Frank Hardart Sr. (October 22, 1850 – December 10, 1918) was the co-founder with Joseph V. Horn of

Horn & Hardart Horn & Hardart was a food services company in the United States noted for operating the first food service automats in Philadelphia, New York City, and Baltimore. Philadelphia's Joseph Horn (1861–1941) and German-born, New Orleans-raised Fran ...

, the food service company that launched the Horn & Hardart

Automat An automat is a fast food restaurant where simple foods and drinks are served by vending machines. The world's first automat, Quisisana, opened in Berlin, Germany in 1895. By country Germany The first automat in the world was the Quisisana ...

cafeterias in Philadelphia and New York. Patrons at the Automats could serve themselves by putting coins into a wall of glass-fronted dispensers, opening a door to an individual serving of everything from a hot entree or sandwich to a piece of pie.Stories of Philadelphi
Frank Hardart, Sr.
June 28, 2014, Page 2.

Biography

Frank Hardart Sr. was born as ''Franz Anton Hardardt'' in the Bavarian community of Sondernheim, today an urban district of

Germersheim Germersheim () is a town in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, of around 20,000 inhabitants. It is also the seat of the Germersheim district. The neighboring towns and cities are Speyer, Landau, Philippsburg, Karlsruhe and Wörth. Coat ...

, in the Palatinate (at that time a part of the

Kingdom of Bavaria The Kingdom of Bavaria (german: Königreich Bayern; ; spelled ''Baiern'' until 1825) was a German state that succeeded the former Electorate of Bavaria in 1805 and continued to exist until 1918. With the unification of Germany into the German ...

) in 1850, the son of Jakob Franz Hardardt II and Franziska Katharina, née Mainzer. He emigrated to America in 1858 with his widowed mother, an older brother and two sisters, who settled in

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...

. 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

'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. The city had the Centennial Exhibition that year and its restaurants were flush with out of town visitors. Hardart took a job washing dishes but was unsuccessful in selling the idea of French-drip coffee to restaurants. He returned to New Orleans and waited tables, 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 new 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."'' Horn and Hardar
Repast: Dining Out at the Dawn of the New American Century, 1900–1910
By Michael Lesy, Lisa Stoffer, W. W. Norton & Company, Oct 28, 2013, Page 92 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

Quisisana Quisisana was a German company that introduced the world's first automat restaurant in June 1895 on the grounds of the Berlin Zoological Garden, Germany. The establishment was considered a success, selling 5,400 sandwiches, 9,000 glasses of wine ...

, so Horn & Hardart could set up their own Automat in Philadelphia. The equipment took a year to build. Unfortunately, the ship carrying Horn & Hardart's new machine, collided with another ship and sank. The equipment was insured, but Horn & Hardart had to wait another year for a replacement. They opened their first Automat on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia on June 2, 1902. In 1905, they opened a second Automat in Philadelphia, in 1907 a third and in 1912, a fourth. Frank Hardart tombstone

Frank Hardart Sr.'s son, Frank Hardart Jr.'s patented inventions helped perfect and expand the Automat. Frank Hardart Jr. rolled out Horn & Hardart's New York operations. He also took over for his father after Frank Hardart Sr. died in 1918.

Family

Frank Hardart Sr. married Mary Bruen and they had six children: Florence Hardart; Frank J. Hardart Jr. (took over for his father at Horn & Hardart); Joseph Hardart; Nan Hardart; Erma Hardart; Augustin S. Hardart (Treasurer of Horn & Hardart) Frank Hardart Jr. married Evelyn Roche. They had three children: Thomas R. Hardart, who followed his father into Horn & Hardart as the company's president and Chairman; Dr. Frank Hardart, an OBGyn MD at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York; and Evelyn Murray of Greenwich, CT. American business executive Frank H. Murray is the great-grandson of Frank Hardart Sr.

Sources

*
"The Last Automat,"
by

James T. Farrell James Thomas Farrell (February 27, 1904 – August 22, 1979) was an American novelist, short-story writer and poet. He is most remembered for the ''Studs Lonigan'' trilogy, which was made into a film in 1960 and a television series in 1979. B ...

( ''New York'' (magazine), May 14, 1979)

External links

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hardart, Frank 1850 births 1918 deaths American food industry businesspeople German emigrants to the United States 19th-century American businesspeople Burials at Gate of Heaven Cemetery (Hawthorne, New York) Burials at Holy Cross Cemetery (Yeadon, Pennsylvania) People from Germersheim (district)