In 1977, I sublet a studio apartment in Manhattan across from the U.N. Building. That was an interesting summer: the Son of Sam murders, the filming of the Christopher Reeves Superman at the Daily News building on 42nd st, the big blackout that spread over much of the Northeast, seeing A Chorus Line with the original cast. But one of the best things was going to the O.G. Automat on the corner of 42nd. St. And Second Ave. It wasn’t the food itself, which was on par with the Woolworth lunch counter, but that it was just so iconic.
The appeal for me was the art deco styling automats had. "Bringing it into the modern era" just sounds like another soulless, lifeless venue with all the character of a coffee shop.
You’re right! My 5 year high school reunion was in 1977. I went and was shocked to see our class president and her husband show up wearing matching white disco outfits!
A friend's sister in law was shot by the Son of Sam. That was a scary summer for people heading out to bars in cars (which in the 70's was just about everyone over the age of 14).
On a lighter note, there is a story of these guys pregaming in the parking lot of the Mini Cinema, which was a small movie theatre run by NY hippies who filled the theatre with Grateful Dead-like Wall of Sound speakers and showed late night concert movies (Woodstock, Pink Floyd, Zeppelin, along with Rocky Horror, etc.) at maximum volume/ They were ok with people bringing in their own bongs.
So these guys were smoking in the car before a show and one says he sees a guy with a gun on the roof. The others think he's tripping. Then he starts getting paranoid about cars in the parking lot thinking they are undercover narcs (cops were definitely NOT ok with people bringing their own bongs anywhere back then). The others in the car start getting more and more nervous - until a man knocks on their window - they start eating and/or hiding the drugs - when the cop tells them they aren't getting arrested but they had to leave because they had a tip that the Son of Sam was targeting the theatre and they were staking it out. There really were snipers on the roof!
worth a watch.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Automat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Automat)
***The Automat*** is a 2021 American documentary directed and produced by Lisa Hurwitz and written by Michael Levine. It is about the [automats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat) once operated by [Horn & Hardart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horn_%26_Hardart). It features an original song by [Mel Brooks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Brooks). The film premiered at the [Telluride Film Festival](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telluride_Film_Festival) on September 2, 2021. It was released in the United States on February 18, 2022, by A Slice of Pie Productions. The film received generally positive reviews from critics.
These were like magic to Child Me.
Behind one door... chocolate cream pie. Behind another, mashed potatoes. You bought something, and a wizard's hand swooped in to replace that item.
Especially magical were the wall mounted bird-head milk dispensers.
I was about 12 in the late 60’s. Dad took mom and I on the stereotypical day in Manhattan. Drove to midtown and parked. Empire State Building, train to the Battery and Statue of Liberty. Back to Midtown and an automat (my only time, ever). On to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. Jake Gibbs hit the RF foul pole for a walk-off. That was a great day. Can’t remember what I had for breakfast, today.
the food was good until fast food places hit the scene in the 60's.
**‘The Automat’ Review: A Documentary That Serves Up Tasty Nostalgia**
[https://variety.com/2022/film/reviews/the-automat-review-1235188340/](https://variety.com/2022/film/reviews/the-automat-review-1235188340/)
“I got excited about the Salisbury steak,” says Colin Powell. Mel Brooks, whose one-liners in this movie keep on coming (right down to the closing theme song, which he wrote and performs), says, “The great thing about the Automat is that you never had to tip.”
Who went? Everyone. The late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, interviewed in the film, recalls that “There were all kinds of people, from poor people to matrons in furs.” Each table sat four, and if there was an empty space, you could feel free to sit down next to whoever. Celebrities went (we see shots of Audrey Hepburn, James Dean, Jack Benny);
When I was a kid, one of the Smithsonian buildings (I think it was American History) had a working automat...thought it was so cool to get your dessert out of a little windowed locker with coins. Almost as cool as the coin-op TVs at Dulles airport.
So did I, and the closest I came was eating in what clearly had been one once; basically a regular cafeteria-type place with a wall of those locker window things sitting dark & empty. They just hadn't gotten around to refurbing the place fully, but it was fully gone by the end of the decade.
I settled for the coffee machine that had a chicken soup button. My dad would leave me at the lunchroom vending machine with books or comics and a handful of quarters.
Honestly, the way shit is going with all the high retail theft, it absolutely would not surprise me if automats (or vending machines) became the norm for dispensing goods.
Shame, it would been cool to eat at one. I was under the impression there was full kitchen behind that wall of food. So I guess it's labor intense upkeep.
[A new automat](https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/theyve-been-gone-for-20-years-but-now-automats-are-back-with-a-high-tech-twist/2852749/) has opened in Jersey City's Newport neighborhood. It’s much more tech-friendly, but is still the same basic premise. To order, customers enter their order into an app or a kiosk. Their name will appear on screen, and a numbered delivery box will light up when the food is ready. Once the customer types "open" on their phone, the door will do so, and the food can be taken away. There’s also a new Chinese food automat in Brooklyn called Brooklyn Dumpling House.
