I recently came back home from my first 2-month trip to America.
One morning I went to a local Starbucks and there was a line of I’d say 12 cars at the drive-thru. Me being the Eastern European I am – I parked my car in the parking lot and went inside.
It was dead as a graveyard. Grabbed my order in a matter of seconds and got out faster than any other car at the window.
Do Americans call this “convenience” or are most people just straight up lazy and can’t take a walk?
21 comments
Sometimes we enjoy the podcast or radio we’re listening to, but I blame it on our unending hope.
When I see someone pull over to the Dunkin line that is out into the street, blocking traffic, I don’t think they’re thinking rationally. They look at the line, knowing they could go inside, but instead think and hope “this is the drive-thru, if the line wasn’t going quickly, other people wouldn’t be sitting in it”. And so they sit there, and hope it will move, and when it doesn’t they refuse to give up on that hope that it’s just one asshole ordering 20 things, instead of all of them.
Maybe there are reasons besides laziness that you’re not thinking of.
Maybe we have 3 kids or a dog in the car. Maybe we’re on a phone call. Maybe we ordered online for a drive-thru pickup. Maybe it’s actually a break in someone’s day to sit idly for 5 minutes in peace and quiet.
Most people are just straight up lazy and can’t take a walk.
I never use drive-thrus. As you say nine times out of ten it’s much quicker to just park and go inside.
I am not a big drive-through place user (I grew up in an area in metro ny where drive throughs were t allowed 1 now I am in Missouri – drive through central) but every now and then I will do what you did and 75% of the time it ends up taking me *longer* at the counter, bc there are fewer employees dedicated to counter service. Some places – like chick fil a- have drive thrus down to a science and there can be 20 cars but the line moves so quickly.
We tend to try to be very busy so eating on the go is common. That is easier to facilitate if you never leave the vehicle.
Additionally we spent 2 years with the lobbies of restaurants being closed due to covid restrictions. And while most places have lifted those requirements many fast food restaurants still do not have enough workers to properly man each shift. So part of dealing with that worker shortage is to reduce the number of total workers needed by closing their lobbies.
That added to the already existing tendency to eat on the go means we are even more likely to just use a drive thru.
Probably lots of reasons, some of which they just don’t think of. Sitting in your car is a ‘safe space’, you don’t feel like you were interrupting your routine. Drive throughs are engineered to make it fell like it was faster, you order on one sde of the building, slowly dirve all the way to the other side, and although it’s actually slower you don’t see/feel that as ‘time’ the same way you would see parking and going inside.
Another thing is that eating in your car has been a thing for much longer than the first drive throughs n 1975, even longer than the modern fast food places have been in existence. Before ‘drive through’ there were ‘drive in’ restaurants, as early as the [late 1920s](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/busy-parking-lot-around-carpenters-sandwiches-drive-in-news-photo-1635179503.jpg?crop=1xw:0.96515xh;center,top&resize=980:*), where you would stay in your car and a server, AKA ‘car hop’ would come out, get your order and deliver it back to you, all while you never left your car. The 1950s were the heyday of [drive in restaurants](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/local-teens-hang-out-in-the-parking-lot-of-an-a-w-drive-in-news-photo-1635255129.jpg?crop=0.9919xw:1xh;center,top&resize=768:*&keepGifs=1); food, hanging out with friends in the parking lot, it was a whole social scene for some. Drive ins are also still a thing in much of the US, [Sonic drive ins](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/route-66-sonic-drive-in-restaurant-albuquerque-new-royalty-free-image-1636561789.jpg?crop=1xw:0.99906xh;center,top&resize=768:*&keepGifs=1) still have no options for even going inside.
TLDR; Eating in your car, with the food delivered, is a very long tradition in the US.
When I decide to go through a drive-through it’s because wherever I’m buying a coffee from isn’t my ultimate destination.
And I usually have my work laptop with me so I’d rather just leave my backpack on the seat next to me in the drive-through line than wear it into a coffee shop (since I’m not supposed to leave it unattended).
You got lucky in it being faster.
Drive thrus are often quicker because there’s more staff devoted to them, even if there’s no counter line.
I will agree that I do not understand waiting in line at the drive thru if there are more than 3 people in line.
It’s faster. If I’m on a lunch break, I’d rather get my food at the drive thru and bring it back, rather than sit down in the restaurant and eat it there.
Drive thrus in my area are generally much faster than going in. 10 cars at a Starbucks is maybe a 2 minute wait to get your coffee. Drive thrus are generally staffed at a higher rate to accommodate us Vs the counter.
And yes we as a culture love convenience. Whether it be a drive thru, creating technology or gadgets, we don’t need that stuff but we like the convenience of stuff
Because I have 3 kids and getting them out of the car, walking across a usually busy parking lot, getting them to stand still in line and then packing them back in the car isn’t worth walking into the store itself. It’s so much easier to just pull up, grab the bag of food and leave.
Walking across a parking lot isn’t an issue for 90-95% of us (taking consideration peoples with disabilities). I don’t know why you, an eastern European are being so judgmental. Lol
I won’t go in the drive thru line if there’s more than about 4 cars. At that point it’s faster to just go inside.
Can’t blast my tunes while I enjoy lunch in the restaurant. Definitely can in my car.
Remember COVID? I’m still trying to stay outside as much as possible.
I have also found that it’s faster, 90% of the time, to just park and go inside. Plus I am cheap and hate wasting gas idling my car.
I was the last person served when I skipped the drive-thru and went inside. Now I always use the drive-thru.
First you have to understand the history of cars in the US.
As early as the 1920’s, and especially during the 1950’s or 60’s, cars were marketed as being a home away from home. Cars especially in the 50’s thru the 90’s were much bigger than your average modern Fiat or Toyota. Entire markets catered to this idea. Especially with drive-in restaurants and theaters. You could just stay in your car and be catered to. this idea compounds with the marketing of fast food. Fast food is marketed to be… well… fast and convenient. Fast food places are also fairly small buildings, and speed and proficiency is key. So what’s the best win-win in this scenario? If I’m a fast food owner, I can serve my food through a window built into the building so people don’t even have to get out of their cars. That’s more customers per hour for me, and speed and convenience for the customer.
America really blossomed after the invention of the car. So many cities were made with cars in mind rather than horses or walking.
It depends on the day.
Sometimes, when the drive-thru is absolutely packed, I just decide to go inside, because it would be faster. Sometimes when there’s no room in the parking lot, I decide to go through the drive-thru, because it would be faster.
It’s literally just a case-by-case basis for me. I don’t see why you need to be all accusatory about people who might have just made a decision based on their preference.
I read some shocking statistic about the amount of people that frequently consume food in their car. I drive a lot and can’t think of a time when I ate in my car. Also, yeh, it’s because they are fat and lazy.