Horn and Hardart CEO David Arena appeared on “Mornings On 1” Thursday to discuss the company's efforts to revive the automat dining experience.

Automats were popular restaurant models that began around the turn of the century, where customers could insert coins and retrieve a prepared meal and beverage.

While all Horn and Hardart retail locations had closed in the city by the early 1990s, at their peak, they were serving hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers per day.

“They served about 90 million cups of coffee each year and fed about half a million New Yorkers a day,” Arena said. “So it's very important to the city, and I believe the concepts they pioneered almost 100 years ago fit the modern consumer better today.”

Following a documentary about automats in 2021, renewed interest in the concept prompted Horn and Hardart to try and bring back the restaurant model. Only an online coffee subscription service currently exists.

Arena said that while others have also tried to revive the concept, his approach will be different. “My approach is to have a methodical step-by-step way of bringing the company back. We started online with coffee, and our next step will be the automat concept.”

Arena said the automat meant a lot to people.

“It really was essential to life in New York City. Everybody ate there, it didn't matter what your job was, what your race was. Everybody went to Horn and Hardart,” he said.

He said he hopes to have a retail automat concept within the next year.