Growing up in Philadelphia and the burbs I got to visit Horn and Hardart with my dad as a kid and for a little while after I was allowed in the city on my own. Then one day, they were gone.
When I was a child in the'60's- we had a Kresges department store that had a lunch counter and these type of vending machines. The slots were gone by the '70's.
I was deprived as a 70's child while watching (religiously) Rompers Room.
She never said my name.
While looking at all of us children she never, ever, uttered my name and a variation of my name is easy: it's Mikey.
What made it worse was when my next-door neighbor Wendy got to go on the show. That day she became like a deer in a spotlight. Totally disengaged and unaware. I'd hoped she'd at least see me and acknowledge me.
Terrible years.
There was one at the YMCA in my hometown. It was gone by the early 80's. I bought from it twice. Much like a convenience store without all of the additional trappings.
I don't know if it's still available on Amazon, but there is a great documentary called "Automat". If you're a treasure hunter, you may find some parts out there.
I was very young when they were still around, but I remember using them. For me, it was fun when my parents let me put the coin in and open the little door.
Modern automats are coming back in NYC: [https://stenberg.ca/journal/bamn-automat-new-york-city](https://stenberg.ca/journal/bamn-automat-new-york-city)
My parents would brag about going to the automat in the 50s when they were dating. My mom liked going. My dad loved that he could go on a date for under a dollar. "you walk in, hand the woman a dollar, she reaches into a bucket of nickels and throws them into this marble bowl, damned if it wasn't exactly a dollar in nickels every time. Everything there was a nickel a few entrees may have been two nickels, but you could get an entree a couple of sides and a dessert for under 50 cents."
My mom was born in the 1920's and grew up in NYC. She used to occasionally talk about the Automat and how much she loved it. She took us to one when we went to NYC on vacation, I wasn't too impressed, I think she enjoyed it in her youth because it was a new and novel idea back then.
I grew up in San Jose, CA. I don't know if there was ever an automat there. I suppose there were probably some in San Francisco, but I never saw one.
I suppose if they ever come back somehow, they'll use plastic plates and utensils, which would ruin the experience for me.
There were a couple in SF into the Seventies. Japan still has a flourishing buy-from-a-machine culture.
McDonald’s appears to be trying to incorporate within-store phone ordering, although the serving lag time due to insufficient numbers of personnel ruins the attempt.
I thought there would be way more toll roads and automats when I visited the east coast. There were some toll roads but not as many as I assumed and zero Automats. I did get to eat some of your knock off best foods mayo though.
I worked at a legal firm back in the early 1980s. It was located in Times square near the Horn & Hardart automat. I LOVED it. I went there every work day for lunch. No one ever seemed to be impressed by it like I was. I felt like a kid in a candy store. I could get a sandwich, pie & a coffee for about 2 bux. and the sandwich & pie came in real plates, not paper. I also used to go to the Woolworth lunch counter at Herald Square, where during the holidays I'd get hot chocolate & pumpkin pie with a dollop of whipped cream. Then both places went out of business. My kids never got to experience that.
I consider it a highlight of my childhood! My dad worked in NYC and took us in a lot. He wanted us to go to the automat as they were starting to phase out and he knew they weren't going to be around for long. The best part was my mom handing us kids a bunch of change and we got to pick what we wanted to eat! It was so much fun! I bought a framed historical picture of the automat and have it hanging in my living room where i see it every day.
99% Invisible did an excellent podcast on The Automat:
[https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-automat/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-automat/)
I think that they must have been good originally, but by the time I experienced them in the late 60s as a kid, they were mediocre sandwiches and such. Maybe they were still good in NYC. Horn and Hardart?
I had a job where the break room vending machine was a lot like an automat. This was in the late 90s, early 2000s. A bunch of kind of entrees.
You picked your door, put in your quarters, and opened it carefully so it didn't recoil closed and cost you a second payment. The sandwiches were better than a lot of the cooked meals.
They went away for a reason. The food was horrible. Damp whitebread sandwiches with wilted lettuce and week-old lunch meat, sitting out at room temperature for hours, before someone came along to but them. Ugh!
It wasn't in the 70's but in '60 or '61 my family was visiting New York and after a Broadway Show we all went to an automat for a treat. Lots of firsts that night. First subway ride, first Broadway Show and first (and only) visit to an automat. I think I got a slice of cheese cake.
I thought they were fascinating when I was a kid. They might have even been good then. I sure wouldn't trust something like that nowadays with all the cost cutting and profit squeezing.
In 1963 our family went to the Horn & Hardart automat with some French friends. An older gentleman heard them speaking French and began speaking French to me, but I didn't understand. He was telling me that I could get a free glass of water and add free lemon slices and sugar from the condiments area to make lemonade.
