How Automats Worked

Once upon a time no visit to New York was complete without eating at an automat. Putting a nickel in a slot and pulling your own ham sandwich from a lit glass case thrilled people to no end. Eventually the novelty wore off and automats faded into history. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability and it starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or half ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 0:35Speaker 02

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• 1:03Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:14Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's not here, but Chuck is. And Chuck's new nickname is Poopy McGee.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Actually, Pukie McGee.

• 1:26Josh Clark?

  Not both?

• 1:27Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:27Josh Clark?

  Well, that's good.

• 1:28Speaker 02

  Here's the story, everybody. I went to Mexico City again and got sick again, thankfully at the end. And I couldn't record yesterday, but we're, we were in danger of missing a published date for the first time.

• 1:42Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 1:43Speaker 02

  In 17 years.

• 1:44Josh Clark?

  Grave danger, I would say, like it's Wednesday at three and we need an episode for tomorrow at 5 a.m.

• 1:53Speaker 02

  Right. And we've never cut it this close. So first of all, my friend, thank you for your flexibility.

• 1:58Josh Clark?

  Thank you for not throwing up long enough to record this episode.

• 2:02Speaker 02

  I last threw up about an hour ago.

• 2:04Josh Clark?

  Man.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  And the main problem is, it's just, I've been in like a fugue state, man. I have nothing in my body for three days now.

• 2:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  So I'm just like spacey and can, I told you on the email, you guys will love this, that like, I'll go 30 minutes where I just like, I'm just so zoned out, I can't have a, I don't even have a coherent thought for a half hour.

• 2:26Josh Clark?

  I know.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  Josh said, well, that part sounds kind of nice.

• 2:30Josh Clark?

  It really does. Man, to be able to just turn it off.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, but, uh, you know, I love that city. I'm gonna keep going back. Um, I, I'm gonna, maybe next time, drink only bottled things and not even cocktails with ice. I'm trying to figure out what, what's triggering me. It may just be my biome and some of the food. I don't know.

• 2:51Josh Clark?

  You need to learn four words in Spanish. I'll have that neat.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  It's not a bad idea, but, um, I'm still gonna go back. I'm gonna try it again. Uh, this may have also triggered my diverticulitis.

• 3:05Josh Clark?

  Oh.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  So that may be why it's extending here into day three. I don't know, but I'm here. Uh, and this gives us, dude, a rare opportunity to do anything newsy or like current, if you want to mention anything.

• 3:19Josh Clark?

  Well, that's what we're doing. We're doing an episode on automat. There's nothing more newsier current than that.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  Uh, that's right, automat. And we need to give a big shout out to a documentary called The Automat by, uh, from director Lisa Hurwitz. Because it's great. And I saw it a couple of years ago, and that's what inspired this episode. But I wanted to, I didn't want to like write on the heels of this great doc, you know, kind of swoop in and do a podcast episode about it. But

• 3:45Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  A great documentary. It's streaming on Max. Highly recommend it. She did a great job. I can't wait to see what she does next. And, uh, it was a big help here.

• 3:53Josh Clark?

  We have another, other huge shout out to give. This is the first, uh, episode we're doing with help from our new writer Laura Clawson.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  So yeah, welcome aboard Laura. Uh, Laura came to us through Livia, which is all the recommendation we needed, right?

• 4:08Josh Clark?

  Right, exactly.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  And she's been great.

• 4:10Josh Clark?

  I've been thinking Chuck, a lot of our writers have good nicknames.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 4:16Josh Clark?

  Laura spells her last name like Claw, C L A W, Sun. So I think we should call Laura Dr. Claw.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  Okay, I thought you were gonna say the Kloster.

• 4:26Josh Clark?

  No, Dr. Claw. It's an Inspector Gadget reference.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Doctor. Oh, okay. I never watched that.

• 4:31Josh Clark?

  That was good. I actually have seen it. So if you don't have cable, but you have an antenna, over the air antenna.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:40Josh Clark?

  There's a station called MeTV and they just play all sorts of great reruns and everything. Well, they just launched a whole new channel called MeTV Tunes and they show some deep cut tunes. I mean, like Beetlejuice, the cartoon. There's Scooby Doo on at 6:00 PM Eastern every day, which makes me very happy. But they show Inspector Gadget too. And I was like, this is actually a much better cartoon than I remembered.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  Uh, where? Is this in your off-grid panic room? Like, where are you watching antenna TV?

• 5:11Josh Clark?

  Oh, no, I've got, I've got a really high-tech setup. I have hijacked the coaxial cables throughout my house and I connected my outdoor antenna to the indoor cable feed, so I can connect TVs throughout my house to get the reception from the outdoor antenna.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  That is the Josh Clarkiest thing I've ever heard.

• 5:33Josh Clark?

  It works really well. Yeah.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 5:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So there you go. You don't need to just stream. You can also get free TV.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  Heck, yeah, man. I've had free TV for many, many, many, many years.

• 5:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Well, you need to be watching MeTV Tunes, Chuck.

• 5:47Speaker 02

  All right. I'll check it out. Uh, should we talk automat? Or did you have another announcement?

• 5:50Josh Clark?

  No, no, I don't have any announcements, but I do have a question for you.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 5:55Josh Clark?

  Chuck. Have you ever eaten food?

• 6:00Speaker 02

  By the way, this is gonna be a tough one for me to get through for obvious reasons.

• 6:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Uh, because in the first paragraph, I saw the words oyster stew earlier and I almost vomited in my mouth.

• 6:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, same here. And I don't even have diverticulitis.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  Uh, I have not eaten food in three days, uh, but I used to eat food.

• 6:18Josh Clark?

  Oh, nice. Okay. Well, Chuck, then I think you would have enjoyed a trip to the automat.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  That's right. And we've been at it for six minutes. We might as well go ahead and say that the automat was a grouping of chain restaurants, self-serve restaurants, sort of like a cafeteria, but instead of being served in a line where people would dump food on a tray, they had these walls filled with glass-fronted compartments. And you would put in some money and a slot, and you would open the door and get your piece of pie, or your chicken pot pie, or your pot roast, or whatever have you.

