The incredible history of the drive-thru Gallery View. Expand View. Now a staple of fast food culture in America and beyond, the drive-thru has been on quite a journey.
The concept began as a modest burger shack with a drive-up window, and burgeoned into the flashy, tech-savvy joints ubiquitous across the globe today. In these nostalgic snaps, we chronicle the fascinating history of the drive-thru. The story of the drive-thru begins with the drive-in.
Peddling the strapline of "America's Motor Lunch", the Pig Stands fast food chain is typically held up as America's first drive-in — a restaurant that sees diners park up and eat their dinner at the wheel. Car ownership rose dramatically through the Roaring Twenties and drive-in restaurants sprung up to cater to America's new motorists. An early purveyor of the concept was Carpenter's Sandwiches, a sandwich shop with a menu of comforting classics think homemade pies and grilled cheese.
It's pictured here on a busy day in the early s. At these new-fangled restaurants, the car became the dining room. Diners would relay their order to carhops who would bring steaming plates of American comfort food right to their vehicle. This photo dates to and sees a Carpenter's Sandwiches carhop deliver dinner and a smile to parked punters. Celebrity foodies soon caught drive-in fever too. This throwback snap shows silent movie star Monte Blue in Hollywood in , as he's served a club sandwich in his mini racing car.
Fast-forward to the s and America's love affair with the motorcar showed little sign of fizzling out. After the Second World War, car ownership began to rise once more and the drive-thru restaurant was on the near horizon.
First, though, came everything else. By this decade, drive-thru banks and even drive-thru grocery and liquor stores as pictured in in Los Angeles, California were commonplace. Red's Giant Hamburg, a down-home joint along Route 66 in Springfield, Missouri, opened in , and is widely credited with being America's first drive-thru restaurant.
The spot began life as a gas station until owner Sheldon "Red" Chaney decided his time would be better spent as a restaurant proprietor. Hot on the heels of Red's Hamburg was In-N-Out, a burger chain that's still a staple of America's fast food scene today. Harry and Esther Snyder founded the well-loved drive-thru in , and they went one step further than Sheldon "Red" Chaney.
Their early strapline was "No Delay" and they made good on what they promised. It's tipped as the first fast food set-up of its kind and it paved the way for the modern drive-thru.
The Snyders pictured here with their kids were a dream team, with Harry front and centre in the kitchen, and Esther managing the restaurant's accounts. By night, after long days slinging burgers, Harry Snyder would also work on perfecting his pioneering speaker system. It certainly doesn't hurt that drive-thrus allow Starbucks coffee shops to speed up service, thereby serving more people and hiking per-store profits. Panera studied drive-thrus for 10 years before opening one. The fast-casual restaurant category, which has become a phenomenal success due to its mix of speedy service, customizable orders, and fresher and higher-quality fare, has been fairly reluctant to pull up to the drive-thru, so to speak.
One reason is the fear that the drive-thru cheapens the experience figuratively and literally, the latter because orders taken away in the car are prone to getting soggy or are otherwise less appealing than food fresh eaten on the spot.
Panera Bread , one of the earliest players in the fast-casual space, reportedly studied drive-thru options for a decade before finally introducing one in That was only after the company settled on a design that would hide drive-thru operations from the regular counter-serve customers they didn't want to disturb or distract anyone , and after developing special packaging that ensure "food integrity" in drive-thru orders.
Chipotle is a drive-thru holdout, and may never give in. Experts in the field have said that a drive-thru would destroy the Chipotle experience , in which customers look at employees face-to-face, eyeball all the ingredients in front of them, and customize exactly what they want in their burrito or bowl.
The question of if or when it will add a drive-thru comes up again and again, but thus far Chipotle hasn't gone there. And based on how successful Chipotle has been without offering drive-thru service, it hardly seems to need it. By Brad Tuttle October 8, And while other types of retail businesses are experimenting with windows, the fast-food drive-thru is evolving. When lines get too long, employees can go outside and approach the cars waiting in line, using a mobile POS device to take their orders right on the spot, or a communicator to call their order in to the restaurant.
Ironically, the drive-thru is becoming a hybrid drive-in. All Rights Reserved. Please contact for permissions. Should they transition back to the old way of doing things? Could they operate with an even smaller location? Starbucks has already announced they will open dozens of pickup-only stores. But then again, maybe drones will solve this issue for much less cost than building a dumbwaiter. Let us know what do you think in the comments below? Invest In A Drive-Thru:.
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