Automat in Wartime
The war was tough on the Automats as on the entire food service businesses, although business remained strong. Employees were being drafted and the ones who remained could find higher paying jobs in defense industries. During the summer, Horn & Hardart hired schoolkids to help out. The hours of operation had to be reduced at the retail shops. Women employees, whom pre-war city regulation had barred from working past ten in restaurants, were now working until midnight. Two Automats in the city were closed.
Food shortages were also a problem. Customers were urged to be frugal with the sugar and not leave a layer of sweet sludge at the bottom of the cup as had been common practice. Patrons swiped pads of butter, which was severely rationed, and some were stealing flatware, hard to find in stores because of restriction on the use of metal in domestic goods. Menu items had to be eliminated because the ingredients were unavailable. To increase efficiency, Horn & Hardart installed rails at the cafeteria steam tables so people had to form lines. A cashier was stationed at the end. Before this customers just approached the steam tables and the people who dished the food also handled the cash transaction.
In January 1945, Mayor LaGuardia instituted meatless Tuesdays and Fridays. No butcher could sell meat on those days and all restaurant meals had to be meatless. Only hot dog stands and other places that lacked cooking facilities were exempt. Amended rules allowed restaurants to serve poultry and organ meats. Horn & Hardart added tripe creole and kidney stew to the bill of fare on those days. Schrafft's featured a vegetable a la king and Childs, another inexpensive restaurant chain of the day, had pasta e faggioli (called pasta fazool by Brooklyn Italians). The New York Times reported that the Automat had a minuscule piece of bacon on top of its baked beans for flavoring.
In February 1945 the federal government instituted a nationwide midnight curfew on restaurants, bars and nightclubs, a particularly onerous regulation for Manhattan with its many late night establishments. Mayor LaGuardia enforced the rule with reluctance, mindful of the fact that it was putting people out of work and displeasing his electorate. Places that always had been opened all-night were exempt, as were hot dog and orange drink stands and hamburger wagons; workers on the night shift needed someplace to eat. LaGuardia warned the feds that if he saw any evidence of political favoritism in the granting of further exemptions, he would throw the curfew back in their laps. The night before and after the exemption went into effect, many clubs and restaurants, including some Automats, had curfew parties.
Meanwhile Horn & Hardart was laying the groundwork for a postwar expansion, acquiring new sites and drawing up plans to increase capacity at some locations as well as at its central commissary.