• 6:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, your oyster stew.

• 7:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but you got to, you would walk up and you'd just sit there with your finger, like on your lower lip, looking from case to case, trying to figure out what appealed to you right then, very much like you were looking at the menu, but you were looking at the actual food you were going to consume instead. So you didn't even need to be able to read to know what you wanted at this, at an automat. And then, like you said, you put your money in and you get your food out and you go sit down. And to people who first went to the automat, Chuck, we're talking like this is the turn of the last century, when they started to take off. This was as high-tech as anything got. Because it's really important to point out, in like the first third, at least, of the 20th century,

• 7:44Josh Clark?

  a lot of people in the United States didn't have a refrigerator. They might have had an icebox, but they certainly didn't have anything pumping free on through it.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  No cable TV.

• 7:55Josh Clark?

  No, no cable TV, not even over-the-air antennas in some cases.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:59Josh Clark?

  No Beetlejuice the cartoon. And they also might not even have electricity in their homes. So the idea of this futuristic, serve yourself out of a glass case that's lit, kind of experience was a really big deal. And what's even more remarkable is, so, okay, you're like, yeah, everybody in the 1910s was just a yokel by definition, right?

• 8:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 8:23Josh Clark?

  These things lasted until the 1960s, and they were still viewed as these amazing places to go eat.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, the last one, this is remarkable, the very last one in New York closed in 91.

• 8:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  Which is hard to believe. They saw a couple of sad decades, a few sad decades before that. But we'll get to all that, but should we go to the beginning?

• 8:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah, let's start at the beginning. That seems appropriate.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  And where else are we going to go but our old friend, Germany? Because the first automat popped up in Berlin in 1895 and the word automat was just more of a general term for a vending machine in Germany. But it won a gold medal a couple of years later at the Brussels World Fair. Europe kind of got into them a little bit. And they spread around Europe over the next five or so years before making the leap to the United States.

• 9:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and it took a little, a little college try, I guess, the first few times for it to make that leap across the Atlantic. And it was two guys, Joseph Horn and Frank Harder, whose last names had become synonymous with automats. In fact, depending on what city you were in, you would probably refer to the automat as a Horn and Harder. That's just, they were, it was like, they were like the Kleenex of automats, essentially, right?

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:40Josh Clark?

  They were already in business together. They owned a chain of cafeterias in Philadelphia. And they said, what's next? What will the future bring? And they figured out the best way to predict the future was to build it themselves. And I think they actually made a trip to Germany and found out about the automats. And they decided they wanted to bring it back to the United States. And like I said, it took a few attempts for them to actually get it to work, right?

• 10:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, their first one in Philly, which was the first one overall, was 1902. But the equipment, you know, because it started in Europe, was in Europe. And they tried to get some of the stuff shipped over there, you know, these big, beautiful cases with the the coin slots and the little windows and everything. And the ship sunk in the Atlantic, so they lost all that gear. They tried again, and these were victim to a warehouse fire, but salvageable. They repaired that stuff. They, they got them up and working. And they beat out their closest competitor. There was one card, Harcombe.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  In New York that went out of business. I think it was a little fancier.

• 10:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  And H and H definitely leaned toward, as we'll see, serving just sort of solid, affordable comfort food to the masses.

• 10:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And so Horn and Hard Art's automat's, I think, like you said, started in Philadelphia. And then after Harcombe went out of business, the Horn and Hard Art kind of muscled in on that market, which is actually pretty brave because somebody had already proven that automat's may not work in New York.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  Good point.

• 11:14Josh Clark?

  And but I guess they had faith in their food. They were like, have you tried this oyster stew? It's amazing.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  God, stop saying that.

• 11:23Josh Clark?

  And so they hit, they hit New York, I think in 1912. By 1932, 20 years later, they had 42 automat's in New York City, another 20 in Philadelphia.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 11:35Josh Clark?

  And H and H became the largest restaurant chain in the entire United States. The United States is big at the time.

• 11:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. And this is like, that's funny, by the way.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  This is like during the Great Depression, like people were going out of business right and left. And they actually, H and H thrived during the depression because again, everything was really cheap. It was comforting stuff. As you'll see, the coffee was great. The food was, was fresh. And well, maybe not more than anything, but additionally, it was, it was, it was a great place to go. They were beautiful places generally. They were clean and they were safe. And, and we'll get to a bunch of other ways that they were inclusive as we go on.

• 12:19Josh Clark?

  They were also known because they were clean and safe and you could get really good coffee for a nickel. They became places where you would just go sit and like rest your dogs or take a load off for a little while or catch your breath, whatever you wanted to do for a little while. And one of the reasons why people did that was because part of the allure of the automat was that there was no front of house staff generally. There were no servers. There was no maître d'. There was no manager. They, if there was manager, they were in the back.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:51Josh Clark?

  So you didn't feel like hustled or rushed or like anybody was judging you for sitting there as long as you want, nursing a single cup of five cent coffee. And so like automat's kind of, kind of got that reputation where you could just go chill out. And as, as big of a deal as they were in New York and Philadelphia, they actually didn't take off everywhere, even though people tried because Horn and Harder were so successful.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, that's kind of hard to believe in a way because they were so successful there. You would think in the other places, like of course, the, the obvious ones, they went to Chicago, Boston, DC and Detroit, uh, and some other places. But you know, those are big cities and it's just odd that they didn't take off there. But we do have a quote here from New York history, uh, from a guy, um, or an idea rather, from this guy named Nicholas Bromel, who basically was like, you know what? In New York, it's so dense. And they, they really concentrated the restaurants around, uh, offices like in, in the garment district, in the financial district, in midtown, uh, where people were either shopping or like going to work, uh, far less in like, you know, the, the quieter neighborhood streets

• 13:55Speaker 02

  and stuff like that. So it was just so densely packed and everyone knows how, how busy New York foot traffic is around those places. And that was at least Nicholas Bromel's take on why they took off in New York and Philly.

