Frank Hardart

Frank Hardart Sr. (1850–1918) was the co-founder with Joseph V. Horn of Horn & Hardart, the food service company that launched the Horn & Hardart Automat cafeterias in Philadelphia and New York. Patrons at the Automats could serve themselves by putting coins into a wall of little boxes, and open a small door to everything from a hot entree or sandwich to a piece of pie.

Frank Hardart Sr. was born in Bavaria in 1850. He emigrated to America in 1858 with his widowed mother, an older brother and two sisters, and settled in New Orleans, Louisiana. He started out washing dishes and cooking in restaurants. While working at a lunch counter at age 13, he learned the French-drip coffee brewing method – a departure from the boiled coffee common at time. The French-drip coffee was later credited as part of Horn & Hardart's early success.

In 1876, Hardart bought a one-way ticket to Philadelphia, with the idea of introducing New Orleans' French-drip coffee to a new market. Philadelphia had the Centennial Exhibition that year and the city's restaurants were flush with out of town visitors. Hardart took a job washing dishes and did his best to sell the idea of French-drip coffee to restaurants, but there were no takers.

He returned to New Orleans and waited tables in restaurants, saving what money he could. He met and married a young Irishwoman named Mary Bruen and in 1886, they moved to Philadelphia to continue Hardart's dream of introducing a better cup of coffee to the masses.

He was working at a luncheonette called Joe Smith's in 1888 when he answered an advertisement by Joseph V. Horn (1861–1941), who was looking for a restaurant partner. Horn, who came from a wealthy family in Philadelphia, had borrowed $1,000 from his mother to place the ads. "Horn got only one answer: three words, scribbled on a scrap of paper, stuffed in an envelope with a boarding house return address on it. Frank Hardart had sent it. He'd been working in a quick lunch (sandwich shop) called Joe Smith's when he saw Horn's ad. He tore off the corner of a bag of sugar, wrote, 'I'm your man' on it, and mailed it."

On December 22, 1888, Horn and Hardart opened their first restaurant together in Philadelphia and in 1898, they incorporated as the Horn & Hardart Baking Company. Horn & Hardart's success grew as they opened lunchrooms on busy street corners in commercial areas of Philadelphia.

Horn had been inspired by a visit to a new "waiterless restaurant" in Boston called, "Thompson's Spa." But it wasn't until Hardart traveled to Berlin in 1900 to find out more about the German version, called "automats," that their own business changed. Frank Hardart purchased the machinery for $30,000, a huge sum at the time, from a German company called Quissana, so Horn & Hardart could set up their own Automat in Philadelphia. The equipment took a year to build.

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