When Fast Food was young.

I still remember the first time I ever went to a Fast Food place.

It was called Sandy's.


It was a typical "American Graffiti" type of place. All the high schoolers would drive there after school, park, and "be seen"

There was no drive-thru. No one wanted to leave.. In fact the managers would actually come out, and tell us to leave for a while, so others could park.

They had one size only food.

For 50 cents you got a hamburger, a small sleeve of fries (probably about 8 or 9 fries) and a small coke (probably 6 or 8 oz).

The burger was probably the equivalent of a "baby-burger" by today's standard, but it was plenty for us.

We also had a place called "The Cozy Inn" that only served "cozy-burgers" and chips & bottled pop. It was a "walk up", although it did have 6 stools at the rickety little counter. You could smell the Cozy Inn blocks away.. (In fast we girls would remove our coats and leave them outside, so our Moms would not know we went there...it was in a not-so-nice part of town, and the guys who worked there were famous for hitting on high school girls :evilgrin:..)


I still recall the time we drove from KU (Lawrence KS) to Kansas City to SEE the "chicken place" with a giant bucket on the roof) It was not open yet, and we all were eager to go there when it finally opened:rofl:

There were no Denny's.. there were only truck stops..REAL truck stops.. the kind that were open 24-7-365, and the waitresses really were like "Flo"..and took NO shit from unruly teens who were a bit tipsy :)

The point is this..

The FOOD was not the goal.. it was the camaraderie. The food was small and cheap, and probably not all that "good for us", even then...but it was not a solitary person doing a "drive thru-gobble-run-back-to-work", or a "drive-thru-get-food-hand-sack-to-kids-for-dinner"

It was a treat...something a little fun,and just a part of a fun evening/afternoon.

and eating in the car. The car hop would bring the tray out & it would attach to the driver's door/window. It was a big treat for us kids when Mom would take us there.

:)

The seasonal closing and opening of the A&W Drive In was an important sign of winter's coming and going.

it was long before Taco Bell & Jack in the Box were around. Had to drive about 15 minutes (which seemed like forever) probably around 1963 to 1966 (but my memory could be bad). A little indpendent place that was just take out.

My Mom's Elderly Aunt that lived with us couldn't pronounce tacos, to her they were Take O's. She had the same problem with Pizza which came out Peessa.

Memories.....:toast:

opened called White Barn (you can find it on FB, if you are at all interested) and it is a walk up or drive up with a few outside tables (in an old Rallys) that has a big local (North St. Louis County) following. Sort of the old style semi-fast food as it's all cooked to order.

Burgers are superb!

Before franchising, this was the norm.:) Franchising changed everything, and not always for the better:(

Wish I still had mine.

It must have held all of 2 oz:rofl:

Was similar in the UK - social gathering points.

:hi:

..... and it seems very inauthentic. Granted, as a GenXer, I have no real claim on the fast-food places of that era, but I'm intrigued by that concept.

Ogden, UT, 1962, and all the tables had white tablecloths and cloth napkins. Our meal was served by a waitress and after we finished eating, she brought a plate with warmed, wet wash cloths to our table. Times have certainly changed.

It's not seen as a place where everybody goes to hang out. I guess, it still does happen if you built Sonics in places where there is only one traffic light in the whole town, and there's nothing much to do.

There would be a line of cars for blocks in both directions circling the restaurant. More people than could actually fit into the place. Just circling, looking for friends and hookups, showing off cars. I don't remember ever going in to buy anything. It was too busy.

The cops finally had to bust it up by putting cruisers at every intersection. It got too big, too many fights. Very strange, looking back on it.

And Arthur Treacher's for fish. But during the summer we'd go to these little ice cream places that were scattered around the area and get the best ice cream ever. Most of them were independently owned, but one may have been connected to Isley's (sp).
Didn't start going to chains on a regular basis until I moved to Utah in the early '80s.

Fast Food started out a treat and hang out for teenage baby boomers. These teenagers grew up with fond memories of fast food. It was really the camraderie and the fun of being a teen, but the food came to be associated with it. Now those baby boomers are adults with kids of their own and trying to recapture some of that fun. And it's just all too easy to hit the drive thru on the way home from work or picking up the kids from day care/school/activities.

