Tag Archives: automation

September 16, 2015 · 8:05 pm

Automation, part I: the disappearing server

How is it that the same culture that loves diners, with their friendly interchange between customers at a counter and cooks and servers on the other side, also idolizes the Automat, with food delivered in metal boxes that are filled by workers hidden from sight?

Through the years proponents of restaurant automation have argued that it’s more sanitary and efficient and results in lower prices for customers. Yet from the start — in the 19th century — automating restaurants was motivated primarily by a wish to eliminate servers.

That this was a desirable goal was never debated. Servers were depicted as annoying, manipulative pests who demanded tips and grew angry if they were too small. As long ago as 1885 a New York Times story hailed a newly invented “waiterless” system that permitted diners to select dishes from a card, place it in a receptacle that wafted it to the kitchen, and be served their food via an overhead railway system. The customer, said the story, “is not preyed upon by the thought that the menial is hovering over him, watching his every movement, and ready to ‘size him up’ in proportion to the amount of his order.” Whether this automation scheme ever materialized is something I have not been able to determine, but it presumably would have looked like this.

There were two basic types of automated restaurants: with one the patrons came to the food, as in the classic Horn & Hardart Automat, and with the other the food came to the patrons. In the latter case, it came in a container/cabinet that arrived (1) from wires overhead, (2) on a conveyor belt, or (3) up through the center of the table. The systems were inventors’ dream projects, resulting in many patents, though actually used in very few restaurants and even fewer successful restaurants. Most of the projects to automate service proved unsuccessful after the novelty wore off.

A sampling of the projects:

1895 – Exhibits of automated “push button” restaurants begin to appear at international fairs in Holland and Germany; soon they are found all over Germany.

1897 – Rumors start that automatic restaurant apparatus from Germany will be installed in Philadelphia’s business district enabling business men to eat more quickly

1899 – An advertisement appears in the Philadelphia Inquirer by a New York man who is seeking backers for an Automatic Lunch Room invented in France.

1901 – Buffalo’s Pan-American Exposition is said to have an automatic lunch room.

1902 – A natural food company in Niagara Falls allegedly runs a restaurant with 600 tables served by “five hundred little electric cars” operated by a switchboard.

1902 – Horn & Hardart open an Automat in Philadelphia.

1902 – The Harcombe Restaurant Co. opens an Automat in New York City.

1907 – An automated quick lunch opens on F street in Washington DC where customers get sandwiches, pie, or coffee by depositing a coin and moving a lever.

1908 – An announcement is made that a waiterless restaurant with Assyrian decor will open in NY on Broadway between 43rd and 44th where guests will receive their meals from a dumbwaiter in the center of their table that will be serviced from a kitchen below.

1909 – A notice by a self-described “first-class man” appears in a Seattle paper seeking partners for a “first-class automatic lunch room.”

1912 – The first NYC Horn & Hardart Automat opens, in Times Square.

1913 – An article in Scientific American proposes that a corporation should be formed to run a central kitchen that can send food to homes throughout cities via pneumatic tubes.

1915 – At least seven saloons in Chicago’s Loop have “free lunch machines” in operation.

1917 – The Automat Company of New England runs three automats in Boston.

1917 – An article in The Hotel Monthly hails a newly invented “Cafetourner” in which food is delivered in “thoroughly clean,” sterilized steel boxes on conveyor belts.

Ca. 1917 – Bell Lunch operates three lunchrooms in New York City, at least one of which appears to be an automat.

1921 – The Automatic Lunch Corporation opens Automatic Lunch Room No. 1 in Detroit, with plans for more in other Michigan cities.

1922 – Horn & Hardart are operating two Automats and five Automat-Cafeterias in Chicago.

1925 – An exhibition in Seattle hosts a booth by the Quick Lunch Company with machines that deliver pie or sandwiches at the drop of a coin.

1925 – Rather than utilizing coins in a slot, The Auteria in St. Paul MN replaces them with a card that is stamped with the price after the customer removes the dish from the device.

1926 – After a couple years in business the National Autometer Restaurant Corp. that ran two automatic restaurants in Washington DC declares bankruptcy.