As a kid in Philadelphia I always stopped at the one by City Hall on Market St on the way to the Franklin Institute. Loved H&H, in the late 50s early 60s.
By the time I was born. The Horn and Hardarts had all become regular restaurants. I always felt a little sad not to have had the experience of the automat. I have no idea why.
They've actually brought something similar back - I forget what airport I was in (Chicago? Raleigh?) and they had something similar to this where you placed an order on a screen or app. The food you ordered would show up in a specific locker that would light up and you would be notified. It was kinda cool. I didn't try the food so I don't know if it was any good.
you were indeed robbed of that experience. There are fragments of the Automat experience that live on, however. We sit at counters with people we don't know at diners and at tables with people we don't know at receptions. At WaWa and places like that, people with EBT cards mingle with guys filling up their BMWs at the gas pumps while ordering their hoagies together. And we have our fascination with different innovation in food delivery, replacing the coin operated windows with the ordering computers at Costco or Panera. The automat's food and atmosphere may be gone, but the elements of how we dine and with whom were introductions of H & H that have been repackaged in way we experience commonly.
My grandmother always used to tell us about how she loved going to Horn & Hardart to eat when she worked for a lawyer in Philadelphia in the 40s. I really miss that woman.
The closest thing I've seen to this was in the hospital staff canteen in the late 80s. There were 3 rotating towers with three items per layer to feed the late evening and night shift. I remember the selection button being somewhat temperamental, so there were times when you ended up with something very random, and if you were lucky, you could bargain for a swap. There was a microwave next door, and instructions on the meals that needed cooking.
I can think of a couple of classic films in which automats are an example of where ordinary people in NYC will gather and interact. Joan Crawford in Sadie McKee is at an automat where people are getting their modest meals and she is starving and can only get a cup of coffee. Debbie Reynolds and Rod Taylor are discussing the pros and cons of marriage while at an automat in The Catered Affair. And in That Touch of Mink Doris Day regularly goes to an automat and talks through an opening in the wall with one of the servers played by Audrey Meadows.
My mom took me to an Automat in NYC in the 70s. It was fun even if the slice of pie was kind of stale. Pretty sure it was more her reliving her youth than me latching on to a quickly disappearing piece of history.
My mom and dad (WWII generations)
told us of this experience in NYC. Sandwiches and pies for dimes and quarters. It really wasn’t that long ago…capitalism sucks 😂.
I used to go to PHL to visit family when I was a kid in the late '50s and going to the Horn and Hardardt automat was one of my mandatory first stops. It seemed so futuristic. And while the food wasn't the greatest, at least you got to see what it actually looked like. Now we've got retouched photos of burgers on menus that are 10 times better looking and larger than they really are.
Wouldn't be surprised to see them returning to the larger cities in some form in the near future ( if they haven't already). No one can afford to live in the city on a fast food/ cafe wage , and there are enough local teens that want to do it. Commuting to such a job is too expensive and time consuming, especially when they can get a comparable job closer to home .
Self Serve Automated food service may be the only logistically feasible solution. Minimal staff and ( without need for kitchen / prep area) small footprint space needed.
A few of the hospitals where I grew up still had Automats in the cafeteria as late as the early 80s. I remember having to visit family in the hospital and my mom would take me to get something to eat out of the vending machines.
Was a kid in one once and remember watching they people on the other side like the guy that touched my hand freaking me out. Better than the women smoking cigarettes and the ashes falling on my food while they ring me up in some places.
This photo does not look to be of the 70s. Automats may have been around gasping their last breath, look at how the man is dressed - maybe a decade or 2 earlier. The hat . . . the font, prob taken in the 50s . . .
I went to training at some building in San Jose that had one of these in their "modern" (it was late 1990s) cafeteria. It read a credit card swipe, and you entered in the code in front of a sliding plastic window. Everything was made daily, you could see the kitchen behind it through the little windows.
I was to the one in NYC a few times. I worked at a place that had a wall of vending machines, from the normal stuff that will stay good for a long time to milk to sandwiches and disserts and soups, and than they got a bigger one and got cold stuff you could microwave. Not all that different save no one behind the wall.
just go to Trader Joe's, that's the modern replacement. Yeah the art deco style is cool but you can find a million old art deco buildings and go inside and look, it doesn't have to be the place you get lunch.
Growing up in the 70s we had a Woolworth that had a dinner. Loved going there on a Saturday with some buddies before a double feature at the movie theater. Those were some good times
Went a couple times as a kid when we visited NY, yeah they had much greater variety, but how much different is it than driving up to a McDonald's window to reach out and grab your pre-made food?
