What Makes Fast Food Drive-Thrus Bad for Cities: Investigating Heinous Land Uses, Episode 2

The "car as a third space" is very real. I'm in a medium size European city and it's super common especially for younger folks, think under 30 mostly, where private space is limited due to the them and their friends living with parents or family or multiple housemates. The car then becomes their private space. Drive throughs are rare here but it's common to see people park, walk to a take away, get food and drive somewhere else to eat as a solo or group activity

I've never understood the appeal of drive thrus. It's basically volunteering to be in a traffic jam.

I registered for a COVID test at a cvs nearby. When it was the day of I found out that location was only letting you take the test from the drive through. I had just totalled my car so I walked to the CVS and stood in the drive thru. I waited like 15 minutes for the lady in front of me to swab. When I got to the window they wouldn't give me a test because I wasn't in a car. Why the heck not? So I ended up just not getting tested. There was nobody else in the drive thru other than the lady in front of me, so I was pretty upset about that.

You're saying what needs to be said. 10 years ago we didn't have an In-n-Out here and ChickFilA had locations in the mall mostly. Now they're proliferating and the lines are out of control. Starbucks is still the worst offender though in terms of traffic spillage into drive lanes on main streets. As a totality, surely this is the sign of a sick society, on various levels. Thanks for your work and keep this kind of stuff coming!

It's not just that fast food produces a lot of package waste...but also food waste. In order to serve food that fast, you have to pre-prepare it in large quantities. But a manager can't predict exact demand, so a lot of fast food gets thrown out. Much that is tossed isn't that bad...maybe just a bit dry or not warm enough. This could actually be used to feed the homeless and/or local pig farms.

Thanks for mentioning Minneapolis. There's absolutely no need for drive-thru restaurants in a decent walkable neighborhood, and I don't miss them at all. I can think of a few banks and pharmacies with tiny drive-thrus near me, but I've never seen them more full than the walk-in areas. I hope more cites ban new drive-thrus.

This is slowly becoming my favourite source of dry humour. Keep it up please.

20 years ago, an Adult video store moved into a former bank with a drive thru near my house. We all were hoping for the store would utilize this. They didn’t. RIP. 😢

The delivery driver model isn't nearly as bad, as one car can pick up multiple orders and use technology to find the most efficient route among each of them. The companies are also incentivized to deliver them as efficiently as possible to save money. Obviously walking or cycling is still better.

The slurp-cut at 10:36 is majestic

So I have actually hated drive throughs since I got my drivers license; way before I was into "urbanism". It never made sense to me because my friends and I would order and when we get our food everyone want's to eat right away. I can't eat while I am driving so we end up parking in a parking lot somewhere to eat in a cramped car. so in the long run we might as well have just gone inside in the first place it's not like it was saving any time or anything.

Thanks, Dude. I was stunned back in 1989 in Charleston, W.Va., when I was on foot and the only place to buy food was a drive-thru (Popeye's Fried Chicken, as I recall). I walked up to the drive-thru and they refused to serve me because I was not in a car! Could that possibly be a thing? It makes me furious just thinking about it now, decades later. Jeez!

One thing to note that I've seen pop up EVERYWHERE at drive thrus.... the lanes block your car in. It used to be that if you pulled into a drive thru, you could leave at any point. The new thing now is to place permanent curbs along the drive thru.... effectively keeping you captive until you reach the end. It's a sneaky way they force you to buy the food

I come from a very small town, and I remember when we got a McDonalds the first thing I noticed was how much more litter there was along the streets.

So glad litter was mentioned in this video. It really bothers me (+ many others) and I think it should be discussed more amongst the urbanist community. Our cities should look their best!

I realized a few months ago that the only reasons I go to fast food restaurants is because I either "don't have time to cook" or "don't have energy to cook". Upon timing myself, I realized it takes me longer to buy something from the chikfila a half mile away than just staying home and making my own food. (significantly cheaper too). Even if the food tastes good, it's not worth it in so many ways.

The underrated thing about chains are the quality control for sanitation. My ex worked for the health department and would complain about how gross a lot of independently owned restaurants were in the kitchen.

3-5 minutes time to process? I wish that was allowed at my first job (KFC). We were given two minutes from the time the car tripped the sensor until the car left the window. The managers made a huge deal about it. Didn't matter if the customer took almost the full two minutes just to say their order

Glad you touched base on this topic. This is near and dear to me since I design the parking lots for fast food establishments. Unfortunately, as a civil engineer, we are unable to change anything about the nature of these developments. We are confined to antiquated city parking minimums, poor setbacks, and the fast food client's demands to meet. This leads to the same, boring, car dependent designs. Every fast food project is copy/pasted to the next (only changing based on city codes) It breaks my heart knowing all of this.... While contributing to poor city development

Some parts of America, especially southern states where liquor laws were historically looser, even have drive-through liquor stores, which just seems like a terrible idea. It was a shocker to me as a Californian.