How Mobile Payments May Bring Back the Automat

If you’ve never heard of an automat, don’t be alarmed. The brand that started it all, Horn and Hardart, actually shut down its last venue in 1991. There was a brief resurgence in the East Village of New York, but that lasted only about three years.

Despite the long and storied history, which actually goes back to 1890s Germany for the prototypes, of the automat, some thought they were dead for good, until a new push emerged to put mobile payment systems in charge.

The original automat concept called for a series of slots in which food was placed, and then the slots were opened and food therein removed once the patron inserted sufficient coins to make the food come out.

This worked quite well in an era where a sandwich often went for 20 cents or less, depending on location and contents, but as food prices increased, the idea of dropping $5 in coins into a slot was more a burden than a futuristic convenience.

The technology wasn’t really sufficient to keep the automat going; bill changers weren’t commonly in service for a while, and by the time such were available, the automat had already started to buckle in terms of popularity, making it a casualty of some of the standard restaurant ills.

With mobile payments becoming an increasingly widely used concept—and able to take most any amount with the wave of a smartphone—the idea of an automat could well come back once more.

The best part about this concept is that it would basically prey on the exact same proclivities that first drove the automat to begin with. When first released, the automat was considered a technological marvel, a wonder of futuristic advancement.

Now, it would be the same thing, using the newest technology in dining. Of course, it’d have a few disadvantages, like some significant job loss if it caught on—no more wait staff or host staff or the like, and it only gets worse if the machines do the cooking too—but it could be a real hit in terms of sheer novelty.

Unattended retail, as it’s known, is nothing new. The idea of an almost completely unattended restaurant may sound far-fetched, but it actually happened once, and with that as a model, might happen again.