That’s like 30 people in line. It takes half a block and a lane of the stroad to fit 30 people.
TIL the word “stroad”. Thanks. I just looked it up, and it’s so much the norm in almost every place I’ve lived that it was hard for me to even grasp the concept at first. Because that’s practically every road. (Although I must say I disagree with how they define street versus road because nobody actually uses those words as being especially different from one another in real life.)
What you’re looking at is a policy failure on multiple levels:
- Car-dependency in general, both in terms of transportation planning (making a stroad) and zoning (allowing the business to have a drive-thru to begin with).
- Failing to validate the capacity of the site design before approving it (yes, I know this was opening day – but several drive-thrus near me overflow out onto the street every day, even after having been open for years, so this kind of failure is definitely a thing!).
- Failure to have the police show up to clear the traffic and ticket everyone blocking the road (possibly as well as the business itself).
There should be some kind of laws around drive thrus, their capacity, and blocking roads. Unfortunately since there aren’t any yet i doubt a cop could actually ticket anyone. Plus a cop is just as happy to wait in the line and block the road as well, because that has been normal and business as usual since drive thrus have existed.
What is really frustrating is try blocking those same lanes as pedestrians or cyclists waiting in a line and suddenly everyone will tell you how unsafe and rude you are.
I will never understand the American obsession with mediocre fast food. I watched this happen with literally every new fast food place that opened in a small city off an interstate in Alabama. I can at least understand why small towns get excited for something new, but it’s always just shitty food or in this case just some fucking chicken tenders?
My experience in the US is that as soon as you leave a densely populated area, the good, interesting food options drop off a cliff. In car dependent suburbia, these are often the best they have
Sometimes, yeah.
But I’ve been to plenty of rural areas that have great Mexican restaurants and Hmong restaurants but most of the white people there preferred to eat at an Arby’s. Some of those white people were friends and they simultaneously acted like they didn’t even know those restaurants existed and as if it were somehow risky to go there.
For those instances, I’d suggest that it has to do with a few factors:
more rural areas tend to be more right leaning,
right leaning people are more likely to be more racist,
and right leaning people tend to be more uncomfortable with things they are unfamiliar with
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S019188699900135X
I have had good chicken tenders from restaurants, but never chains. Chains I don’t understand why people get them. For the same price and better taste you can just go to the store, get some frozen ones and pick them in the air fryer. Heck season them a bit and I’d argue they’re the same as any fast food ones
This was the case in my town when In-n’-Out burger opened up. The line there is still huge years later now after it opened. We tried it to see what the big deal was and it was…slightly better than Burger King? Yet it costs the same as a local burger joint who have way better food. I do not understand American taste buds.
Americans are overworked and underpaid with limited access to childcare and healthcare. Most have little free time or energy to cook. They rely on prepackaged foods and fast food.
It sucks. Also we have a lot of areas called food deserts, where there aren’t any real grocery stores nearby and people there tend to rely on fast food even more.
FUCK.
that’s my hometown.
haven’t been there in years, but i used to walk there a lot. i typically just had to walk on the grass or in the ditch next to the road. then i had to plan my entire route around where i could cross the roads. very very few places to do that, and almost none that were safe.
got harassed by the cops once because i was walking at night with a flashlight in that town. walking is so uncommon there that it’ll get the police called on you.
also, more town than city.
same kind of crazy line formed there when they got chick-fil-a and portillo’s. it’s in Wisconsin, so they got chick-fil-a late and portillo’s early in their respective spreads across the country.
Raising Cane’s did this when they opened their store by me. They sent out mailers for free meals and stuff on opening day, the lines stretched around the block and they had police handling traffic. It’s marketing fluff to make a ruckus in a new market.
Surprise surprise once people had to pay, I’ve never seen lines like this again there.