A long but very entertaining article detailing all of the latest in kitchen gadgetry. Among the marvels: infrared heat lamps, the microwave oven, a magnetically driven chocolate mixer, french fry and burger makers and a polisher that pummels your silverware with 1/8″ shot. The author also goes into all of the ways restaurants can increase their sales including allowing people to order through a microphone and speaker (because people like to hear themselves talk), good lighting and perfect consistency from day to day.
Overall it kind of sounds like a modern day McDonalds…
YOUR SNACK SHOP IS GOING HIGH-HAT
By James Joseph
AN OLD-HAND CHEF, venturing out of retirement, recently spent but an hour in a restaurant’s chromed and push-buttoned kitchen before turning in his white hat and apron for good.
“You don’t need a cook,” he snorted. “What you need is an electronics engineer!”
Like that old-timer, you have only to look behind (and under) the counter of your favorite hamburger place to eyewitness a revolution that’s both gastronomic and electronic:
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What a great name. I’d never heard of Spudnuts before reading this but now I’m curious to try them. They seem to still be around.

Their Potatoes Make Dough
Don’t say doughnuts to the Pelton brothers, say Spudnuts. They glamorized the lowly spud and made themselves a fortune in the process.
By H. W. Kellick
AL and Bob Pelton were suckers for sinkers—doughnuts, that is. They’d eaten glazed doughnuts, chocolate covered doughnuts and just plain doughnuts. They were also eager to make lots of money and doughnuts got them to thinking.
“Why can’t we invent a new kind of doughnut?” Al said one day over a cup of coffee and a doughnut. Just like that.
Today, the brothers Pelton never mention the word doughnut. Say Spudnut and you’ll draw a smile from them, though. For they’re out to supplant the common doughnut with their million-dollar idea—a delicious potato pastry.
As a matter of fact, the Peltons are now selling more than three-quarters of a million dozen Spudnuts per month. To date they’ve franchised 350 shops throughout the United States, Canada, Alaska and Hawaii.
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I had no idea decalcomania was a real word. From wikipedia:
“Decalcomania, or décalcomanie, a decorative technique by which engravings and prints may be transferred to other materials, was invented in Russia and introduced into the United States at least as early as 1868.”
Device Labels Sausages
Indelible labels are printed on sausages and other meats packed in natural casings by an automatic machine operating on the decalcomania principle. The device is designed to protect housewives from the substitution of inferior products for well-known brands.
Now you too can make juice! It’s almost as easy as changing a tire!
Home Unit Extracts Vegetable Juices
A NEW electric juice extractor makes it easy to prepare fresh-vegetable juices of every description at home. When carrots, beets, celery, spinach, fruits, and berries are fed into its motor-powered shredder, they are instantly reduced to pulp. Collected in cloth bags, the product is said to yield all its vitamins, minerals, and other valuable nutritive elements in a powerful hand press, where tons of pressure exerted by means of a convenient lever squeeze out every drop of juice and leave only a bone-dry residue behind in the bag.
This looks like one of the first self-serve soda machines.
Machine Supplants Soda Jerkers
NOW comes the mechanical soda jerker. Drop your money in the slot, punch the button for the flavor you want, and the machine, shown below, does the mixing and shaking, delivering soda in a package.
From Stannous:
this would probably be worth a fortune!
Here’s a couple of soda machine sites:
http://gameroomantiques.com/
http://soda-machines.com/machines/index.html