The History of the Fotomat Booth

Photo from TheFotomat.com

If you grew up in an American suburb in the '70s or '80s you probably remember Fotomat booths. Looking like the offspring of McDonald's with their cheerful yellow arched roofs, the drive-through huts became the icons for a business model that for a while did one thing only and did it well: process photos from 35mm film. 

At one time there were over 4,000 Fotomat kiosks spread out across the U.S. and Canada. Most of them have since been demolished or left to decay but if you're lucky you may encounter one still standing in the wild. Some kiosks got converted into businesses that sold ice cream, cigarettes, and other goods after Fotomat Corporation was purchased by Konishiroku Photo Industry (later becoming Konica) in 1986. 

Fotomat filled a consumer need during the personal camera craze of the mid-20th century. It may be hard for generations that have only experienced taking photos with their phone to appreciate what the photo developing process was like for their parents and grandparents. Decades before digital photography, personal cameras that used 35mm film were used to take photos. 

Kodak cameras in particular were all the rage in the 1960s. They were small, portable, and popular for capturing moments from vacations, holidays, birthday parties, and other social gatherings. The one downside was you had to take the film somewhere to be processed-usually a photo processing lab- and then wait several days to get your prints. Not only that, but there was always a good chance that some photos weren't going to develop the way you intended. Bad lighting conditions or accidentally placing a finger over the lens when the shutter was pulled would render a print useless. Gosh, how did we survive before digital photos? 

The Fotomat booth made the process faster and more convenient: customers could stay in their car as they dropped off their film and pick up their photos the following day. Film was rushed from the kiosks to a local Fotomat photo lab that would develop the prints overnight. It was part of "The Fotomat Picture Pickup Promise" that guaranteed photos would be ready on the date indicated on the customer's slip. They also offered to refund customers for photos they weren't satisfied with, "no matter who's fault it is". 

When Was Fotomat Founded?

Fotomat was founded by aviation enthusiast and WD-40 co-founder Preston "Sandy" Mitchell Fleet in 1965 in San Diego. He saw an opportunity to make photo processing less of a chore for consumers. The first Fotomat kiosk opened for business that year in Point Loma, CA.  

Mysteriously absent from the Fotomat Wikipedia page is the role that Fleet's business partner Clifford Graham played in the company's history. A larger-than-life character (despite being 5'4") and con man who carried a gun, a friend once recalled that Graham "could talk those dumb La Jolla doctors and airplane pilots into giving him his life savings". 

Graham was constantly cooking up get-rich-quick schemes and failed business ideas (he promised investors he could turn sand into gold in one post-Fotomat business venture). By the mid-80s his scams caught up with him, and a federal grand jury found him guilty of mail fraud, wire fraud, income tax invasion, and filing false income tax returns. He went bankrupt and vanished shortly afterwards and to this day, no one knows if he hightailed it out of the country or if one of his swindled victims arranged to have him offed. 

Fleet took the credit for founding Fotomat, but Graham was most likely responsible for dreaming up the dress code for female Fotomat employees. Dubbed Fotomates (like Playboy's playmates) they were required to wear short-shorts or hot pants as they were called at the time and a yellow and royal blue smock top. Male employees were called Fotomacs and wore more modest attire: light blue polo shirts. 

Where Were Fotomat Booths Located?

Fotomat kiosks were usually constructed in small strip malls parking lots across suburbia - a convenient location where a customer could drop off film or pick up their photos in the same plaza where they did their grocery shopping. The kiosks took up very little space which kept overhead costs down - although their diminutive size didn't prevent drivers from occasionally backing up into the structure's concrete barrier. 

Occasionally, a Fotomat booth would get shoehorned into a small municipal parking lot or just off a busy main drag. These awkward locations are probably where the most fender benders occurred. 

Image via RareHistoricalPhotos

Where Did Fotomat Employees Go to the Bathroom?

Having such a small retail footprint did come with a major downside: there was no room (or plumbing) in a Fotomat booth to accommodate a bathroom. This meant that Fotomat employees usually had an arrangement with one of the stores in the shared lot to use their restroom with permission when nature called. 

The job did come with its perks: booths did come equipped with air conditioning (so at least employees weren't sweltering in the summer months) and heat for the winter. High school students took jobs as Fotomates or Fotomacs and as they usually staffed a kiosk alone, it meant they had some privacy in between assisting customers. 

Image via eBay

Fotomat Gets into Trouble with Kodak

Fleet and Graham made one major faux pas with the design of the Fotomat kiosks: the roof advertised that it sold and developed Kodak film. The problem was the lettering design and roof's color were too close to Kodak's branding at the time, and it made it look like Kodak owned the booths. 

Pressed with lawsuits, the Fotomat roofs were updated in 1970 to avoid confusion with customers. 

1970 was the same year the company went public, and it was also listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1977. Graham, however, was ousted by the company in 1971 on allegations that he was misusing funds. Fleet himself would sell his shares and exit the company by the 1980s, but not before Fotomat ventured into the movie rental business. 

Fotomat Offers Drive-Thru Movies

Years before Blockbuster and Redbox existed, the drive-through photo development kiosks offered VHS movie rentals, naming the new service "Fotomat Drive-Thru Movies", from 1979 to 1982. Paramount Pictures was the first film distributor to enter into an agreement with Fotomat to make its releases available to rent. Walt Disney Home Entertainment followed in 1980. 

Image credit: RidleyScottTowels via Reddit

It cost $11.95 to rent a videocassette for a period of five days which was a pretty hefty sum back in the day (the 2025 equivalent would be about $53). It also required some delayed gratification: customers would choose the movie they wanted from the company's catalog, call a number to reserve it, and then pick it up the following day from their local Fotomat kiosk. 

Fotomat Drive-Thru Movies eventually dropped their rental fee to $9.95 for five days. However, by 1982 local video rental stores had started to pop up around the country offering cheaper rental rates without the overnight rate, and Fotomat discontinued the service that year. 

Fotomat also sold blank VHS tapes as well as 35mm film and also offered a filmstrip development service which was popular with schools. Teachers could have Fotomat produce a custom captioned or sound filmstrip made by recording the audio on cassette tape and providing that to Fotomat along with the photos that would accompany the recording. 

Why Did Fotomat Go Out of Business?

Fotomat had a pretty good run, but it became obsolete by the time drugstores and retailers began offering in-store photo development services. And once one-hour photo development technology became the industry standard, it was pretty much all over for Fotomat. 

As late as 1986, however, the company still had commercials running on TV (and the Fotomates were no longer required to wear tight, revealing shorts.)

Did you use or work at a Fotomat booth? I'd love to hear from you in the comments!