Horn & Hardart, around for nearly 140 years, brought the Automat to America. (All photos courtesy of Horn & Hardart.)

I n my house, watching the premiere of Lisa Hurwitz’s 2021 documentary The Automat was bigger than any awards show. While I was too young to experience them before the last one closed in Manhattan, in 1991 (with enough time to make it into Whit Stillman’s film Metropolitan), I grew up with parents who spoke of the magical contraption which involved putting a nickel into a vending machine, getting to choose from a glowing heated cabinet with options like baked beans or homemade pie, and pulling out a freshly made meal. It was self-service, fast-casual cafeteria dining, without cutting corners—down to the elegant interiors. Horn & Hardart opened America’s first Automat in Philadelphia in 1902 (it began as a luncheonette in 1888), before expanding to New York where it became an essential part of the city’s dining history.

Could the Automat ever return? A business centered on speed and efficiency without compromising on quality seems ripe for a lunch landscape dotted with salad bowl chains and an era of folks working on modern diners with the flavor of yesteryear. In 2024, the New York Post reported that a millennial by the name of David Arena—who wasn’t from the restaurant world and instead had founded a media company called Alcove—had obtained the rights to the Horn & Hardart name with the intention of rebooting a physical restaurant again, in the style of the Art Deco Automats of yore. A few years later, so far, that hasn’t manifested… yet (it’s still on the horizon). Similarly, as I’ve reported on in the past, Schrafft’s, another bastion of 20th century New York dining which first opened in 1898 in Herald Square, is in the process of a relaunch but has yet to make good on its promise to sign on a Midtown lease.

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