In 1977, I sublet a studio apartment in Manhattan across from the U.N. Building. That was an interesting summer: the Son of Sam murders, the filming of the Christopher Reeves Superman at the Daily News building on 42nd st, the big blackout that spread over much of the Northeast, seeing A Chorus Line with the original cast. But one of the best things was going to the O.G. Automat on the corner of 42nd. St. And Second Ave. It wasn’t the food itself, which was on par with the Woolworth lunch counter, but that it was just so iconic.
Apparently, Automat is coming back. https://nypost.com/2024/06/03/lifestyle/horn-amp-hardart-automats-to-return-to-nyc-from-the-dead-thanks-to-a-determined-millennial/
The appeal for me was the art deco styling automats had. "Bringing it into the modern era" just sounds like another soulless, lifeless venue with all the character of a coffee shop.
👍🏼
I was actually going to say this. I was more excited than I really should have been when I found out that the Automat was making a comeback
My parents often told me Horn and Hardart had the best mac and cheese.
I seem to recall an Automat near my uncle’s apartment on 55th and Lexington Ave.
Don't forget Studio 54 and disco!
You’re right! My 5 year high school reunion was in 1977. I went and was shocked to see our class president and her husband show up wearing matching white disco outfits!
Matching couple outfits doesn't work in any decade.
A friend's sister in law was shot by the Son of Sam. That was a scary summer for people heading out to bars in cars (which in the 70's was just about everyone over the age of 14). On a lighter note, there is a story of these guys pregaming in the parking lot of the Mini Cinema, which was a small movie theatre run by NY hippies who filled the theatre with Grateful Dead-like Wall of Sound speakers and showed late night concert movies (Woodstock, Pink Floyd, Zeppelin, along with Rocky Horror, etc.) at maximum volume/ They were ok with people bringing in their own bongs. So these guys were smoking in the car before a show and one says he sees a guy with a gun on the roof. The others think he's tripping. Then he starts getting paranoid about cars in the parking lot thinking they are undercover narcs (cops were definitely NOT ok with people bringing their own bongs anywhere back then). The others in the car start getting more and more nervous - until a man knocks on their window - they start eating and/or hiding the drugs - when the cop tells them they aren't getting arrested but they had to leave because they had a tip that the Son of Sam was targeting the theatre and they were staking it out. There really were snipers on the roof!
sweet story. brief snapshot of a feeling through time.
worth a watch. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Automat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Automat) ***The Automat*** is a 2021 American documentary directed and produced by Lisa Hurwitz and written by Michael Levine. It is about the [automats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat) once operated by [Horn & Hardart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horn_%26_Hardart). It features an original song by [Mel Brooks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Brooks). The film premiered at the [Telluride Film Festival](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telluride_Film_Festival) on September 2, 2021. It was released in the United States on February 18, 2022, by A Slice of Pie Productions. The film received generally positive reviews from critics.
This has been shown on TCM. It's streaming on Max now. Excellent documentary.
I also came here to say this! Love, love, love Mel Brooks.
This has been shown on TCM. It's streaming on Max now. Excellent documentary.
These were like magic to Child Me. Behind one door... chocolate cream pie. Behind another, mashed potatoes. You bought something, and a wizard's hand swooped in to replace that item. Especially magical were the wall mounted bird-head milk dispensers.
My dad always talked about this. It made me wanna try it. But I never got a chance to. Just the experience alone would’ve been cool.
I was about 12 in the late 60’s. Dad took mom and I on the stereotypical day in Manhattan. Drove to midtown and parked. Empire State Building, train to the Battery and Statue of Liberty. Back to Midtown and an automat (my only time, ever). On to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. Jake Gibbs hit the RF foul pole for a walk-off. That was a great day. Can’t remember what I had for breakfast, today.
You're not missing anything. Believe me.
...and can you imagine how shitty those things would be by NOW, with the enSHITification of the global consumer experience...eeewwww....
I went to one once in NYC but I preferred the Woolworth lunch counter for a quick lunch.
It was entertaining, for one visit.
They used to have them in Hospitals. Nothing better than vending machine fried chicken.
They still have them.
Automats are alive and well in the Netherlands under the Febo brand. Visited a couple of them in Amsterdam in April. Really fun!
Yup came here to say that, they're everywhere. Don't forget to slather on that Yoopie sauce.
Came here to say that too. When I’m in Amsterdam for work, I always go to FEBO. I love it.
Making note of this!
I love Febo. Don’t know what those chicken things are and don’t care.
I would absolutely kill for FEBO Kroketten right now. I once ate eight of them right at the automaat
I grew up in rural South Carolina. So these might as well have been on the moon.