• 14:07Josh Clark?

  I have my own take.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  Let's hear it.

• 14:09Josh Clark?

  At the very least in Detroit, it didn't work because of the name they used for the restaurant. The automat in Detroit was called Automatic Lunchroom Number One. I mean, that's like, that's like the, that cereal, it's like a plain white box that says bran flakes in just black font.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:30Josh Clark?

  Or beer, like that beer can you got me that time?

• 14:33Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I mean, I kind of like the off brand stuff, but yeah, that's definitely weirdly vague.

• 14:39Josh Clark?

  That's not off brand. That's off brand.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  Awful.

• 14:44Josh Clark?

  You want to take a break?

• 14:46Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, let's take a break. We'll be right back.

• 14:48Josh Clark?

  Take a break so you can go throw up.

• 15:08Josh Clark?

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• 15:25Speaker 02

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• 15:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah, plus, everything at Quince is priced 50% to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen, so you can give luxury, quality pieces without the luxury price tag.

• 15:53Speaker 02

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• 16:17Speaker 02

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• 16:29Josh Clark?

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• 16:53Josh Clark?

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• 17:33Speaker 02

  Okay, we're back. I did not throw up. I think I'm good. It's been subsiding every day in the afternoon and I feel fine.

• 17:41Josh Clark?

  Good.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  And then in the morning again, I'm nauseous. So that's why I think it's diverticulitis.

• 17:45Josh Clark?

  Man, that is awful. Are you gonna be able to record tomorrow?

• 17:48Speaker 02

  Uh, we'll see.

• 17:50Josh Clark?

  All right.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  No, I'll be okay. Uh, I'll be fine.

• 17:53Josh Clark?

  Good.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  I'm gonna do a lot of studying after this.

• 17:55Josh Clark?

  Okay, good.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  Uh, all right. So we were talking about the, the busyness of New York and why it worked out there. And one of the other reasons it was really popular, because like I mentioned, it was, it was a very clean place. They prided themselves, at least in the, in the heyday decades. Uh, they did go downhill and, you know, kind of fall into a little bit of shabbiness. But in the heyday, they were known as being really, really, really clean, safe places. And, uh, believe it or not, at the time, there were a lot of cafeterias that like, if you were an unaccompanied woman, they would not serve you. You had to be in there with your husband, or they just served men, like businessmen. Uh, so a woman could go in by herself, uh, children could go in and it wasn't like a seedy thing. Uh, families could feel safe and, and, uh, like they're in a clean place with good food.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  And also, a lot of these were really, really beautiful restaurants on the inside.

• 18:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they were, like, there was a really low likelihood that one customer was going to expose themselves to the other customers. It just wasn't that kind of place, right?

• 18:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:55Josh Clark?

  And you, like you said, they are gorgeous. Um, they were art deco, which was the trend at the time.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  Beautiful.

• 19:01Josh Clark?

  And they, uh, they would have, some of them had like two-story facades. Uh, there was a lot of marble stained glass, bronze everywhere. Uh, they had big windows that let in tons of light. Some of, uh, some of them had a mezzanine upstairs dining area, like, they were huge. And then they also paid attention to details too, like that famous coffee that you were talking about. Um, you would put your nickel in this cool little dispenser and the coffee came out of like a, an Italianate dolphin's mouth.

• 19:33Speaker 02

  It, that, it's a beautiful, like, I would love to find one of those on eBay, just the-

• 19:37Josh Clark?

  They're there.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  Oh, you can buy those?

• 19:39Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  How much are they?

• 19:40Josh Clark?

  I didn't see, but I'll get you one, just, just as a present for, for recording today. How about that?

• 19:46Speaker 02

  Well, I said, I think in the, I mean, it's been a while since I've seen the doc, but I think there was someone that is getting like the automat machines too, and collecting and restoring them.

• 19:54Josh Clark?

  Wow, nice.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  Pretty cool.

• 19:56Josh Clark?

  Kind of like the Merv Griffin set? They just found him out back of a Burger King.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  What? I never heard that.

• 20:02Josh Clark?

  You remember in Seinfeld when Kramer found the old Merv Griffin set? And he started hosting the Merv Griffin show in his apartment?

• 20:07Speaker 02

  That's right. Burger King will come back again in this episode, believe it or not.

• 20:11Josh Clark?

  That's right. Um, so you said they were rigorously clean. That was one of the things they were known for. The other thing they were known for was that their food was like,

• 20:22Josh Clark?

  like, really fresh. I couldn't think of a, a non-offensive way to put it, but it was a really fresh take on food.

• 20:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it was as fresh as food could be for that format.

• 20:35Josh Clark?

  Exactly.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  Let's say that. Uh, the coffee was super fresh. Like after 20 minutes, they would throw the coffee out and put new coffee in. Uh, the food, they did not sell the next day. Um, and if you're thinking, God, what a lot of food waste, because they're pre-making this stuff. And, you know, we'll get to that in a sec, but, um, a little bit of genius here is they had, uh, three different day old shops in lower income neighborhoods in New York. So the next day they would sell the food there at a discount. So, uh, even if you didn't have the nickel for the piece of pie or whatever, you might be able to get it for like two or three cents the next day.

• 21:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah, or two and a half cents.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:14Josh Clark?

  If you could find a half cent.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  I'll eat a pie for a week, so I'm fine with that.

• 21:18Josh Clark?

  For sure. As long as it hasn't fallen on the street in public.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:22Josh Clark?

  For sure.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  No, no street pie.

• 21:25Josh Clark?

  Um, and they were also known for that really good coffee, right? That came out of dolphins' mouths.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:30Josh Clark?

  Um, so at the time, if you were in America, the coffee you drank, and this is the, I don't know, the 1910s. It was boiled.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:40Josh Clark?

