probably. In nineteen twelve, H and H spread to New York.
Yeah, and at first they had kitchens on site, like tucked out of site in the back or in a basement, but as they grew to more locations, they wanted a way to maintain quality across restaurants.
Yeah, and the recipes were standardized and relied on essential Commissary system to supply their locations, leading many sources that I read to call these automats America's first major fast food chain.
Apparently, Horn and Hardart and like other board members, would visit the central kitchens daily to quality control and test new menu items.
And they offered a huge range of menu items four hundred at one point, from what I read, from lobster and cocktails to pie and coffee, all kinds of things.
Oh yeah, their slogan was less work for Mother.
That also sounds kind of dystopian, very creepy. Yeah. Yeah, Well, there were a lot of reasons people liked H and H, especially during a time when a people were concerned about the cleanliness of their food, and they liked seeing it before they bought it. B people were really into this new technology and the food industry, and see it was just really aesthetically pleasing. The restaurant was.
Little bit novel, a little bit aesthetic shure.
Yeah, Tipping was discouraged, and because of how the whole thing worked, it was easy to hide how much you spent.
Yeah, meaning in a culture obsessed with appearing well off, even during these hard times, you could eat more cheaply.
Right, you didn't, as you said, Lauren, you didn't necessarily have to interact with the German. And there were a lot of reasons people didn't like waiters in the US at this time.
Yeah, And you can see our episode on tipping about that fair warning. I think it's the angriest I've ever heard Annie be ever in years of knowing her. But very basically, like, this was a really complicated and racially charged issue that essentially stems from the fact that after the end of slavery in the US, business owners did not want to pay for servant work, so we created this like systemically classist legal loophole where business owners could underpay employees and customers were expected to make up a living wage and tips, which customers then became annoyed by and sort of took it out on the white staff.
Yep, yep.
It continues to this day.
It does still makes me angry. Yeah anyway, anyway, H and H was also a place where people of all backgrounds could and would go, from celebrities to blue collar workers. It was also one of the places unescorted women at the time could go.
Yeah, kids too. Kids could go like after school and grab something to eat and do their homework.
The most popular item was the coffee, and the owners would occasionally do spot checks to taste it for temperature and taste. These restaurants sold about ninety million cups a year at the height of their popularity in the nineteen fifties ISH. One of the reasons was because they introduced fresh drip coffee to Philadelphia and New York, and the employees would set timers for twenty minutes and throw out old coffee. These restaurants even kind of became a tourist attraction, which makes sense if they're only in these certain areas.
Oh yeah, yeah.
Not everyone loved them, though some complained about how young folks were in too much of a hurry and the food was cheap in quality. On top of that, there was a backlash from labor unions in nineteen twenty nine. The bus boys and cooks made well below minimum wage at the time. Time, the hours were long and overtime and paid vacations were non existent. Their New York City locations were picketed in nineteen thirty seven, and then in nineteen fifty two a strike caused the company to raise the cost of their coffee to cover the cost of increasing the salaries of their employees. And then eventually these restaurants just kind of fell out of fashion as Americans taste changed. Lunch wasn't as important a meal as it used to be. A lot of people moved out to the suburbs. There were other options similar to it, like McDonald's readily available.
Yeah and suburban living and chain's. Like McDonald's, emphasized car culture, which was simultaneously co developing. Like a lot of the new popular affordable restaurants were places with drive up or drive through features where you didn't have to get out of your car, sort of the exact opposite of what an automat has going on, right, And.
The type of food was no longer as popular as it once was. Price hurt them to a nickel just wouldn't cut it anymore.
Yeah, and I mean H and H tried. In the nineteen fifties, they opened a few suburban retail stores where you could buy these prepackaged foods. In nineteen sixty one, they got liquor licenses for a couple of their urban locations to attract the like Martini lunch customers. See our Bartini episode about that. But yeah, nothing really worked. By nineteen sixty nine, they wound up donating their original locations machinery to the National Museum of American History.
Wow wow Yeah. In the nineteen seventies, H and H replaced their remaining restaurants with Burger Kings.
Or other fast food brands like Arby's.
The final Automatic closed in New York City in nineteen ninety one. This is so fascinating to me though. I love seeing that, like when companies try to adapt and evolve, how they kind of stray from what they were we are, and then when they kind of come back in different forms. So, in twenty fifteen, the idea was revived in San Francisco with a place called Iza I think It's meant to be I think so, yeah, where people could place an order for custom chema bowls via an iPad and pick it up from a glass compartment filled wall. However, it closed in twenty nineteen.
Yeah, there's been a couple different, like attempted revivals in the United States, but none of them ever really worked out. In twenty twenty one, a documentary premiered about the H and H Automats, directed by one Lisa Hurwitz and called appropriately The Automat. Mel Brooks wrote a song for it. She interviewed all of these people like like Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Colin Powell and mel Brooks and yeah, it sounds really delightful. I've not watched it, but I think it's available on Max right now though, oh that's in my future. And yeah, certainly there are traces of the Horn and Hardart automat and other dining concepts today like conveyor belt restaurants and places where you order from touch screens and maybe pick up from like a line or yeah, from some kind of wall like that at Itza. There are some more classically automat style places operating in Germany and Japan, possibly Sweden. I'm not totally positive because I yeah, I was like, I need to limit myself to this rabbit hole. Those other rabbit holes are for other days. So yeah, topics topics for the future.
Yes, and listeners, please, if you are from another country and you have some insights, some experiences, please let us know.
Oh absolutely, yeah, let's see seed our future knowledge. And if you have any personal experience with any of these places, or if you have like a family story from somebody who does, we would love to hear it.
Yes, we absolutely would. But I think that's what we have to say about automats and H and H specifically for now.