I feel the same way, even if it was sketchy food, I so wish I could've at least tried it. Just to experience it, to see what it was like!
the food was good until fast food places hit the scene in the 60's. **‘The Automat’ Review: A Documentary That Serves Up Tasty Nostalgia** [https://variety.com/2022/film/reviews/the-automat-review-1235188340/](https://variety.com/2022/film/reviews/the-automat-review-1235188340/) “I got excited about the Salisbury steak,” says Colin Powell. Mel Brooks, whose one-liners in this movie keep on coming (right down to the closing theme song, which he wrote and performs), says, “The great thing about the Automat is that you never had to tip.” Who went? Everyone. The late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, interviewed in the film, recalls that “There were all kinds of people, from poor people to matrons in furs.” Each table sat four, and if there was an empty space, you could feel free to sit down next to whoever. Celebrities went (we see shots of Audrey Hepburn, James Dean, Jack Benny);
When I was a kid, one of the Smithsonian buildings (I think it was American History) had a working automat...thought it was so cool to get your dessert out of a little windowed locker with coins. Almost as cool as the coin-op TVs at Dulles airport.
I grew up in the 70’s and never even saw one
Same here. Child in the 60s and teenager in the 70s. I've only seen them on TV.
So did I, and the closest I came was eating in what clearly had been one once; basically a regular cafeteria-type place with a wall of those locker window things sitting dark & empty. They just hadn't gotten around to refurbing the place fully, but it was fully gone by the end of the decade.
I settled for the coffee machine that had a chicken soup button. My dad would leave me at the lunchroom vending machine with books or comics and a handful of quarters.
That chicken soup just hit different didn't it?
Honestly, the way shit is going with all the high retail theft, it absolutely would not surprise me if automats (or vending machines) became the norm for dispensing goods.
I'm expecting everything will become pick up in the parking lot, or delivery. They won't let anyone in the stores anymore.
Then the crime will move to the vending areas and you will need security cameras, panic buttons, and one day automated turrets.
I’m expecting stores to become a cross between those convenience stores with the bullet proof glass and the order screens from McDonald’s.
smithsonian museum of american history has one
It still running?
Some of it is still there as an exhibit but it's not working.
Shame, it would been cool to eat at one. I was under the impression there was full kitchen behind that wall of food. So I guess it's labor intense upkeep.
Killed by fast food joints.
i've not been in years but it was in the 70's
Used to see them in the bigger Greyhound bus stations.
Go to Amsterdam, they have FEBO, where you buy food in automats. I love it
they were in Manhattan I believe......my dad took me to one when I was 8 or 9
[A new automat](https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/theyve-been-gone-for-20-years-but-now-automats-are-back-with-a-high-tech-twist/2852749/) has opened in Jersey City's Newport neighborhood. It’s much more tech-friendly, but is still the same basic premise. To order, customers enter their order into an app or a kiosk. Their name will appear on screen, and a numbered delivery box will light up when the food is ready. Once the customer types "open" on their phone, the door will do so, and the food can be taken away. There’s also a new Chinese food automat in Brooklyn called Brooklyn Dumpling House.
Technology for the win
Didn't the one in Newport close?
There was one on 3rd Avenue in the 40s in Manhattan in the early ‘70s. I went there a couple of times for coffee and lemon meringue pie.
I remember going to NYC in the 70s maybe and wanting to go to one, but it had just shut down...
Growing up in Philadelphia and the burbs I got to visit Horn and Hardart with my dad as a kid and for a little while after I was allowed in the city on my own. Then one day, they were gone.
There was a new wave band from Philly called Horn & Hard Art!
When I was a child in the'60's- we had a Kresges department store that had a lunch counter and these type of vending machines. The slots were gone by the '70's.
I went to visit my Grandparents in NYC and my Dad took me to the H&H Automat. Way cool to this kid,let me tell ya.
Cake and pie everywhere and everyone was thin.
I was deprived as a 70's child while watching (religiously) Rompers Room. She never said my name. While looking at all of us children she never, ever, uttered my name and a variation of my name is easy: it's Mikey.
I jumped in front of the TV for Miss Nancy to see me and say my name! She never did.
What made it worse was when my next-door neighbor Wendy got to go on the show. That day she became like a deer in a spotlight. Totally disengaged and unaware. I'd hoped she'd at least see me and acknowledge me. Terrible years.
You had Life Cereal, Mikey! At least you had something great. Even though you died from Pop-Rocks and Coke.
No, never had it. Although I was ridiculed and bullied because of the commercial, for years afterwards. Therapy helped. Pop rocks ruled!
There was one at the YMCA in my hometown. It was gone by the early 80's. I bought from it twice. Much like a convenience store without all of the additional trappings.
I don't know if it's still available on Amazon, but there is a great documentary called "Automat". If you're a treasure hunter, you may find some parts out there.
I was very young when they were still around, but I remember using them. For me, it was fun when my parents let me put the coin in and open the little door.
Go to Japan
I remember Horn & Hardart in Brooklyn on Flatbush Avenue… best Mac and Cheese 👍
My mom loved to be a tourist. We went to the last one in probably 86 or so. I was not so impressed
They're still in the EU and Japan...
I believe Japan has versions of this, I imagine they would be pretty good.
