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.
- There are more than 211,000 fast-food restaurants in the United States.
- The drive-thru format was pioneered in the United States for banking services.
- Hamburgers sold for just 18 cents at some of the first drive-thru restaurants.
- Restaurants, coffee shops, liquor stores, pharmacies, and many more services utilize drive-thrus for quick service.
- Although McDonald’s made the drive thru public, it was Wendy’s who first thought of the idea around 1971.
- Drive-thrus led to installation of cup holders in vehicles
- In 1951, the fast-food California-based chain Jack in the Box became the first restaurant to build its presence around the convenience of drive-thru fast food, capitalizing on California’s emerging car culture.
- The first drive-thru restaurant, surprisingly not a McDonald’s, started fueling drivers with food in 1947. Located on Route 66 in Springfield, Missouri, at Red’s Giant Hamburg, its run lasted until 1984. Opening its drive-thru lane just a year after Red’s was the original Los Angeles-area In-N-Out Burger.
- The longest-running burger drive-thru goes to the original In-N Out Burger. It opened in 1948 in the Los Angeles area.
- McDonald’s is a popular chain today, but it didn’t adopt the drive-thru access until 1975.
- 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.
- Averaging about 130 seconds, Wendy’s can give you a frosty and a perplexingly square, yet delicious, burger in just a little over two minutes — the fastest of any major drive-thru chain. Burger King (averaging a minute more) has the slowest service on average.
- 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
- 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 in Memphis, Tennessee. 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 and assemble your order, as it spits out your items underneath the kiosk itself.
- The Westerville Public Library has been an institution in Westerville, Ohio since it first opened in 1930. And to make things easier for their patrons, the Westerville Public Library opened a drive-thru window in 1999. Now the people of Westerville can reserve items online and pick them up without leaving their cars.
- 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.
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