It is. We do already have some listener mail for you, though, and we are going to get into that as soon as we get back from one more quick break for a word from our sponsors.
And we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you. We're back with storm. The ding is going to be really effective for that one. I can tell you that right now, Lauren.
Oh yes, yes.
I also want to say I'm in a different setup than I normally am, and I can't. I can't rely on my visuals like A usually Can'tah, So I'm sorry if I'm a little off my listener mail game.
No, I think you're doing great personally.
Thank you for me. Mikayla wrote, I just listened to your episode on Prickly Pears and I had so many thoughts. My grandma passed away a year and a half ago. She only spoke Spanish and I didn't. But even with that, one of my strongest memories I have of her is working side by side in her kitchen to remove the spines from the paddles that she cut from the plant in her backyard. She then cooked them with beans and they were delicious. I have since been Team nopals. People have opinions, and when I recall that memory, it reminds me of a time when a friend shared with me how a neighbor told him that the tunas were edible, So the next time he was at a park with his daughter, he saw one and thought they should try it. His neighbor had not told him about the spines. Also, please enjoy this picture of my parents' front yard. For my mom's fiftieth birthday, her center pieces were individual Nopell paddles. After the party, she planted one in the front yard. This is it fifteen plus years later. Yes, it is now taller than their one story house. My siblings and I call it the cactus tree. The gray trunk at the bottom is the original paddle that she planted. You can see tunas and varying states of ripeness all over the plants. My mom freezes the tunas and uses them for smoothies. That's amazing. That is amazing. The picture is so cute too. It's like decorated with Christmas lights. I love it. Fifteen years wow right amazing? Ah yeah, I oh.
I am, I am. I am envious of people who have a good head start on their gardens. I am working on it. It's going to it shall be mine. Yes, After many years of potted gardens. I'm going to move on up slowly.
That's all right, Lauren. I'm slow and steady wins the race. So the tomato race. Yeah, however, you can get fresh tomatoes is a good way to do it. That's what I say, right right.
Oh no, all of this is delightful. Thank you so much for sharing. Oh my goodness. Yes, Christine wrote, I was intellectually curious about the non dairy creamer episode because coffee creamer is something I'm curious about. I read about it a lot in fiction, but it's not very common in Australia. I should note here I worked in it for over twenty five years. Raging caffeine addictions are an occupational hazard and if you meet an it person that doesn't drink coffee run I'm also Australian, which means I come from a country of serious coffee connoisseurs. We believe our coffee is the best in the world, and there's a lot of people, even Americans and Italians who agree. We do not use creamer for people who don't drink espresso, short black or long black. The only appropriate addition is milk plant milks. If you must a flavored syrup if you're really sad. But that's as far as it goes. Every so often on social media, someone who's recently arrived in Australia will ask where they can find creamer or why it isn't in supermarkets see Coors Red below. The answer is some variation on our coffee is not use milk because you're in Australia now, and if shelf stability is a concern, there is euht milk available in various sizes. I vaguely remember ads from my childhood for various brands of milk powder, and even one for coffee mate. This was Carnation Coffee Mate, so it is probably from before nineteen eighty five when Nestley acquired Carnation. Come to think of it, the milk powder ads were Nestley and always implied powdered milk was fine for coffee or even worse in tea. I haven't seen any major marketing campaigns for powdered milk in years, though, which suggests that even the evil capitalist lizard people who run the previously mentioned international food company have realized Australians will never switch to their inferior coffee additives.
Oo wow, I love this strong opinions, very strong. We've heard from a lot of people about non dairy Kreamer's, but I would love if someone else from Australia I want to see. Yeah, I think I was just drinking cheap free coffee when I was in Australia, and I know I can fill the rage coming at me, but I don't remember.
You were also a student.
Yeah, this is this is coffee free at this hotel, perfect that drink.
Yeah yeah, now this is this is wonderful and fascinating and yeah, I don't disagree with your assessment of that company that you mentioned. You can see the stuff they don't want you to know. Episode on Bottled Water. If you'd like to learn more about how I feel, m hm uh huh.
Yeah, yeah, definitely check that out.
But yeah, no, this is and this is also like kind of kind of exactly how I feel about about coffee. I'm like, if it's good coffee, you don't need to adulterate it with other stuff. I want my good coffee to taste like good coffee. I don't want it to taste like other stuff. If it's kind of not good coffee, then.
Yeah, you know whatever, sure, yeah, yeah, I bet that's generally the consensus, although I do have friends that I'm convinced they don't like coffee, Oh absolutely, but they like adding all the stuff in.
Totally yeah, which is also fine.
Yeah, totally. You do what you want to do. We can't tell you.
I mean, probably don't spend that much money on coffee if you don't like the taste of it. But you know you can get the cheap stuff, right, you know. That's all I'm saying. And you are correct. Raging caffeine addictions do run pretty rampant in it, that.
Is I have.
If you couldn't guess it about me and and Annie too, I assume like I've got a lot of friends in it.
So yep, yeap. But it's no watch out, they no conversation.
I would say that the production team here at iHeart is vaguely similar in that regard. There are a few humans who certainly have had like multiple monsters a day habits.
Yes, that is true. That is true. And I got drawn into that for a little bit and I had to get off that. I had to jump off too much.
You're already an anxious person, Annie, you don't need.
This is why am I still awake at their I am working. Oh my god, not good.
No well, drink responsibly, Drink responsibly, no matter what it be.
Thanks to both of these listeners for writing to us. If you would like to write to us, you can Our email is hello at saverrepod dot com.
We're also on social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at saver pod and we do hope to hear from you. Save is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks us always to our superproducers Dylan Pagan and Andrew Howard. Special thanks today to JJ Posway. Thanks to you for listening, and we hope that lots more good things are coming your way.
