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Fast food drive thru11/26/2023 ![]() ![]() WATCH: Full episodes of The Food That Built America online now. Cup holders were once a rarity in auto interior design, but by the late 1980s it was common for cars to feature more cup holders than passengers. However, smaller chains, like Jack-in-the-Box (founded in 1950) and Wendy’s (1969), adopted the drive-thru early on and by the mid-1960s the Wienerschnitzel chain was opening A-frame restaurants with a car-sized hole that ran straight through the building.ĭrive-thrus changed the types of food that quick-service restaurants offered, ensuring the supremacy of the hamburger while spurring the invention of drip-free tacos and boneless morsels of fried chicken. The first McDonald’s burger stands opened in 1948, serving 10-cent burgers from walk-up windows (the pedestrian equivalent of the drive-thru) but it wasn’t until the mid-1970s that the first McDonald’s drive-thru opened up. Drive-Thrus Eventually Become Popularĭespite In-N-Out’s success with a drive-thru-centric business plan, the largest national chains were slow to adopt the model. It was the third McDonald's restaurant, and opened on August 18, 1953. The oldest operating McDonald's restaurant in the world is a drive-up hamburger stand in Downey, California, USA. READ MORE: How McDonald's Beat Its Early Competition and Became an Icon of Fast Food By mid-century drive-in owners were experimenting with systems like Aut-O-Hop, Dine-a-Mike, Electro-Hop, Fon-A-Chef and Ordaphone, all allowing parked customers to call in their orders. ![]() But the car-bound diners wanted quick service, prompting an arms race among the carhops to take orders and shuttle food as quickly as possible (hence the roller-skating carhops featured at many drive-ins). By indulging their patrons’ desire not to leave their cars, restaurateurs could operate with fewer employees, letting prices fall while profits rose. The drive-in was less a pure novelty than an expression of great American passions that go hand in hand: speed, efficiency and, sometimes, laziness. In 1931 a Los Angeles franchisee of the chain, Pig Stand Number 21, began to allow car owners to order and receive bagged meals from a single window (it’s not clear whether they had to get out of their cars). Customers would pull into the parking lot and be immediately greeted by carhops, combination waiter-busboys who served burgers and fries on trays that clipped onto the car’s window. The drive-in concept was first popularized by a Texas chain of eateries called the Pig Stand, whose first drive-in opened on a highway connecting Dallas and Fort Worth in 1921. Before the drive-thru, though, came the drive-in, a type of restaurant where customers ate their meals on the premises without leaving their cars. ![]()
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