Wendy's is associated with bringing innovation to fast food, from its square burger patties to . The chain is also responsible for modernizing how that food is served, as Wendy's adapted drive-thru service into the system we know today. In 1970, barely a year after , founder Dave Thomas opened the first freestanding Wendy's location in the city which included a pick-up window.
Wendy's has publicly admitted that a window from which customers could grab food without entering the restaurant wasn't new, but claims it hadn't been done successfully. One of the first restaurants to cater to nascent car culture was Dallas, Texas-based Kirby's Pig Stand in the 1920s when it introduced the idea of a carhop restaurant. Demand for Kirby's food outgrew its nonexistent dining room and small parking lot.
Looking for a solution to its limited parking space, Kirby's invented the drive-thru to keep customers moving. Other restaurants followed suit over the decades, typically in a move to increase service beyond the confines of a small dining space. Red's Giant Hamburg opened in 1947 along Route 66 in Missouri, operated out of a converted gas station, and was one of the first establishments to have a drive-up window with speakers.
West Coast restaurants picked up the trend in the 1950s, with In-N-Out and Jack in the Box debuting their drive-thru services equipped with comparable speaker systems. Though arriving on the fast food scene earlier than Wendy's, neither McDonald's nor Burger King intr.
