Automats

Before McDonald’s, there was the Horn and Hardart Automat. On 22 December 1888, Joe Horn and Frank Hardart opened their first lunchroom at 39 South Thirteenth Street in Philadelphia, opposite Wanamaker’s Department Store. Customers flocked to their lunchroom to sip their “gilt-edge” coffee, prepared in the French-drip method made popular in New Orleans, Louisiana.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the company learned about a new Swiss invention called the “waiterless restaurant” or the “automatic.” The first machine they purchased was manufactured in Germany and installed at 818 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia on 9 June 1902. In 1912 John Fritsche, the chief engineer for Horn and Hardart, designed a more efficient machine with rectangular glass doors that could be opened by a knob. The customer would walk down a wall of these windows, select a hot or cold item, insert a nickel, and turn the knob; the door would then spring open to reveal the food. Behind the bank of glass doors an efficient team of women kept the slots filled with food.