Lunch counter

A section of the standard wood, stainless steel, and chrome lunch counter from the Woolworth's five and dime in Greensboro, North Carolina. This particular lunch counter is preserved in the National Museum of American History, having been the site of the 1960 Greensboro sit-ins against racial segregation and Jim Crow laws.
A drugstore lunch counter in Hermiston, Oregon

A lunch counter or luncheonette is a small restaurant, similar to a diner, where the patron sits on a stool on one side of the counter and the server serves food from the opposite side of the counter, where the kitchen or food preparation area is located. As the name suggests, they were primarily used for the lunch meal. Lunch counters were once commonly located inside variety stores (also known as "five and dimes", "five and tens", or "dimestores"), pharmacies, and department stores in the United States throughout the 20th century. The intent of the lunch counter in a store was to profit from serving hungry shoppers, and to attract people to the store so that they might buy merchandise.


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