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.
Read more about Lunch Counter: History, Significance in The American Civil Rights Movement
Famous quotes related to lunch counter:
“Long as there’s lunch counters, you can always find work.”
—Mother and Aunts Of Dorothy Allison, U.S. waitresses. As quoted in Skin, ch. 2, by Dorothy Allison (1994)