  And there was no filter, no nothing. So like grounds would come out. So your coffee was gritty. There was no filter again to take out any of the oils, any of the tastes. It was harsh, harsh coffee. And that's what people drank. And you liked it and you didn't complain because the coffee would punch you in the face if you did. It was that kind of coffee.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:59Josh Clark?

  Well, Horn and Hard Art had a different take. They had a French drip, right? Which is still makes pretty good coffee.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:08Josh Clark?

  But at the time, you had to go to New Orleans to get coffee like that. And Horn and Hard Art serving the stuff in New York and Philadelphia at all of their 60 plus automats for a nickel. And every 20 minutes, they throw out the old coffee and bring in fresh stuff.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  That's right. They sold so much coffee that they ended up losing money on it because they kept it locked into that nickel price for 38 years?

• 22:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And I did the math in 1912, which is when they hit New York, a nickel was worth a dollar 60 today. By 1950, it was worth 64 cents. So they started definitely losing money over time on the, on that coffee.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. So they were losing money. They eventually had to raise the price. Uh, the only thing they could do was double it to 10 cents. Uh, because their slots took nickels. Uh, and their sales dropped a lot, uh, from 70 million cups a year to 45 million. Uh, they still came out on top revenue wise, if you do the math. But, um, I remember watching the documentary and they were talking about this. I wondered, and I haven't found my, a way to wrap my head around how to actually do this topic, but something about change, like coins and how they established, uh, so much commerce, like a coin slot only taking a nickel, the only thing you can do is double it. So what does that mean to the economy?

• 23:29Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  Like there's something there, but I'm just not quite sure how to frame it. So maybe somebody could help me with that.

• 23:34Josh Clark?

  Maybe we could tie it into, to the idea that I had about why everything is so much more expensive now, even relatively speaking than it used to be.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. Cause I mean, the idea of like, Uh, doubling the cost of something is crazy. Uh, even if it's a nickel to a dime at the time, like doubling your price is just insanity for a business. But there was nothing else they could do.

• 23:55Josh Clark?

  But even still, even doubling the price from a nickel to a dime in 1950s money, that was still 20 or so cents less than what they were getting for it in 1912.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:06Josh Clark?

  Adjusting for inflation. So it sounds like to me, the bigger problem is that they just doubled it overnight. And again, that's all they could do because their slots only took nickels.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:17Josh Clark?

  So that's what they had to deal with. But like you said, even still, they came out on top revenue wise. But I get the impression that there were probably a lot of grumblers over that kind of thing, who really just took super good, cheap coffee for granted and frankly, shame on them.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, they also sold a lot of pie. Uh, and I do remember this from the doc. Pie was a very big deal at H and H. Um, in 1964, here's a pretty fun stat. Um, they sold an average of 822 pieces of pie in New York City between eight and 11 a.m. Uh, and there are some people who said, uh, some historians that have said that, I don't know about this, but maybe. Um, that there was a desire for people to do things like eat pie for breakfast. But if you had to order it from a server, you might be like, oh, you know, I can't order apple pie for breakfast.

• 25:07Josh Clark?

  Right. Uh, so. Pancakes with apples on it.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. But, uh, at the automat, you could just do it on, you know, on the download and be quiet about it. Um, I just, I didn't know people would be judgy like that back then, but maybe.

• 25:19Josh Clark?

  Uh, yeah, I think every, yeah, cause they were pretty proper back then too, you know?

• 25:24Speaker 02

  Pie for breakfast?

• 25:27Josh Clark?

  Even today though, I went and looked, I was like, okay, surely our attitudes have changed. No, no, they haven't. If you look up breakfast pies, it's all like.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  Keesha.

• 25:36Josh Clark?

  You know, breakfast stuff, but in like a pie shell or something like that. There's no one out there eating actual pie for breakfast. It's insane.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, cause it's a dessert. It's a little weird.

• 25:48Josh Clark?

  For sure.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  I mean, I like the idea, but it is a dessert.

• 25:51Josh Clark?

  You can make the case that almost all breakfast foods are desserts in the United States, man. Have you heard of like IHOP?

• 26:01Speaker 02

  So after your steak dinner, you get a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit?

• 26:05Josh Clark?

  Exactly. I would.

• 26:07Speaker 02

  That sounds good.

• 26:08Josh Clark?

  Although I don't like biscuits very much as a sandwich. I like a biscuit by on its own. Like say a Cracker Barrel, if you get biscuits and honey.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 26:17Josh Clark?

  Really good. But if you take that biscuit, cut it in half and put anything like an egg or cheese or something on it, I'm like, this is grody.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 26:25Josh Clark?

  Give me an English muffin. Make it a mix.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  Wow, okay.

• 26:28Josh Clark?

  For sure.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  Never, never knew that. All right. Still getting to know each other after all these years. All right. So let's talk a little bit about the nickel throwers because if you're gonna require a bunch of nickels, you're gonna have to have a bunch of nickels. And you don't often come in with a bunch of nickels as a consumer. So they had change people. They were women, basically. They called them nickel throwers.

• 26:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 26:51Speaker 02

  And they just sat there all day long, shoving nickels across the counter. Just like when I would go to the 99 cent movie when I was a kid. They had a big stack of tickets and a big stack of pennies. And they would just shove it back to you in the window. And it was always a lot of fun, I thought.

• 27:10Josh Clark?

  That's funny. So I guess they, they decided that that 99 cent price really brought people in more than a $1 movie would, huh?

• 27:17Speaker 02

  Maybe. And I'm curious how much they would lose in a year on those pennies.

• 27:21Josh Clark?

  I don't know.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  You know?

• 27:23Josh Clark?

  One of the things, though, Chuck, did you see, I guess in the documentary, the nickel throwers and like the, the bubble, the glass bubble.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:32Josh Clark?

  Fronted things that they said and they looked like fortune tellers.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's pretty funny.