And of course, the fast food restaurants cleverly market themselves as fun places to be. Everyone is so happy in the ads...

What started as a fun treat emerged into habit.

Boomers no longer have small kids... and most Boomer Moms learned how to cook. a LOT of us older boomers had the luxury of not having to work outside the home, so meal-planning was just a part of our day.

I think the younger boomers who mostly worked outside the house did not have the time to teach their kids how to cook, who may have gotten "hooked" on fast foods...and suburbs had a lot to do with it too.

If you had a long commute, time became your enemy..

In their advertising, which seems to be either aimed at children or adults with child-like minds, they try all they can to make the visit to their outlets sound like fun, just part of a fun evening/afternoon.

And also notice this, its almost never about the evening part, their advertising always shows shots during the daytime. I have read, and don't really know if this is true or not, that the fast food industry does very little evening business compared to their daytime fare - that they have never found a way to get people to come in for dinner no matter how good they are at filling the place at lunch time.

Perhaps people still associate "dinnertime" as a more substantial meal, and maybe eating in plastic chairs under fluorescent lights is not all that much fun :)

Me thinks you are raining on my "HAPPY MEAL" :party:

In Chicago, it's Superdawg!!!



Carhops, great Shakes and Sundaes and hot dogs with ALL the trimmings (you folks call it a "Chicago Style"...in Chicago, there's only one style...Vienna)

mustard & onion :P

That's a "naked dog"...LOL

If you can see the hot dog, it's not done right.

Cheers...

In Berkeley, CA there is a classic place called Top Dog! Wonderful hot dogs of different varieties.

all the seating is outside, in fact, there is no "inside" except for the kitchen. I love the old-fashioned feel, and I'm 24. :)

There are always HUGE lines there on hot summer days.

and their malts were to die for.. My fave: Chopped banana & chocolate malt..(sort of like a Blizzard, but malt-ier)

We called it the bug place because they served their malts & shakes with a paper napkin on top (no plastic lids back then) because it was right next to a baseball field, and the bright lights on a pole right next to their little place attracted moths & all kinds of other flying critters..

girls with long hair kept a scarf in the glovebox of the car, because a big ole flying grasshopper tangled in your hair, took all the fun out of the malt:)

people who went there often knew to bring a rolled up newspaper with them to swat away the bugs as they waited their turn :)

As a kindergarten kid in the '70s, Friday nights were the bestest! In Chicago, we had a place called Solly's where my daddy would drive us in the station wagon to pick up gyros, hot dogs, and shakes for the dinner drive to our weekend cabin in Twin Lakes, WI. :loveya:

everyone cruised through sandy`s on monday and friday nights...

now it`s an office for a title loan

when I was a little kid. I don't know when they disappeared maybe when McDonalds came into being. I've tried to find out something about them but they have completely disappeared off the face of the earth like they never existed at all even on the internet. :yoiks:

edit: added word

good, tasty food, go to a truck stop. I guess I went to the wrong truck stops.
:rofl:

I remember the best burger was a bar burger. Big, fat and greasy - but yummy!

They grind their own patties, cook over charcoal, no fries, gotta have chips instead, and they still have a jukebox that plays 45s. Their shakes are kind of meh, though.

A hamburger, a small order of fries and a small vanilla shake.

And we knew it was a treat to be enjoyed now and then, not a cheap staple to fill our bellies because 'good' food was too expensive.

The picture you posted looks exactly like the one that was on the corner of Sheridan and Lake in Peoria Illinois, opening around 1965.
My sister worked there for a couple of years in the early 70's, before it became first a Hardees, then a Dairy Queen.
The "deluxe" burger in those early years was called a "Hi-Lo." Two 2mm thick patties, a slice of cheese, mustard, ketchup, pickles...somehow I remember it as so very basic, but it tasted different, and better, than any other burger I've had since. Of course, it was the most expensive burger they offered. It cost $.40.

and it was the first place I saw that had a "condiment" station where you put the fixins' on yourself.. they had sliced tomatoes, lettuce, pickles etc.

and they had a guy on view, peeling potatoes:)

I was so little. I remember the gigantic, rotating sign was (predictably) a Q inside of a circle and my mom loved the onion rings. Dad liked the iced cream.