1928 – A New York hotel exposition features a waiterless dining room with tables equipped with dumbwaiters set into tables.

1929 – Hall’s Mechanafe No. 1, which delivers food in cabinets on a conveyor belt, opens on Main Street in Boise ID. Along with the Horn & Hardart Automats in Philadelphia and New York it survives far longer than most restaurants with automatic service.

1930 – The first Merry-Go-Round café, in which a conveyor belt circulates along a counter, opens in Los Angeles.

1931 – The Hotel Warren in Worcester MA installs “auto-magic” tables where food comes up on a dumbwaiter set into the table. [pictured at top]

1933 – NYC’s Ye Eat Shoppe installs a conveyor belt that serves orders to patrons seated at the counter.

Beginning in the 1930s, but mainly after World War II in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, the second stage of automating the restaurant began, focused on streamlining food preparation in the restaurant kitchen. By the end of this stage computers had changed the meaning of “automatic.”

As for the fabled Horn & Hardart Automats, when the nation’s original one closed in 1969, in Philadelphia, the new president of Horn & Hardart said the concept had reached its peak before and after WWII. With only ten left in business, he acknowledged, “They are not really automatic.” As a story in the Los Angeles Times said, the Automat had become “a museum piece, inefficient and slow, in a computerized world.”

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Filed under technology

Tagged as automation, Automats, efficiency, kitchenless restaurants, patents, waiterless restaurants

April 30, 2013 · 3:23 pm

Before Horn & Hardart: European automats

Note: In preparing for an interview for a documentary on Automats I looked at new sources I wasn’t aware of when I originally wrote this post in 2010, among them a wonderful German trade publication which pictures European Automats produced by the Sielaff company of Berlin. The booklet, from the Hagley Museum and Library’s digital archives, also contains rare exterior and interior shots of NYC’s first Automat, opened in 1902 by James Harcombe. I’ve made modifications to the post and have included some new illustrations.

When automats opened in New York and Philadelphia in 1902 many people were convinced they were an American invention. But they were not. A reporter for the New York Tribune captured a conversation between an American businessman and a foreign guest at James Harcombe’s NYC Automat in 1903, shortly after its opening. After examining the place, the American exclaimed, “What a tribute to American inventive skill!” The man at the next table replied, speaking with an accent, “This is a German idea. There are dozens of these restaurants on the Continent and this one was moved bodily from Berlin …” As the editors of the American Architect and Building News had observed in 1892, when it came to “penny-in-the-slot” machines the U.S. was “far behind the rest of the civilized world.” Even though Americans detested tipping, admired gadgetry, and loved fast service, for some reason the US lagged in the area of automated restaurants.

Slot machines actually go back to antiquity. The first may have been a holy water dispenser in Egypt over 2,000 years ago. But it was Germany that developed the first automatic restaurant, applying electricity to the idea of self-service. Germany was also responsible for the term “automat” which in German usage applies to any type of coin-operated dispensing apparatus. The world’s first automatic refreshment dispenser appeared on the grounds of the zoo in Berlin in June of 1895 and was considered a “howling success.” On its first Sunday in operation it sold 5,400 sandwiches, 9,000 glasses of wine and cordials, and 22,000 cups of coffee. The first “automatisches restaurant,” providing hot meals as well as sandwiches and drinks was also designed by Max Sielaff of Berlin. It was presented to the public at a Berlin industrial exposition in 1896.

The fame of automatic restaurants spread rapidly in 1897 when one was installed and won a gold medal at the Brussels world’s fair. That same year an announcement was made that a similar restaurant would open soon in Philadelphia and in St. Louis – as far as I can determine neither of these became a reality at that time. In 1900 Paris had ‘buffets automatique’ — which resembled automats — all along the boulevards. Automats appeared in London a bit later. Around this time a visitor to St. Petersburg, Russia, found an automatic restaurant by the name of Quisisana, which evidently was the name of a Sielaff competitor in the European automatic restaurant industry. (pictured: top, Karlsruhe, 1903; middle, Dortmund, 1902; bottom, Wurzburg).