• 27:36Josh Clark?

  But it was part of that whole ornate look to everything. Like it's just the whole, most of those places were really pretty.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, like you said, it conveyed a sense of the future. Like, kids loved it for that reason because they were, it was like being in the Jetsons or something. But kids also loved it because that gave them a sense of autonomy to, to go in there and get a couple of nickels from their parents and to be able to walk up and pick something out.

• 28:00Josh Clark?

  You gotta read that Neil Simon quote. It's great.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Neil Simon. I take issue with his quote, or the end of it.

• 28:06Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah, okay.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  Neil Simon, the great Neil Simon, said this when he was a child about going there, or as an adult about going there as a child. "To have your own stack of nickels placed in your tiny hands, to be able to choose your own food richly on display like museum pieces, to make quick and final decisions at the age of eight, that was a lesson in financial dealings that not even two years at the Wharton School could buy today."

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Maybe a little hyperbole there.

• 28:32Josh Clark?

  You think that's hyperbolic?

• 28:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, probably so.

• 28:35Josh Clark?

  But it is a pretty great quote for sure.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  It's very sweet.

• 28:38Josh Clark?

  So one of the things, though, is including people like Neil Simon, other people who were interviewed in the automat documentary, people tend to remember the food as like, good. And it's entirely possible it was for a while, but the older, the longer you go along in the history of the automat, the worse the food probably got for a little while. So it's not entirely clear that the food was actually good toward the end. And we can't really say, because again, the last one closed in 1991. And I'm guessing by the time that one closed.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  It probably wasn't too good.

• 29:15Josh Clark?

  Right, you shouldn't really compare the food in general over the course of the history of the automat to that last one. But I'm guessing it was probably pretty decent for a while, based on some of the stuff I'm reading.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  I bet it was pretty good, if for no other reason than in the 1920s and 30s and 40s and 50s, they use real food.

• 29:33Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 29:34Speaker 02

  And real ingredients, and it wasn't like it is today. So I just think by virtue of that, it was probably not bad, you know?

• 29:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I'm with you. So Chuck, I say we talk about how automated the automat really was, because it turns out, not really. It was really a facade. Literally, it was a facade of food that seemed to be mysteriously conjured out of nowhere, possibly by robots.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that was one of the selling points, that, you know, another piece of pie on a tiny plate would pop into that window when one went out. It's not like it just stayed empty. I guess if they ran out of pie, it would. Or they probably put, you know, something else in there. But they had a huge, actually, a few different central commissaries in the city where they would make all this stuff, they would ship it over there, and they had tons and tons and tons of worker bees behind the scenes. Doing all that stuff. They had these rotating drums that would do the work of filling the actual slots, but there had to be someone filling those drums. So it wasn't a bunch of robots back there. It was not George Jetson. It was just a bunch of people plating stuff

• 30:43Speaker 02

  up and putting it in the drum to put in the window.

• 30:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So say that you went up and you're like, I'm going to have that delicious bowl of bubbling greasy oyster stew that's just sitting there looking at me in the face. I think one of those oysters might still be alive. That's, that's how good it was, right? And you put your nickel in and you pulled the lever, correct?

• 31:05Speaker 02

  Uh, I don't remember if there was a lever, but that sounds about right.

• 31:08Josh Clark?

  Or like you pulled that, like you were buying cigarettes as a kid when you were 14 in a coin operated machine. That, that kind of lever is what I'm talking about, right?

• 31:16Speaker 02

  Well, I didn't like you did, but sure. I saw the bad kids doing that.

• 31:19Josh Clark?

  Exactly. So you would do something like that. And then either it would open, like it would allow the, the little glass compartment window to open up so you could get your oyster stew or what have you from inside. Or it might rotate a drum, like you were saying, so that that oyster stew was now available to you and you'd open the window and then the, there would be an open compartment in the back of the drum that somebody who was working the back of the automat cases would see was empty and would put a new thing of oyster stew in there. And then the whole thing would just continue. I also saw that some of them had a photo of the food and that, yeah, you would like open the case and just pull it

• 32:00Josh Clark?

  out. And then the people in back would notice that that one was empty. But suffice to say, however the food came out, there was a way to see in the rear that that compartment needed refilling. And one of the things Horn and Harder was known for was employing armies of people who made sure that that food was there, that the compartments were full and that the food was fresh too. That the, the Salisbury steak wasn't getting jiggly. You know what I mean?

• 32:30Speaker 02

  I'm struggling.

• 32:31Josh Clark?

  I'm sorry.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Uh, I know you're doing it on purpose. It's all fun.

• 32:36Josh Clark?

  That last part wasn't on purpose.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  Um, for a while there, they didn't have hot, uh, windows. They just had the cold windows. So the hot food was served from a steam table.

• 32:45Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 32:46Speaker 02

  Um, but it was not too long until they had the, the hot windows and the cold windows or the hot cases, probably.

• 32:51Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  Um, how they treated their workers is a matter of debate. Um, they, they struck a couple of times, uh, 1937, they struck. They had 3,000 employees at the time. Um, that, uh, failed. That organizing effort did not hold.

• 33:06Josh Clark?

  Um.

• 33:07Speaker 02

  Then again, in 1952, they struck again, uh, and eventual New York State Supreme Court Justice Melvin Barash, uh, was one of the people trying to organize at the time in 1952. And in 1991, he said, the conditions were straight out of the 19th century.

• 33:23Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  Um, that effort failed. Other people, if you watch the documentary, the, the son of the president of the company said, no. It was great. We had company picnics and Christmas parties and like every, it was really, really, really great.

• 33:41Josh Clark?

  Daddy loved the workers.

• 33:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 33:44Josh Clark?

  There was also an actor named Apache Ramos, who, uh, is best known for playing one of the orphans in The Warriors. Uh, but also is lesser known as having managed the fat boys in the eighties.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  Oh, The Warriors, that Warriors.

