![]() ![]() There were just a handful of drive-thru burger restaurants in America in the late 1940s…mostly mom-and-pop places…Red’s Giant Hamburg on Route 66 in Springfield, MO and the first In-N-Out Burger in Baldwin Park, CA, a Los Angeles suburb.ĭrive-up joints…first with car-hops - often on roller skates - then with two-way speakers preceded the mom-and-pop drive-thrus. It was 1970 when McDonald’s - then a 1,600-restaurant chain - started building truly sit-down restaurants…indoor seating rather than picnic tables and parking lots. ![]() More on that later…but first some other fast-food history. Army…that drive-thru wouldn’t have existed either. Indeed, McDonald’s didn’t open its first drive-thru until 1975…48 years ago, tomorrow, Jan. in 1967…the chain’s first restaurant outside the United States. Every hamburger-lover went inside…ordered, paid and - almost always - ate in their cars in the parking lot or on one of maybe two concrete picnic tables in view of the Golden Arches.Ĭanada’s first McDonald’s opened in Richmond, B.C. And…there was no drive-thru in any of them. McDonald’s opened a restaurant in my hometown - Ocala, FL - in 1965…the 700th restaurant in the chain…a decade after the first one in California. They order, pay and pick up their food at drive-thru windows and eat on the go. ![]() But, most - 1.7 million - never set foot in one of those restaurants. Every day, about 2.5 million Canadians buy food at one of the 1,403 McDonald’s across Canada. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |