The "help yourself" restaurant known as a "cafeteria" has long been a feature of American life, and now the same idea is being applied to grocery stores. In this "help yourself" shop the shopper enters through a turn-stile and is provided with a hand-bag, into which she places all that she requires from the store. At the exit turn-stile a second assistant takes the bag, checks the contents, and while the shopper is paying at the office the goods are made up into a parcel. By this system it is contended that the number of shop-assistants is reduced to a minimum, and that waiting is eliminated from shopping. What the shop-assistants think of these stores, known as "groceretarias", will not be difficult to imagine. Generally it would seem that much attention is being given to the deprivation of the shop-assistant of this job. Certainly this is the tendency of the automatic machines and these new American stores.
The Irish Times, March 23rd, 1929.