• 33:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like come out and play.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  Apache Ramos. Okay. We'll have to check that guy out.

• 34:04Josh Clark?

  Oh man, he had a magnificent Afro in that, um, in that movie.

• 34:08Speaker 02

  Oh, yep. I totally know exactly the guy. Yeah.

• 34:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  What a great Afro.

• 34:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah. But he also managed the fat boys, like the fat boys are back.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 34:17Josh Clark?

  Uh, in the eighties. Um, he worked at an automat and so did his grandmother. I'm assuming one or the other got the other one the job. But he remembered, um, that the horn and hard art would throw holiday parties for the workers' children around like Christmas time. Oh man, can you imagine how beautiful those places looked when they were decorated for Christmas parties in like the fifties and sixties? Like I, if, you know, people are like, if you could ever go back in time, what would you do? I would go to that Christmas party.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Uh, this reminds me of a childhood trauma that I suffered because. Growing up, my sister had a best friend whose father worked for Kraft Foods. And they had a big Kraft, like, they rented Six Flags or something. It was some big thing every year.

• 35:07Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 35:07Speaker 02

  My brother's best friend worked for Coca-Cola. And every year, they had the big Coca-Cola picnic thing. I had nobody and I never got to go. And every single year, I had to watch Scott and Michelle go to the Kraft event and the Coke event.

• 35:21Josh Clark?

  Man, that's terrible.

• 35:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, it just, it, it still sticks with me after all these years.

• 35:27Josh Clark?

  Your friend Richie was like, well, my dad owns the tire shop, so you can come to that. We don't really have a party, but we stand around.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  Uh, should we take another break?

• 35:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 35:39Speaker 02

  All right, we'll take another break and talk about the inclusivity of the automat right after this.

• 36:00Josh Clark?

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• 36:18Speaker 02

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• 36:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah, plus, everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. So you can give luxury quality pieces without the luxury price tag.

• 36:45Speaker 02

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• 37:07Speaker 03

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 37:09Josh Clark?

  Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.

• 37:12Speaker 02

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• 37:28Speaker 03

  It was going to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.

• 37:36Josh Clark?

  That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.

• 37:42Speaker 04

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• 37:48Speaker 02

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• 37:51Speaker 04

  To actually see the whole stadium light up and data's flowing is a beautiful thing.

• 37:56Speaker 03

  What the fans experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.

• 37:59Josh Clark?

  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love.

• 38:03Speaker 05

  Connecting changes everything. AT&T.

• 38:09Speaker 02

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• 38:20Josh Clark?

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• 38:34Speaker 02

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• 38:43Josh Clark?

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• 38:56Speaker 02

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• 39:23Josh Clark?

  Okay Chuck, just before we took a break, you nailed it on the head. You said we were talking about the inclusivity of the automat, and in particular, the Horn and Harder automat, which again, they were synonymous with automat. They were one of the earliest chain restaurants in the United States to integrate, not discriminate against their clientele. Not just, you know, like unescorted women, God forbid, but also racially speaking, economically speaking, like whoever came to a Horn and Harder automat to eat was treated equally. And that was huge. I mean, we're talking, starting in the 1910s.

• 40:04Josh Clark?

  That was an enormous deal. And that's something that, I mean, my hat's off to them for that.

• 40:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. They had a motto, which was "Serve everybody and serve everybody in the same way", which is a great quote. And Colin Powell, former Secretary of State, is in the documentary. And it's a great, really sweet interview. And he said, "The one we would usually go to is automat on 42nd Street. I never even thought about the fact that I'm a black kid. Should I go into Horn and Harder? Is it okay to go to the automat? All the automat's had that beautiful diversity that didn't exist in most of the rest of the country, of economic standing, of color, of ethnicity, of language. You never knew what you'd run into in an automat."

• 40:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's pretty cool. There was also a historian named Lisa Keller, I believe, in the documentary, pointed out that if you were an immigrant, this was a great place for you to go because you just went and looked at the food and put your nickel and you didn't really have to be able to read or speak English, and you could still get a good meal of oysters too.

• 41:07Josh Clark?

  I can't wait to see what Aaron Cooper does with this.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:12Speaker 02

  They were also known for their celebrity fans. They had, there was one very famous Esquire spread. Of course, this is for Esquire, so it was all set up. But in 1951, Audrey Hepburn was photographed for Esquire.

• 41:27Josh Clark?

  So cute.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  Shopping at an automat, very cute. But in the documentary, Reiner and Brooks, you know, Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks, loved the automat and they, they talked with great adoration about their childhood of going to those restaurants.

• 41:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and James Dean, his favorite baked beans in the world were Horn and Hard Art's baked beans.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  James Bean, more like.

• 41:49Josh Clark?

  That's right. He really knew what he was talking about, too. That's how he died in that car accident. He was eating some baked beans at the time and lost control of the steering wheel.

• 41:57Speaker 02

  God.

• 41:59Josh Clark?

  That's not true, everybody. We did a short stuff on it, so.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 42:03Josh Clark?

  Don't at me.

• 42:05Speaker 02

  So I guess we're at the sad point, like so many of these episodes that we do on A Cool Thing From The Past, where the decline begins.

• 42:11Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  The 1960s is when that started, although they were still like a huge deal culturally, you know? Everyone knew about the automat. And I don't think we mentioned, you know, at a certain point in New York City, they were so famous that it was like, when you go to visit New York, you would go to an automat just for that experience.

• 42:28Josh Clark?

  Right, like how, like when we were kids, you went to that city's like Hard Rock Cafe to get the T-shirt. Remember that?

• 42:35Speaker 02

  Oh, man, totally.

• 42:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, you wear it with your Panama Jack sunglasses and everybody at, at home would be like, you had a great summer, obviously.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. My band did a, one gig at the Hard Rock Cafe here in Atlanta one time.

• 42:46Josh Clark?

  Wowee. Did they put your guitar up under a glass case afterward?

