Thursday Open Line


This is National Drive-Thru Day — noting the popularity of restaurants that take orders by intercom and then pass the food out a window to the customers wanting to keep on the move. The first such service was the idea of Robert Peterson at a Jack in the Box restaurant in San Diego in 1951, serving hamburgers for just 18 cents. At the time, drive-in restaurants were very popular. The serving staff — some even on roller skates — brought food to people who stayed in their parked cars with the meal set on a tray attached to the car. Today, a drive-thru is a feature of many of the more than 216,000 fast food restaurants in the U.S., which employ nearly 3.5 million people, and generate well over $151 billion in sales each year. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau, online at www.census.gov