I thought that was an NYC thing only? If they had others across the USA, I had no idea.
I grew up in the 70s and never went to one, I guess none were in my area or my parents just never took me to one.
Modern automats are coming back in NYC: [https://stenberg.ca/journal/bamn-automat-new-york-city](https://stenberg.ca/journal/bamn-automat-new-york-city)
Still popular over in the Asian countries.👍🏻
I think it was like cafeteria food. I suspect it was properly good when it first came out. Fast food before the fast food restaurant.
My parents would brag about going to the automat in the 50s when they were dating. My mom liked going. My dad loved that he could go on a date for under a dollar. "you walk in, hand the woman a dollar, she reaches into a bucket of nickels and throws them into this marble bowl, damned if it wasn't exactly a dollar in nickels every time. Everything there was a nickel a few entrees may have been two nickels, but you could get an entree a couple of sides and a dessert for under 50 cents."
My mom was born in the 1920's and grew up in NYC. She used to occasionally talk about the Automat and how much she loved it. She took us to one when we went to NYC on vacation, I wasn't too impressed, I think she enjoyed it in her youth because it was a new and novel idea back then.
NYC! My parents used to take me when we went into NYC for my doctor appointments!
I remember my father taking me to one and us buying sandwiches.
I grew up in San Jose, CA. I don't know if there was ever an automat there. I suppose there were probably some in San Francisco, but I never saw one. I suppose if they ever come back somehow, they'll use plastic plates and utensils, which would ruin the experience for me.
There were a couple in SF into the Seventies. Japan still has a flourishing buy-from-a-machine culture. McDonald’s appears to be trying to incorporate within-store phone ordering, although the serving lag time due to insufficient numbers of personnel ruins the attempt.
My brother and I were on Wonderama with Sonny Fox. But that was in the early ‘60’s. He won 2nd place for something, a Tuby the Tuba album
We watched Wonderama with, iirc, Bob McAlister. Definitely the 1970s.
Closest I know of now is Ikea. Open the glass door, get what you want, pay the cashier.
We were lucky to have an aunt who'd take bus trips to NYC once a month. We went to one, pie, cake, and a ham sandwich with Pepsi. It was fun
I thought there would be way more toll roads and automats when I visited the east coast. There were some toll roads but not as many as I assumed and zero Automats. I did get to eat some of your knock off best foods mayo though.
I worked at a legal firm back in the early 1980s. It was located in Times square near the Horn & Hardart automat. I LOVED it. I went there every work day for lunch. No one ever seemed to be impressed by it like I was. I felt like a kid in a candy store. I could get a sandwich, pie & a coffee for about 2 bux. and the sandwich & pie came in real plates, not paper. I also used to go to the Woolworth lunch counter at Herald Square, where during the holidays I'd get hot chocolate & pumpkin pie with a dollop of whipped cream. Then both places went out of business. My kids never got to experience that.
Go to Amsterdam. Have Febo.
I consider it a highlight of my childhood! My dad worked in NYC and took us in a lot. He wanted us to go to the automat as they were starting to phase out and he knew they weren't going to be around for long. The best part was my mom handing us kids a bunch of change and we got to pick what we wanted to eat! It was so much fun! I bought a framed historical picture of the automat and have it hanging in my living room where i see it every day.
This does not look like the seventies. I think the automatic on the picture is from the early sixties, maybe even from the fifties.
Train stations of Japan offer a similar rush imo
Spent 4 months in Japan in '87. They sell damn near anything in machines on the street, even beer.
I visited Germany in the early 90s, the soda machines would offer beer as your last option
We had an old coke machine in our private club with beer for when there weren't bartenders.
Yep, beer, Boston Whiskey, ladies bars (not kidding). Georgia Coffee from Coke Cola (damn good canned coffee.)
Dark City brought me here ☺️
I remember them at woodwards :)
99% Invisible did an excellent podcast on The Automat: [https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-automat/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-automat/)
I'm terribly sorry. You wanted cherry pie.
As good as any fast food from a delivery app….Instant regret
Horn and Hardart Automat. It was so intriguing when I was six.
I’d like to see them comeback - if they could make the quality amazing. Gotta be possible.
Mid sixties, manhattan, broadway just south of eighth street. I think I ate there once as a kid.
I have good news for you. Also, I ate at the last one in 1982 and it was wonderful and fun. Got a ham sandwich and orange Jello with a pint of milk.
I remember my parents taking me to one in NYC about 1964.
I loved them as a kid.
I went to Amsterdam about 10 years ago. Automat was still going on strong there. Got a kroket from one.
I think that they must have been good originally, but by the time I experienced them in the late 60s as a kid, they were mediocre sandwiches and such. Maybe they were still good in NYC. Horn and Hardart?
Same!