• 42:50Speaker 02

  They did.

• 42:51Josh Clark?

  That'd be pretty sweet. They should.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  But the 60s is where things really started to struggle, even though they were, again, still popular culturally.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  Stockholders were involved by that point, obviously. Just revenues started dropping. The, the suburbs was a big cause of it, you know? When people started moving out to the suburbs, offices and office complexes started getting built in the suburbs. And people started shopping at malls in the suburbs and there were fewer and fewer in people, just, you know, walking around New York, doing things like shopping and going to their, their office. So it just, it started to sort of slowly drop and slowly drop until they got a little weird with some of their ideas, right?

• 43:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah, Wild West Room? I could not find a picture of that. But apparently, one of the automat, this one in Times Square, they put a Wild West Room in, in 1966. I mean, I'm sure people would have gone crazy for that in 1966.

• 43:47Speaker 02

  Not a wild restroom. That's, that's every restroom in New York City.

• 43:51Josh Clark?

  There's like a ton of potted plants and a tiger in there.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  Right. They also tried a beer garden. They tried the roller skate waiters thing. They tried, you know, live bands and dancing and stuff like that. But eventually Horn and Harder looked at each other and they said, "Well, this has clearly seen its best days." The silver lining is, is we are sitting on a bunch of really valuable real estate.

• 44:16Josh Clark?

  I know, like 40 buildings in Manhattan.

• 44:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, and so they're, don't feel too bad. They were doing okay.

• 44:21Josh Clark?

  No, but instead of selling them, they said, "Hey, I've got an idea. Let's remove the automat and put Burger Kings in instead."

• 44:28Speaker 02

  There you have it.

• 44:28Josh Clark?

  Get new franchises. So that's where you would have gotten your old automat cases is in the back of a Burger King.

• 44:35Speaker 02

  I was just about to improvise one of those terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible Burger King commercial songs.

• 44:41Josh Clark?

  That's, that's one of the big drawbacks to watching, uh, MeTV tunes.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  Oh, is that on there too?

• 44:48Josh Clark?

  There's this one Burger King ad that keeps playing over and over and over again. I had to hit myself in the knee with a hammer to get it out of my head.

• 44:55Speaker 02

  Well, it's this whole new campaign with the guy that's singing.

• 44:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 44:58Speaker 02

  That can't sing.

• 44:59Josh Clark?

  Please don't do it.

• 45:00Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 45:01Josh Clark?

  That's like my oysters too.

• 45:04Speaker 02

  "Well, I guess I won't do a song right now."

• 45:06Josh Clark?

  Oh, man. Actually, I know exactly why. Now we're even.

• 45:11Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 45:12Josh Clark?

  So, yeah, um, I guess you can just, if you can mute the, um, the TV fast enough, then you can keep watching MeTV tunes.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. All right, so Burger Kings went in. Automats were going downhill. Another thing that happened was, uh, as they started going downhill,

• 45:32Speaker 02

  a different kind of shopper started coming in there. Uh, people that were itinerant, uh, people that, uh, were unhoused, uh, people that were vagrants and just sort of coming through town, who knew that they could hang out there for that nickel cup of coffee for hours and hours and hours. And when that starts happening, families stop coming in and it just creates this sort of vicious cycle where your clientele is different and it's not seen as that that safe middle-class space any longer.

• 45:58Josh Clark?

  No, in those same families, they're like, oh, let's go down to the automat stepping in. They're like, oh, it's seedy here. So they stopped coming in, which just reinforced the ability of like the homeless population to hang out in Horn and Hard Art. Horn and Hard Art's whole thing was serve everybody and serve everybody the same way. So as far as I ever saw, they weren't exactly rousting vagrants who were hanging out drinking like a cup of coffee. And it just, it just was basically the same story as the inner city in the United States in the 60s and 70s. Once they, once the suburbs rose and everybody moved out of there and the neighborhoods and the communities that did survive had US

• 46:38Josh Clark?

  interstates built right through their neighborhoods, things just took a turn for the worse and the automat was not immune to that whole thing.

• 46:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. Another big part of that is like these, this huge central commissary kitchens where they were cooking all this stuff is an excellent, excellent, efficient way to do it when you are booming with business.

• 47:00Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  Once business drops and you're not cooking, you're not needing to cook as much, all of a sudden you're, the economy of scale isn't there any longer and you have these huge places with fewer employees and less food being pumped out.

• 47:12Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  And it's just, it was just a downward spiral. It's very sad.

• 47:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So the other thing too is it's, it's interesting and I think it's kind of appropriate that Horn and Hard Art got into fast food franchises because the automat kind of helped lay the, the foundation for that. But rather than hundreds of different dishes, which is apparently what Horn and Hard Art offered at each of their automats, you know, fast food has like 10. And like, yes, you can have it your way, but really you can have it your way choosing from these five ingredients or whatever. And the, there were much like down scale, like surroundings. It was just like the automat's

• 47:56Josh Clark?

  vision with all of the glitz and idealism removed from it, then you have fast food franchises.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, basically. That last one that closed in 91, it was the last one starting in 1977 at 200 East 42nd Street. So, right there, you know, sort of near Times Square.

• 48:15Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  And it lasted 14 years on its own as a nostalgia piece, basically, before becoming a Gap.

• 48:25Josh Clark?

  That's right. It's a Gap.

• 48:26Speaker 02

  What else?

• 48:28Josh Clark?

  So, like you said, if you went to New York, like you would go to the Empire State Building, you might go see a Broadway play, and you would go eat at an automat. That's just how iconic it was, right? It popped up, like anytime you're trying to get across how New York your movie was, like there would be a scene in an automat or something like that.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:50Josh Clark?

  Francis Ford Coppola apparently directed a movie in the 60s that featured an automat called Automat Now. It showed up in, I'm kidding.

• 49:02Josh Clark?

  It showed up in like-

• 49:02Speaker 02

  I get it now. I'm a little slow and foggy.

