A cafeteria

A cafeteria is a type of food service location in which there is little

or no waiting staff table service, whether a restaurant or within an
institution such as a large office building or school; a school
dining location is also referred to as a dining
hall or canteen (in British English).[1] Cafeterias are different
from coffeehouses, despite being the Spanish translation of the
English term. Instead of table service, there are food-serving
counters/stalls, either in a line or allowing arbitrary walking paths.
Customers take the food they require as they walk along, placing
it on a tray. In addition, there are often stations where customers
order food and wait while it is prepared, particularly for items such
as hamburgers or tacos which must be served hot and can be
immediately prepared. Alternatively, the patron is given a number
and the item is brought to their table. For some food items and
drinks, such as sodas, water, or the like, customers collect an
empty container, pay at the check-out, and fill the container after
the check-out. Free unlimited second servings are often allowed
under this system. For legal purposes (and the consumption
patterns of customers), this system is rarely, if at all, used for
alcoholic beverages in the US.
Customers are either charged a flat rate for admission (as
in a buffet) or pay at the check-out for each item. Some
self-service cafeterias charge by the weight of items on a
patron's plate. In universities and colleges, some students
pay for three meals a day by making semestrial payments.
As cafeterias require few employees, they are often found
within a larger institution, catering to the clientele of that
institution. For example,schools, colleges and
their residence halls, department
stores, hospitals, museums, military bases, prisons, and
office buildings often have cafeterias.
At one time, upscale cafeteria-style restaurants dominated
the culture of the Southern United States, and to a lesser
extent the Midwest. There were numerous prominent
chains of them: Bickford's, Morrison's Cafeteria, Piccadilly
Cafeteria, S&W Cafeteria, Apple
House,Luby's, K&W, Britling, Wyatt's Cafeteria, and Blue
Boar among them. Currently two Midwestern chains still
exist, Sloppy Jo's Lunchroom and Manny's, which are both
located in Illinois. There were also a number of smaller
chains, usually located in and around a single city. These
institutions, with the exception of K&W, went into a decline
in the 1960s with the rise of fast food and were largely
finished off in the 1980s by the rise of "casual dining". A
few chains — particularly Luby's and Piccadilly Cafeterias
(which took over the Morrison's chain in 1998) — continue
to fill some of the gap left by the decline of the older
chains. Some of the smaller Midwestern chains, such
as MCL Cafeterias centered on Indianapolis, are still very
much in business.
History
Perhaps the first self-service restaurant (not necessarily
considered a cafeteria) in the United States was the Exchange
Buffet in New York City, opened September 4, 1885, which
catered to an exclusively male clientele. Food was purchased at a
counter, and patrons ate standing up.[2]This represents the
predecessor of two formats: the cafeteria, described below, and
the automat. During the 1893 World's Columbian
Exposition in Chicago, an entrepreneur named John Kruger built
an American version of the smörgåsbords he had seen while
traveling in Sweden. Emphasizing the simplicity and light fare, he
called it the "Cafeteria" - Spanish for "coffee shop". The
exposition attracted over 27 million visitors (half the US
population at the time) in six months, and it was initially through
Kruger's operation that America first heard the term and
experienced the self-service dining format.

Meanwhile, in everyday, hometown America, the chain of Childs

Restaurants was quickly growing from about 10 locations in New
York City in 1890 to hundreds across the United
States and Canada by 1920. Childs is credited with the critical
innovation of adding trays and a "tray line" to the self-service
format, which they introduced in 1898 at their 130 Broadway
location.[3][4] Childs did not change its format of sit-down dining,
however. This was soon the standard design for most Childs
Restaurants - and many imitators - from coast-to-coast, and
ultimately the dominant design for cafeterias.
Other names
A cafeteria in a U.S. military installation is known as a chow hall,
a mess hall, a galley, mess decks or, more formally, a dining
facility, whereas in common British Armed Forces parlance, it is
known as a cookhouse or mess. Students in the USA often refer
to cafeterias aslunchrooms, though breakfast as well as lunch is
often eaten there.[citation needed] Some school cafeterias in the United
States have stages and movable seating that allow them to be
used as auditoriums. These rooms are known as cafetoriums.
Cafeterias serving university dormitories are sometimes
called dining halls or dining commons. A food court is a type of
cafeteria found in many shopping malls andairports featuring
multiple food vendors or concessions, although a food court could
equally be styled as a type of restaurant as well, being more
aligned with public, rather than institutionalised, dining.
Some monasteries, boarding schools, and older universities refer
to their cafeteria as a refectory. Modern-day
British cathedrals andabbeys, notably in the Church of England,
often use the phrase refectory to describe a cafeteria open to the
public. Historically, therefectory was generally only used by
monks and priests. For example, although the original 800-year-
old refectory at Gloucester Cathedral(the stage setting for dining
scenes in the Harry Potter movies) is now mostly used as a choir
practice area, the relatively modern 300-year-old extension, now
used as a cafeteria by staff and public alike, is today referred to
as the refectory. A cafeteria located in a television studio is often
called a commissary. NBC's commissary, The Hungry Peacock,
was often joked about by Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show.