National Drive-Thru Day on July 24th recognizes an innovation conveniently going strong today. The drive-thru reached its iconic zenith in the 1950s but stayed strong through the 60s, 70s, and beyond. People have enjoyed this service since the 1930s.
- 1928 – The first drive-thru burger chain was a bank called The City Center Bank in Syracuse, New York
- 1947 – Red’s Giant Hamburg in Springfield, Missouri opened the drive-thru in 1947. Closed
- 1948 – Established in 1948, In-N-Out offered a two-way speaker box for ordering, and this genius invention was vital to the continuation of the concept.
- 1951 – Jack in the Box first launched in San Diego, and originally only offered drive-thru service
- 1971 – Wendy’s pioneered the modern drive-thru with its innovative window design. It was one of the first fast-food chains to offer a dedicated drive-thru lane, emphasizing speed and efficiency from its inception.
- 1975 – McDonald’s launched its first drive-thru restaurant in Sierra Vista, Arizona.
- 1975 – Burger King reintroduced modern drive-thru windows to speed up service and adapt to changing consumer habits.
- 1983 – The cupholder started to appear in cars
- 1999 – The Westerville Public Library in Westerville, Ohio. To make things easier for their patrons, the Westerville Public Library opened a drive-thru window in 1999.
- 2002 – National Drive-Thru Day was created and was founded by the original drive-thru chain, Jack in the Box.
- There are more than 211,000 fast-food restaurants with drive-thrus in the US
- The drive-thru format was pioneered in the US for banking services.
- If you happen to drive through a fast-food joint in the early afternoon, you’ll have the easiest, breeziest time getting your food. Think of the window between lunch and dinner — that’s your sweet spot.
- If you ask for a specific dipping sauce, you want that specific dipping sauce, right? Well, then get in your coupe and head on over to Chick-fil-A, where they have the most accurate service, nailing 92% of orders.
- Burger King: your beefy crowns can’t hide the fact that you also have the least accurate service, only successfully filling 82% of orders.
- 70% of fast food business is sold through drive-thrus (Source)
- Drive-thrus aren’t just for fast food. Here’s a short rundown of some of the more unusual (read: hilarious) ones:
- Strip Club
- Funeral Parlor
- Prayer Booth
- Christmas Nativity (Sorry, only seasonally)
- Contemporary Art Gallery
- Liquor and Gun Store
- And, in case all of the rest of those go horribly wrong, a Law Firm.
- Smartmart in Memphis, Tennessee. Smartmart is a gas station and automated drive-through convenience store. Customers drive up to one of the store’s four ATM-like touchscreen display kiosks to select the items they’d like to buy. Once purchased, a series of conveyor belts and computer-operated dispensers go to work to search for and assemble your order, which then spits out your items beneath the kiosk.
- Drive-thru design heavily influences what we order. Those appetizing photos of combo meals are prominently featured on drive-thru menu boards for a reason.
- Panera studied drive-thrus for 10 years before opening one.
- Chipotle is a drive-thru holdout, and may never give in.
- If you feel like your drive-thru experiences are taking longer than they used to, you’re probably correct. In 2019, the average time it would take a customer to get their order from the window was 255 seconds, according to QSR. This was 20 seconds longer than a typical pick-up would take in 2018.
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