• 49:05Josh Clark?

  Hey, I think you're doing magnificent for considering what you've been through the last couple of days, man.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  I've been through apocalypse now.

• 49:12Josh Clark?

  Bugs Bunny went to an automat and a hair grows in Manhattan.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  That's right. The Flintstones, they even had a Flintstone automat in a 1962 episode.

• 49:22Josh Clark?

  And there's a book that I think I've heard of, but I'd never read, from the mixed up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  It sounds familiar.

• 49:30Josh Clark?

  Well, the thing that sounds familiar to me is that these kids hide out, living in the Met, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

• 49:39Speaker 02

  Oh, that's Royal Tannenbaum's.

• 49:42Josh Clark?

  That's, yeah, I guarantee that was an homage to that then, yeah. But anyway, in this children's book, these kids are runaways and they live in Met. That's the Met, right? The Met isn't the opera house, it's the art museum?

• 49:56Speaker 02

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the Met, yeah.

• 49:59Josh Clark?

  Okay, right. Well, one of the things that they do is they feed themselves by going to the automat.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  Oh, that's fun. And I did not know, he totally, yeah, let's call an homage. You're kinder than I am.

• 50:11Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah. Wes Anderson does not rip stuff off. He lovingly pays homage to it.

• 50:17Speaker 02

  That's right. That's right. Pat Boone tried-

• 50:21Speaker 02

  His version of the automat called the Dynomat in 1962, which was frozen food that was then microwave. That did not work out too well.

• 50:29Josh Clark?

  That's surprising.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  But there were a few other things over the years that were tried like this, that did not take off like the automat did.

• 50:36Josh Clark?

  My favorite was the Andy Matt.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, what's up with that?

• 50:39Josh Clark?

  Andy Warhol, this is just what an artist he was. He could just talk about, he'd just mention something in passing and people are still talking about it 50 years later. But he said that he was going to come up with a chain of Andy Matts, which were like automats, but instead of having to go get your food from a case, you would sit down on like a red mohair banquet and order through a pneumatic tube. And you would order frozen food and champagne. That's what he was going to offer at the Andy Matt.

• 51:09Speaker 02

  Oh, that's funny, but that never happened at all, right? Just an idea.

• 51:13Josh Clark?

  No, it didn't. But there's some people who are trying to revive it.

• 51:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there are things like this. I mean, Japan has stuff like this, right?

• 51:20Josh Clark?

  They have what's called katzen sushi.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  Okay, what's that?

• 51:24Josh Clark?

  It's the sushi that comes around in a conveyor belt.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  No, but they, I've seen little windows as well of things. It may not be hot food, maybe it's other things.

• 51:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I'm sure that they do. I remember going to Toledo Hospital to visit my mom when she was at work and they had basically automat sandwiches. Like, I always just thought it was like a.

• 51:43Speaker 02

  Like a vending machine?

• 51:44Josh Clark?

  A vending machine, yeah, but they, no, it was an automat, basically.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a place in Brooklyn called the Brooklyn Dumpling Shop. I think there are like 12 of them and here in Canada. And they, I just looked up a picture of them and they, they had these little automat kind of like cubbies that you order through an app, like a locker system. And I've also seen, I think it was a Shark Tank product that I ended up seeing in a hotel where it's like a machine that gives you like a cheeseburger or a pizza, like, but made to order. So like you can say what kind of pizza you want and it'll, it's just got this machine inside that'll, you know, load it up with whatever and then bake it and then it spits it out in 15 minutes or whatever. So things kind of like this, but not, not truly automat stuff.

• 52:29Josh Clark?

  One of the things you can choose for that pizza maker is, I don't want the cheese to scald the roof of my mouth. And the pizza machine's like, yeah, yeah, sure, sure. Definitely not.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  And then they have a hidden camera on you.

• 52:41Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  And spit out a picture of you going, ah!

• 52:44Josh Clark?

  Yep. Yeah. Damn it. You got anything else?

• 52:48Speaker 02

  I have nothing else. I don't think I have to puke. I think this is the best I've felt in a few days, so hopefully that holds.

• 52:55Josh Clark?

  That makes me feel good about the effect I have on you.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, just little Josh, little side cup of oyster stew. I'm back on my feet again.

• 53:04Josh Clark?

  There you go. Well, since Chuck's back on his feet again, obviously, anyone who's ever listened to this show before knows that he just unlocked listener mail.

• 53:15Speaker 02

  That's right. This is short and sweet. This is kind of fun because it's a, this is coming out tomorrow and it's a correction on an episode that was just out.

• 53:23Josh Clark?

  Awesome.

• 53:23Speaker 02

  So maybe for a change, we won't get like 400 emails from crafters.

• 53:27Josh Clark?

  Okay. Oh, yeah.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  Hey, guys. R E, the High Times episode and Martha Stewart, hodgepodge is a big jumble of things that don't go together. Modgepodge is the craft supply. Just don't want you to embarrass yourselves at the craft store. That is from Kelly.

• 53:42Josh Clark?

  Modgepodge is what you use to glue together a big jumble of things that don't go together.

• 53:47Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 53:48Josh Clark?

  That's a great Kelly. Thank you. And to the other thousand of you who wrote in, it's nice to know that there are people out there still using modgepodge.

• 53:56Speaker 02

  It's fun.

• 53:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I mean, it's fun to say. And it's got a cute label, too.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Modgepodge is really a lot of fun. I enjoy it.

• 54:03Josh Clark?

  For sure. And we heard from Martha Stewart, too. She said, yes, I have modgepodge laying around. Jerry got in touch with her and asked.

• 54:11Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 54:12Josh Clark?

  Well, if you want to be like who?

• 54:15Speaker 02

  Kelly.

• 54:15Josh Clark?

  If you want to be like Kelly and write in to gently correct us, we love that kind of thing, you can send it via email to [email protected].

• 54:27Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 54:43Josh Clark?

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• 56:11Speaker 06

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