A customer gets her breakfast orders from an automatic locker of Freshhema Pick'n Go, an online breakfast order service, in Shanghai, July 17, 2020. Xinhua/Fang Zhe via Getty Images Food lockers could offer restaurants a new lease of life during the pandemic. The lockers are temperature-controlled and often unlocked via an app or with a pin code. Automats could also make a resurgence, as people look for contactless ways to collect food orders. Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories. Food lockers have boomed in popularity during the pandemic as a contactless way for customers to collect food.Chains including KFC, Burger King, and Smashburger have all announced plans to bring food lockers to their restaurants.The trend has been around for way longer than the pandemic, and isn't just being used by restaurants. A Horn & Hardart automat selling sandwiches in New York City, January 1980. Barbara Alper/Getty Images Food lockers, in their most basic sense, are devices that are used to store food, often for customers to collect.