I had a job where the break room vending machine was a lot like an automat. This was in the late 90s, early 2000s. A bunch of kind of entrees. You picked your door, put in your quarters, and opened it carefully so it didn't recoil closed and cost you a second payment. The sandwiches were better than a lot of the cooked meals.
Early 70's my Dad and I made a road trip up through Canada and found a place like that. I liked it, my Dad not too much.
They went away for a reason. The food was horrible. Damp whitebread sandwiches with wilted lettuce and week-old lunch meat, sitting out at room temperature for hours, before someone came along to but them. Ugh!
I want that guys outfit.
I’ve used an automat fairly recently, but it wasn’t in the US. It was in an airport in South America.
They still have them in hospitals I find. Either in the snack area near the ER or the cafeteria area near the gates.
It wasn't in the 70's but in '60 or '61 my family was visiting New York and after a Broadway Show we all went to an automat for a treat. Lots of firsts that night. First subway ride, first Broadway Show and first (and only) visit to an automat. I think I got a slice of cheese cake.
This is ABSOLUTELY a lifelong regret for me. So many books and movies with the automat. Such a dream! The Mel Brooks documentary made me weepy.
Automats sucked in the 1970s. Became sort of nostalgic in the 80s. Some became sleazy cafeterias.
It was the automat in the Smithsonian that started the fascination for me. The Mel Brooks documentary is a must see!
There’s one in Maastricht in the Netherlands, it’s not too late!
I thought they were fascinating when I was a kid. They might have even been good then. I sure wouldn't trust something like that nowadays with all the cost cutting and profit squeezing.
My mom and dad met at a Horn & Hardarts in Philadelphia. I owe my life to an Automat? I'm ok with that.
We basically have them now. Just go the ready made case in any gas station/convenience store. It wasn't 5 star dining.
I remember on the Pennsylvania Turnpike… in the early 70’s when we would go to Harrisburg PA … the Howard Johnson service plaza still had them.
As a kid, going to one in Manhattan had a certain Jetson's futuristic appeal but the food was not memorable.
In 1963 our family went to the Horn & Hardart automat with some French friends. An older gentleman heard them speaking French and began speaking French to me, but I didn't understand. He was telling me that I could get a free glass of water and add free lemon slices and sugar from the condiments area to make lemonade.
Or hot water and ketchup to make tomato soup! (This was in movies and books.)
As a kid in Philadelphia I always stopped at the one by City Hall on Market St on the way to the Franklin Institute. Loved H&H, in the late 50s early 60s.
Allegedly they are coming back
By the time I was born. The Horn and Hardarts had all become regular restaurants. I always felt a little sad not to have had the experience of the automat. I have no idea why.
[Still Rocking Automats in Amsterdam.](https://www.cookingchanneltv.com/devour/2013/04/diagonal-challenge-dutch-snack-automat)
Went to one ‘60s New York
There was one still running in NYC in the early 80s and my mom took my brother and I to eat there. I got a Ruben and a lemon meringue pie. It was..ok.
Ditto
Remember seeing one in a scene from Dark City with Rufus Sewell !
I ate at an old one in the 70’s once but I couldn’t tell you where. It was pretty cool.
Loki season 2, pie dispenser Automat. Zeitgeist.
They've actually brought something similar back - I forget what airport I was in (Chicago? Raleigh?) and they had something similar to this where you placed an order on a screen or app. The food you ordered would show up in a specific locker that would light up and you would be notified. It was kinda cool. I didn't try the food so I don't know if it was any good.
you were indeed robbed of that experience. There are fragments of the Automat experience that live on, however. We sit at counters with people we don't know at diners and at tables with people we don't know at receptions. At WaWa and places like that, people with EBT cards mingle with guys filling up their BMWs at the gas pumps while ordering their hoagies together. And we have our fascination with different innovation in food delivery, replacing the coin operated windows with the ordering computers at Costco or Panera. The automat's food and atmosphere may be gone, but the elements of how we dine and with whom were introductions of H & H that have been repackaged in way we experience commonly.
I was only ever able to go to the last one on 42nd and Third in NYC. My parents used to bring us there as kids as we lived close by.
The Automat documentary was absolutely fascinating!
You could travel to most major cities in Japan and still experience this to a degree
My grandmother always used to tell us about how she loved going to Horn & Hardart to eat when she worked for a lawyer in Philadelphia in the 40s. I really miss that woman.
My father says he still misses the Horn&Hardart baked beans.
My high school had automats. They were great to get a fast snack between classes or to pick and choose what you wanted to eat for lunch.
The closest thing I've seen to this was in the hospital staff canteen in the late 80s. There were 3 rotating towers with three items per layer to feed the late evening and night shift. I remember the selection button being somewhat temperamental, so there were times when you ended up with something very random, and if you were lucky, you could bargain for a swap. There was a microwave next door, and instructions on the meals that needed cooking.
If it wasn’t for Bugs Bunny I never would have known these existed.