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Filed under lunch rooms, technology

Tagged as 1900s, automation, Automats, Berlin, German restaurants, New York restaurants, Philadelphia restaurants, Sielaff automat patent

January 28, 2010 · 5:15 pm

Taste of a decade: restaurants, 1900-1910

It is the dawn of the modern era of restaurant-ing. Patronage grows at a rate faster than population increases and the number of restaurant keepers swells by 75% during the decade. Leading restaurant cities are NYC, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, and Boston. Inexpensive lunch rooms with simple menus and quick service proliferate to serve growing ranks of urban white collar workers, both male and female. Women patronize places they once dared not enter, climbing onto lunch counter stools and venturing into cafes in the evening without escorts.

Diners worry about food safety and cleanliness. Cities mandate restaurant inspections. Meat preservatives used by some restaurants to “embalm” meat that has spoiled come under attack. Restaurants install sanitary white tile on floors and walls to demonstrate cleanliness.

Cooks and waiters unionize. Restaurant owners follow suit, advocating the abolition of the saloon’s “free lunch,” combating strikes, and targeting immigrants who operate “holes in the wall.” As Italians and Greeks open eating places some native-born Americans complain that foreigners are taking over the restaurant business.

New types of eating places become popular such as cafeterias, vegetarian cafés, German rathskellers, tea rooms, and Chinese and Italian restaurants. Dining for entertainment spreads. Adventurous young bohemians seek out small ethnic restaurants (“table d’hotes”) which serve free carafes of wine. Many restaurants introduce live music. The super-rich are accused of “reckless extravagance” as they stage elaborate banquets. The merely well-to-do hire chauffeurs to drive them to quaint dining spots in the countryside.

Highlights

1901 As restaurant patronage rises “foody talk” is everywhere. A journalist overhears people “shamelessly discussing the quantity and quality of food which may be obtained for a given price at the various restaurants.” Hobbyists begin collecting menus and Frances “Frank” E. Buttolph deposits over 9,000 menus in the NY Public Library.

1902 Restaurants automate and eliminate waiters. In Niagara Falls a restaurant devises a system of 500 small cable cars which deliver orders to guests. The Automat opens in Philadelphia, inspiring the city’s Dumont’s Minstrels to create a vaudeville act called The Automatic Restaurant which features “Laughing Pie” and “Screaming Pudding.”

1903 “Where and How to Dine in New York” lists restaurants with cellars where men’s clubs play cavemen and eat steak with their hands. – Hawaiians croon in San Francisco restaurants; ragtime bands play in NYC’s Hungarian cafés; and at McDonald’s (“a touch of Bohemia right in the heart of Boston”) a “Young Ladies’ Orchestra” serenades patrons.

1903 In Denver, where a large part of the population eats out, a cooks’ and waiters’ strike closes large eating places. Strikes break out in Omaha and in Chicago, where a newly formed union rapidly gains 17,000 members. Restaurant owners replace black servers with white women in Chicago, while in Omaha they replace white waiters and cooks with black men.

1905 Five hundred guests of insurance magnate James Hazen Hyde don 18th-century costumes and enjoy a banquet at Sherry’s. Two floors of the NYC restaurant are transformed into a royal French garden and supper is served at tables under wistaria-covered arbors set on a floor of real grass.

1906 Afternoon tea is so fashionable that NYC’s Waldorf-Astoria supplements the Waldorf Garden space by opening the Empire Room from 4 to 6 p.m. – Italian-Americans Luisa and Gerome Leone start a small table d’hote restaurant in NYC near the Metropolitan Opera.*

1908 Johnson’s Tamale Grotto is established in San Francisco with “A Complete Selection of Mexican Foods to Take Home.” – In Washington, D.C., the Union Dairy Lunch advertises that they have passed inspection with “Everything as sanitary and clean as your own home.”

1909 The Philadelphia Inquirer features a story about stylish yet practical “restaurant frocks,” showing a coral pink dress and matching hat ideal for traveling in dusty, open automobiles while visiting rural roadside inns and tea rooms.

* Later known as Mamma Leone’s.

