automat

What it means

1. A vending machine for food.
2. historicalA cafeteria consisting of vending machines.

   People from all levels of society ate in Automats at least occasionally. Movies often cast their cosmopolitan stars dropping coins in Horn & Hardart's slots, and tourists felt compelled to visit an Automat.

   1986, Philip Langdon, Orange Roofs, Golden Arches: The Architecture of American Chain Restaurants, Alfred A. Knopf

   2 more examples

   The Automat, whose gleaming chrome-and-glass machines brought high-tech eating to a low-tech era, has gulped down its last coin and served up its last helping of macaroni, baked beans and kaiser rolls. The last Automat in the country, in midtown Manhattan, closed on Tuesday, a victim of changing eating habits. […] There were 30 Automats in New York when Mr. Stern was a young Western Union bicycle messenger stopping in for lemon meringue pie between deliveries.

   1991 April 11, James Barron, “Last Automat Closes, Its Era Long Gone”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 26 Dec 2022

   While automats were hailed by the thrifty populace as being “waiter-free” and—even more appealing—“tip-free,” someone had to cook the food, stock the little compartments, keep the floors clean, bus the tables, refill the sugar and condiments, and exchange larger coinage into nickels, since patrons rarely entered with enough nickels for a meal.

   2009, David Freeland, Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan’s Lost Places of Leisure, NYU Press, →ISBN, page 172

In a sentence

People from all levels of society ate in Automats at least occasionally. Movies often cast their cosmopolitan stars dropping coins in Horn & Hardart's slots, and tourists felt compelled to visit an Automat.

1986, Philip Langdon, Orange Roofs, Golden Arches: The Architecture of American Chain Restaurants, Alfred A. Knopf

Where it comes from

1. GermanAutomat
2. Englishautomat

Borrowed from German Automat, as the system was originally developed in Germany in the late 19th c. Doublet of automaton.