Car hop12/29/2023 ![]() ![]() He also went online to hire a handful of professional roller skaters and a DJ, and kicked off his carhop service in early May with a socially distanced party in his restaurant’s parking lot. But those that don’t often offer a cardboard box that diners can position on their lap if eating in the car.) (Not all restaurants offering carhop service provide carhop trays, which clip onto the car door when the window is rolled down. “I started thinking of old school movies, and immediately went online and ordered carhop trays.” “I just had this flash of, ‘Wait a minute,’ ” he said. They were sticking around and eating in the car. By late April, he noticed that many of his customers weren’t pulling away from the parking lot after receiving their food. ![]() Brownstone Pancake Factoryīournias had to shut his indoor dining room in March but continued to offer curbside pickup. In Los Angeles, the service is offered at the Sunset Boulevard, Santa Monica and Sherman Oaks locations - all marked by the iconic, Jetsons-esque Googie architecture that evokes the Space-age optimism of the American midcentury.Ī mother and son enjoy over-the-top carhop dining at Brownstone Pancake Factory in Edgewater, New Jersey. Mel’s is now offering carhop service at its Geary Street and Lombard Street locations in San Francisco. And when coronavirus first happened, I immediately thought: ‘How can we provide the Mel’s Drive In experience with only pick-up and delivery?’ “ “It just transports you back in time back in the ’50s. “I always wanted to bring back the carhop,” said Weiss. He is serving up portions of much-needed nostalgia. In doing so, he is serving up more than just burgers and fries on his carside trays. He brought the carhops back, and soon dozens of other American eateries followed suit. But this spring, with indoor restaurant service banned in California and diners wary of stepping beyond the sanitized sanctuaries of their homes and cars, the younger Colton, who now owns the company, decided to also take a chance. ![]() Courtesy of Mel's Drive Inīy the 1960s, Mel’s, like diners and dives across the nation, had retired its carhop service. Mel's Drive In brought back carhop service this spring after retiring it in the early 1960s. So he took a chance and introduced the concept to Northern California, importing the kitschy carside service to his very first Mel’s Drive In location, at 140 South Van Ness Avenue, and securing Mel’s Drive In a place in car culture history. The elder Weiss had seen the roller-skating, poodle-skirt-clad waitresses delivering trays of burgers and shakes to diners seated in their Buick Roadmasters and Chevy Aerosedans at eateries across Los Angeles. The popularity of carhop dining evolved in America in tandem with the popularity of the automobile itself, predating the fast-food drive-through and reaching a peak in the years following World War II. Weiss’ grandfather, Mel Weiss, was the first to bring carhop dining - in which waiters bring a restaurant order directly to people in their cars - to San Francisco in 1947. ![]() So he started thinking like his grandfather. When the coronavirus pandemic shut down his restaurants, Colton Weiss knew that to survive, he would need a creative (and safe) solution to keep serving his customers. ![]()
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