“Automats were right up there with the Statue of Liberty and Madison Square Garden,” Kent L. Barwick, former president of the Municipal Art Society, lamented to the New York Times in 1991 when the ...

Once considered the future of dining, automats embraced both convenience and novelty. The self-service restaurants were first introduced in the early 20th century and required customers to insert ...

The last automat in the US - Horn & Hardart - closed in New York in 1991, but a recent trip to Amsterdam showed me that they are still thriving in the Dutch city. Automats are like self-service ...

It was once the world’s largest restaurant chain, serving 800,000 people a day. It was Horn & Hardart, and its cavernous, waiterless establishments represented a combination of fast-food, vending and ...

For introverts since the dawn of time, eating out has presented a set of problems — mainly, having to interact with other humans in order to get your hands on a simple turkey sandwich. For a brief ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. A style of dining that gained popularity in the Great Depression is reemerging: automats, which feature food vending machines that ...

Some restaurateurs in the New York City metropolitan area are looking to the past to figure out the future of dining during the coronavirus pandemic. The automat, a concept developed more than a ...

While running errands in Toronto’s Yorkville neighbourhood recently, I spotted a wee café on Bay Street. Burnished wood and mid-century-modern accessories behind the glass made for a charming design ...

Automats are like vending machines where you insert coins or swipe a card to get hot food. They boomed in the US in the middle of the last century but have now disappeared. They are thriving in the ...