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 the
United States) 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.