Read about other decades: 1800 to 1810; 1810 to 1820; 1820 to 1830; 1860 to 1870; 1890 to 1900; 1920 to 1930; 1930 to 1940; 1940 to 1950; 1950 to 1960; 1960 to 1970; 1970 to 1980

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Filed under miscellaneous

Tagged as automation, lunch rooms, music, restaurant associations, restaurant patrons, sanitation, tea rooms, unions

March 25, 2009 · 12:32 pm

The Automat, an East Coast oasis

automatlogo In the late 19th century owners of large popular-price restaurants began to look for ways to cut costs and eliminate waiters. The times were hospitable to mechanical solutions and in 1902 automatic restaurants opened in Philadelphia (pictured below) and New York. In both cities, a clever coin-operated set-up – and a name – were imported from Germany. There was, however, a striking difference between the two operations. The Philadelphia Automat, run by Joseph Horn and Frank Hardart, served no alcoholic beverages, while the New York Automat, true to its European origins, did.

automatphil3051 The Automat in NYC was owned by James Harcombe, who in the 1890s had acquired Sutherland’s, one of the city’s old landmark restaurants located on Liberty Street. The Harcombe Restaurant Company’s Automat was at 830 Broadway, near Union Square. Reportedly costing more than $75,000 to install, it was a marvel of invention decorated with inlaid mirror, richly colored woods, and German proverbs. It served forth sandwiches and soups, dishes such as fish chowder and lobster Newburg, and ice creams. Beer, cocktails, and cordials flowed from its faucets. A bit too freely. The Automat’s staff had to keep a sharp lookout for young boys dropping coins into the liquor slots.

While the Philadelphia Automat thrived, the New York counterpart ran into financial difficulties shortly after opening, possibly because of a poor location. It advertised in an NYU student magazine in 1904: “Europe’s Unique Electric Self-serving Device for Lunches and Beverages. No Waiting. No Tipping. Open Evenings Until Midnight.” The disappearance of the Harcombe Automat ca. 1910 seemed to fulfill pessimistic views that an automatic restaurant couldn’t succeed in New York, allegedly because machinery would malfunction and customers would cheat by feeding it slugs.

1912bdwyautomat Undeterred by the first Automat’s fate, Horn & Hardart moved into New York in 1912, opening an Automat of their own manufacture at Broadway and 46th Street (pictured). It turned out that New Yorkers did indeed use slugs, especially in 1935 when 219,000 were inserted into H&H slots. But despite this, the automatic restaurant prospered, expanded, and became a New York institution. By 1918 there were nearly 50 Automats in the two major cities, and eventually a few in Boston. Horn & Hardart tried Automats in Chicago in the 1920s but they were a failure. On an inspection tour in Chicago, Joseph Horn noted problems such as weak coffee, “figs not right,” and “lem. meringue very bad.”

Part of the lore of the Automat derives from the unexpected forms of sociability it inspired among strangers. Others found in it a unique entertaining concept. Jack Benny hosted a black tie dinner in a New York Automat for 500 friends in 1960, but he was scarcely the first to come up with the idea. As early as 1903 a Philadelphia hostess rented that city’s Automat for a soirée, hiring a caterer to replace meatloaf and coffee with terrapin and champagne. In 1917 a New York bohemian group calling themselves “The Tramps” took over the Broadway Automat for a dance party, inserting in the food compartments numbered slips corresponding to dance partners. For most customers, though, the Automat meant cheap food and possibly a leisurely place to kill time and watch the parade of humanity.

automatmysteries3041 The Automats hit their peak in the mid-20th century. Slugs aside, the Depression years were better for business than the wealthier 1960s and 1970s when some units were converted to Burger Kings. In 1933 H&H hired Francis Bourdon, the French chef at the Sherry Netherland (fellow chefs called him “L’Escoffier des Automats”). In 1969 Philadelphia’s first Automat closed, being declared “a museum piece, inefficient and slow, in a computerized world.” That left two in Philadelphia and eight in NYC. The last New York Automat, at East 42nd and 3rd Ave, closed in 1991.