The time – 1950s – the invention – The EggOmat, an egg vending machine enclosed in a wooden shed, born on Mountain Boulevard, across from the field that’s now home to municipal ballfields in Somerset County’s Warren Township, New Jersey. But we’re not here to talk RevWar history, we’re here to look back at the EggOmat, an automated roadside egg stand that changed thinking while delivering fresh eggs 24/7 back in the 1950s!
In 1883, Percival Everett was the first man to introduce a modernized vending machine in the UK, which dispensed postcards. Then the French followed with the first drink vending machine. But the American phenomenon didn’t kick in until the1940s when coin slot vending machines, or simply “slot machines” started becoming all the rage. In 1947, there were already over 5,000,000 machines in America dispensing gum, soda, and peanuts. kleenex and all other sorts of items. The prediction was to grow to over 17,000,000 by the mid-1950s. So our story is local and it ties right into this trend with an egg vending machine called the”Egg-O-Mat.”
If you look at Warren Township, you can go back to before the founding of America. By the time the American Revolution came around, fewer than a hundred families lived in what would become Warren. In 1806, Warren Township was created from portions of Bridgewater and Bernards Township. Warren was named in honor of Joseph Warren, hero of the Battle of Bunker Hill. So you have the background, now what about the EggOmat…… let’s dig in. And if you have any stories to share, please post a comment in the Comments section at the end of the retrospective.
Camillo and Alice Epstein were Jewish refugees who fled Austria during WWII. Like other Jewish farmers, Camillo came to the country-like setting in 1946 and acquired a 50-acre farm located at 41 Mountain Blvd. The Warrenville Poultry Farm, along with thousands of chickens laying thousands of fresh eggs to sell the Epsteins spent three decades selling eggs with their iconic vending machine dispensed farm-fresh eggs that would be checked and refreshed typically every 8 or 10 days. He would move about 4 or 5 cases of eggs per week. Top egg sellers would sell up to 1,200 dozen eggs a month.
So What IS an Egg-O-mat?
What was coined the Egg-O-mat, was built inside a climate-controlled shed ( refrigerated, heated, humidified) managed by a thermostat. Purchased by chicken rancher Camillo Epstein for his Warrenville Poultry Farm, the vending machine eliminated the need for Epstein to continually staff a farm stand. When food stores were closed, customers could still buy eggs 24 hours a day, seven days a week at the EggOmat.
EggOmat Construction
The EggOmat was a coin-operated temperature-controlled carousel built by Heinz Braunsberg from his Heinz Poultry Farm in Bristol, Connecticut. Branusberg was also a WWII Jewish refugee to America. He started offering his egg vending machine in 1953 after learning about a California egg vending machine company that invented names such as the “Eggaterra”. But it was Heinz that coined the phrase and patented the term “Egg-O-Mat,” hoping his machines would sit side by side with milk and cigarette vending machines found at many gas stations around the country.
The Warren machine is a wooden shed that houses the galvanized steel egg-o-matic conveyor system in a proper HVAC’d environment, that would drop eggs into a tray based on a size selection dial. Epstein was often bothered by youngsters who viewed the machine as an amusement device, so he rigged an intercom so he could hear if someone was stealing eggs. It’s a pretty advanced design for the times.
Endangered Egg-O-Mat Gets a New Life
The EggOMat sat near the roadway until 1999 when it was removed for a small shopping center. Epstein had sold his farm in 1980 and moved to Florida. The new owner turned the EggOmat over to the historical society in 1998. The shed stopped operating long before its mechanisms were taken into the township’s care in 1999. “It had been abandoned for a number of years before that,” said Alan Siegel, president of the Warren Township Historical Society. Today, the original EggOmat shed sits dilapidated and decaying in a wooded area near the township’s Department of Public Works (DPW) garage. The mechanical inner workings were taken inside the DPW facility decades ago and stored there. While there has been interest in bringing back the EggOmat, Siegel doubts that the original inside machinery is still operable.
After a failed “Save the EggOmat” campaign, which included selling T-shirts, everyone is rooting for the EggOmat to make a comeback at the township’s Wagner Farm. If you have any memories of the EggOmatic, be sure to post a comment below.
Egg-O-Mat Locally Made Cartoons
Cartoons by Lisa Rosalie Eisenberg who moved to Warren and captured this great history. (Click to Enlarge)
The New Jersey Museum of Agriculture at Rutgers University showcased another Egg-O-mat until it was dissolved in 2011. The museum opened in 1990 and was located at 103 College Farm Road in New Brunswick, on the campus of the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences of Rutgers University.
In 2022, the township committee and Rory Britt announced that the Wagner Farm would allow the EggOmat to reside on the property, most likely just off the street for all to see. Warren’s Wagner Farm Arboretum, located just down the road from the original Epstein farm at 197 Mountain Avenue is a beautiful area that offers gardening, education, and relaxation. The arboretum, owned by Warren Township, hosts a Giving Garden Project (GGP) has distributed over 100,000 pounds of produce to the needy. The bottom line is that The Wagner Farm Arboretum will be the final resting place for Epstein’s shed and eggOmatic sometime later this year or early next year. We will update this post when we hear more about the progress.
The New Jersey Museum of Agriculture in North Brunswick (now defunct) owned an Eggomatic, a mid-20th-century machine that graded eggs. When Andrew B. Jacobson, the museum’s curator and director of collections, learned about Warren’s Eggomat, he was interested; “It would be something we would definitely want,” Jacobson said. “It’s such a mechanical marvel.” While the museum has since disbanded, they did find another ee-O-mat and we’re going to try to find out where it went.
Additional Information
Today, Warren has a chicken ordinance called “Keeping of Fowl,” which bans chickens from properties under 1.5 acres. For every additional one acre of land, four chickens could be added. The chickens would NOT be permitted to run loose. So, I’m not sure if Carmine and Allison could have ever made a go of it today, given that 50 acres would permit 200 chickens (just sayin’).
Just a Man Before His Time
Check out this great website showcasing the history of other weird vending machines from the 1920s to the 1960s.
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Other MLH Local History Stories
Mapping Historic Sites in Warren, NJ
So interesting to learn the history of some of the iconic Warren sites. Happy to subscribe!
My family used to go to the Egg o mat on Sunday nights , very convenient.