National Drive-Thru Day: Who Really Invented the Drive-Thru?
Yesterday was National Drive-Thru Day. And like so many things we now take for granted, the story of the drive-thru is a little more complicated than it might seem.
Red’s Giant Hamburg in Springfield, Missouri, is widely credited as the first drive-thru restaurant in the United States. Red’s opened along Route 66 in 1947, and by 1948 owner Sheldon “Red” Chaney had installed a drive-up window and speakers so customers could order from their cars and then pick up their food.
That is Red’s in this photograph, sometime after it had closed. The photograph is from the State Historical Society of Missouri, David Eslick Photograph Collection.
At almost exactly the same time, something similar was happening in California.
Harry and Esther Snyder opened the first In-N-Out Burger in Baldwin Park in 1948. Harry developed a two-way speaker system that allowed customers to place their orders without getting out of their cars and then drive forward to pick up their food. In-N-Out calls the original location California’s first drive-thru hamburger stand.
So Red’s gets the historical credit for the first drive-thru, while In-N-Out helped establish the ordering system that looks much more like the drive-thru we know today.
Then along came Jack in the Box.
Jack in the Box opened in San Diego in 1951 with drive-thru service built around ordering through a two-way intercom and picking up the food at a service window. Decades later, in 2002, Jack in the Box campaigned for a National Drive-Thru Day, originally proposing July 28. California Governor Gray Davis recognized the occasion statewide, and the observance later moved to July 24.
So Jack in the Box did not invent the drive-thru.
But they did give it its own day.
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