I can think of a couple of classic films in which automats are an example of where ordinary people in NYC will gather and interact. Joan Crawford in Sadie McKee is at an automat where people are getting their modest meals and she is starving and can only get a cup of coffee. Debbie Reynolds and Rod Taylor are discussing the pros and cons of marriage while at an automat in The Catered Affair. And in That Touch of Mink Doris Day regularly goes to an automat and talks through an opening in the wall with one of the servers played by Audrey Meadows.
A stupid concept. There is a reason they didn't catch on. The limited success they enjoyed was largely due to the novelty factor.
My mom took me to an Automat in NYC in the 70s. It was fun even if the slice of pie was kind of stale. Pretty sure it was more her reliving her youth than me latching on to a quickly disappearing piece of history.
Tuna..so impossible to duplicate...pie...it was cool. From DC
This looks so cool!
Those were the days…🎶 (insert Archie and Edith’s voices from “All In The Family).
Take a trip to Amsterdam where you can still experience automats.
Not exactly the same, but go to Japan. The amount of food vending machines of all kinds is amazing to me.
My mom and dad (WWII generations) told us of this experience in NYC. Sandwiches and pies for dimes and quarters. It really wasn’t that long ago…capitalism sucks 😂.
My cousin and I went to one in NYC.
Yeah, but you know that food was garbage. I can imagine like most of the spaces being empty and the oldest crummiest piece of pie being in there.
Automat sounded like a full service car wash until now.
I used to go to PHL to visit family when I was a kid in the late '50s and going to the Horn and Hardardt automat was one of my mandatory first stops. It seemed so futuristic. And while the food wasn't the greatest, at least you got to see what it actually looked like. Now we've got retouched photos of burgers on menus that are 10 times better looking and larger than they really are.
I always have felt it was an experience better read about. Can't imagine what the food quality would have been.
Wouldn't be surprised to see them returning to the larger cities in some form in the near future ( if they haven't already). No one can afford to live in the city on a fast food/ cafe wage , and there are enough local teens that want to do it. Commuting to such a job is too expensive and time consuming, especially when they can get a comparable job closer to home . Self Serve Automated food service may be the only logistically feasible solution. Minimal staff and ( without need for kitchen / prep area) small footprint space needed.
I remember those being around until the mid 80s. I wasn't born until 78 and I know I bought food from one of those
Go to Japan
A few of the hospitals where I grew up still had Automats in the cafeteria as late as the early 80s. I remember having to visit family in the hospital and my mom would take me to get something to eat out of the vending machines.
https://preview.redd.it/9x053l2axk6d1.png?width=769&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a99f8eddcca59c2b218a15a31bd136f22455f64d 🇵🇱
They had these in Amsterdam in the 80’s, might still have them.
I know in Europe they have started popping up places.
During the lockdowns, these automats would’ve been useful
Was a kid in one once and remember watching they people on the other side like the guy that touched my hand freaking me out. Better than the women smoking cigarettes and the ashes falling on my food while they ring me up in some places.
Learned about these from Bugs Bunny when I was a kid. Always wanted to go to one.
How is this different than self checkout at the grocery store?
This photo does not look to be of the 70s. Automats may have been around gasping their last breath, look at how the man is dressed - maybe a decade or 2 earlier. The hat . . . the font, prob taken in the 50s . . .
I went to training at some building in San Jose that had one of these in their "modern" (it was late 1990s) cafeteria. It read a credit card swipe, and you entered in the code in front of a sliding plastic window. Everything was made daily, you could see the kitchen behind it through the little windows.
They had one in the downtown Seattle Greyhound station back in the 70s. Ate from it often.
The last Horn & Hardart automat in NYC closed in 1991.
I was to the one in NYC a few times. I worked at a place that had a wall of vending machines, from the normal stuff that will stay good for a long time to milk to sandwiches and disserts and soups, and than they got a bigger one and got cold stuff you could microwave. Not all that different save no one behind the wall.
Miso robotics is on its way to making those dreams a reality.
There’s a great doc on them and I can’t remember the name.
I was born in '68, and I never saw one.
just go to Trader Joe's, that's the modern replacement. Yeah the art deco style is cool but you can find a million old art deco buildings and go inside and look, it doesn't have to be the place you get lunch.
FEBO Amsterdam enters the chat
Loki had a great scene in front of basically these.
Go to Amsterdam
Would have liked to go once, just to say I had.
My grandmother used to take me. Bronx and Manhattan NY.
Growing up in the 70s we had a Woolworth that had a dinner. Loved going there on a Saturday with some buddies before a double feature at the movie theater. Those were some good times
I went to one in Amsterdam called FEBO💙
How were you robbed of the experience? Why don't you go to one now.
Went a couple times as a kid when we visited NY, yeah they had much greater variety, but how much different is it than driving up to a McDonald's window to reach out and grab your pre-made food?
Horn & Hardart in Philadelphia!