Lunch counter
A lunch counter or luncheonette is a small restaurant, similar to a diner, where the patron sits on a stool on one side of the counter and the server serves food from the opposite side of the counter, where the kitchen or food preparation area is located. As the name suggests, they were primarily used for the lunch meal. Lunch counters were once commonly located inside variety stores, pharmacies, and department stores in the United States throughout the 20th century. The intent of the lunch counter in a store was to profit from serving hungry shoppers, and to attract people to the store so that they might buy merchandise.
History
, an early five and dime store chain, opened their first luncheonette in New Albany, Indiana, around 1923, and expanded rapidly from there. Lunch counters were often found in other dimestores, like Newberry's, S. H. Kress, H.L. Green, W.T. Grant, McLellan's or McCrory's. Members of the retail staff who had taken lunch counter training would staff the counter during lunch time. A lunch counter was built into dime-stores as late as the 1950s. However, into the 1960s, they lost popularity to fast food restaurants, such as McDonald's, and convenience stores, such as 7-Eleven.Typical foods served were hot and cold sandwiches a lot, soups, pie, ice cream, soda, coffee, and hot chocolate.