‘The Automat’ is a valentine to pie and nickel coffee

Around Valentine’s Day, it’s customary for movie critics to cite their favorite romantic movies. But romance comes in many guises. In that spirit, I offer praise for the new documentary “The Automat,” which chronicles the history of Horn & Hardart, the beloved chain of retail stores and eateries featuring self-service vending machines that, at its height in the 1950s, fed an estimated 800,000 people a day.

Since the automat chain, started by Joe Horn and Frank Hardart in 1902, went out of business in the early 1990s, and was located only in Philadelphia and New York City, it’s logical to assume most viewers won’t relate to this movie at all. But I disagree. Horn & Hardart occupies a significant position in the history of American consumerism, which director Lisa Hurwitz amply demonstrates through archival footage and multiple interviews. More than that, there’s also the richer resonance for audiences of connecting to a place that has summoned so many joyful memories. (Full disclosure: As a kid, I went into ecstasies over the tapioca pudding, cheese muffins, and pumpkin pie.)

One of the franchise’s great appreciators is Mel Brooks, who pops up periodically in the film to rhapsodize over the automat’s coconut cream pie (“God made that”), creamed spinach, mac and cheese, and, most of all, the coffee, which for many years, until hard times hit in the 1970s, cost only 5 cents. (“I’ve paid $35 for coffee not half as good,” says Brooks.)

Nickels were the coin of the realm at Horn & Hardart. You showed up with a roll of them, or else presented a dollar to an employee who would, according to Brooks, magically scoop up exactly 20 nickels in a big barrel for you. The emporiums were immaculately clean and spaciously laid out, with marble floors and tabletops, and dolphin-shaped spigots for the coffee. The food was housed along the wall in individual see-through vending machines. You dropped your nickels in, lifted the plastic door, and pulled out your pie. Within moments, dumbwaiter-style, the offering would be replaced by unseen hands.

Repeated throughout the movie is how egalitarian this experience was for so many people, especially immigrants and people of color, who often found themselves unwelcome in regular restaurants, or else unable to afford them. 

Horn & Hardart, partially by design, was a great melting pot; executives and white-collar workers were just as likely to mix it up there as anyone else, and there was no preferential seating. (Also no waiters – i.e., no tipping.) Interviewed before their deaths, Colin Powell and Ruth Bader Ginsburg – who talks about the automat as a haven for “working women without a lot of cash” – each laud the place’s inviting openness. 

Changing demographics and economics inevitably collapsed the franchise’s business model. More customers moved to the suburbs; frozen foods and TV dinners, not to mention home-cooked meals by stay-at-home moms, were ascendant. Worst of all, the price of coffee went up – to 10 cents! The last automat, located near Grand Central Terminal in New York, finally closed in 1991, whereupon the company’s valued real estate was sold mostly to fast-food chains.   

Hurwitz resists the temptation to turn this story into a parable about corporate capitalism, and that’s probably just as well. She never loses sight of the deeper reason for our interest: our longing for togetherness in whatever form it takes, even if it’s just an eating place. 

We’ve all had the experience, especially in the past few years, of dropping by a favorite restaurant only to discover it’s been shuttered. The pang that we feel speaks to more than the loss of a good meal. In its own rueful way, “The Automat” functions as a kind of restorative to those feelings of loss. It’s a celebration of what for so many people was among the happiest of times.

Peter Rainer is the Monitor's film critic. “The Automat” is available in select theaters starting Feb. 18. It is not rated.