BOTTOM LINE : Fotomatamorphosis

Only a few years ago, it seemed that every third parking lot in Southern California had a blue-and-yellow Fotomat kiosk. In 1980, there were about 4,000 of them across the country, but every year after that saw a dramatic decrease, sometimes by the hundreds, as one-hour photo-finishing labs flourished.

Konica bought Fotomat’s processing facilities in 1986, and soon, says Donald Franz, editor of the Photo Finishing Newsletter, “most kiosks were destroyed and leaseholders turned that space into parking lots--well, more of a parking lot than it already was.”

There’s no way to tell how many remain in Southern California--there’s no Businesses-in-Former-Fotomat-Kiosks Assn.--but an informal survey reveals that scores of the teeny little shops now house scores of teeny little businesses, from jewelers to flower merchants, watch repairers to coffee bars. Some samples:

Drive Through Tobacco sits conveniently across from a country-western dance club in Glendale--”a great location,” says owner Mike Karagizyan, to sell to cigarette smoking, tobacco-chewing, line-dancing cowboys.

The Coffee Brake, a drive-through espresso bar in West Los Angeles, opened up last year and has been so successful that owner Carolyn Teninty says she’s keeping her eye open for other kiosks. “They’re tough to find,” she says. “I got lucky with this one.”

At A-1 Affordable Locksmith in Santa Monica, owner Chau Tran was confronted with a problem common at many former Fotomats: Customers kept coming up to the kiosk to drop off film. So Tran did what any smart business owner would do--he added photo-finishing to his locksmith services. “We discovered an automatic built-in side business that we didn’t have to advertise,” says Tran. “Nice huh?”