Lunch counter

A lunch counter (also known as a luncheonette) is a small restaurant, much like a diner, where the patron sits on a stool on one side of the counter and the server or person preparing the food serves from the other side of the counter, where the kitchen or limited food preparation area is. As the name suggests, they were most widely used for the lunch time meal. Lunch counters at one time were commonly located inside of retail variety stores (or "five and dimes" as they were called in America) and smaller department stores. The intent of the lunch counter in a store was to both profit from taking care of hungry shoppers and attract people to the store more often in the hopes that they might buy some merchandise or cross two errands off their list in one location.

History

Woolworth's, an early five and dime chain of stores, opened their first luncheonette in New Albany, Indiana, and expanded rapidly from there.^[1] 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, or if a shopper wanted to place an order for a snack. Typical foods served were hot and cold sandwiches (e.g., ham and cheese, grilled cheese, BLT, patty melt, egg salad), soups, pie, ice cream (including sundaes, ice cream sodas and milkshakes), soda, coffee and hot chocolate.

Significance in the American Civil Rights movement

Integrating lunch counters in the Southern United States through the use of sit-in political protests in the 1960s was a major accomplishment of the Civil Rights Movement. These involved Black Americans and their supporters sitting at the lunch counter in areas designated for "whites only", insisting that they be allowed to purchase and be served cups of hot coffee.