According to this (Error | Sonic), there are Sonic’s in 46 states, but as the numbers show, the majority of them are located in the Southern part of the US.
I have fond memories of A&W Root Beer in a glass with a couple of cheese dogs. Not that many left anymore.
I remember a drive-in that I think had roller-skated girls at the corner of Pico and Sepulveda (cue Doctor Demento) when I was small. We went there with my grandmother, but she had a stroke when I was five and couldn’t drive after that, so this is a loooooooooong time ago. I always loved it. But I think it was more the excitement of the “waitresses” and the tray on the car window. Burgers, shakes, fries, the usual.
The small town in Southeastern Michigan where I grew up had two drive-ins, one on either end of town. Dog 'n Suds (arf and barf) and the Little Skipper (the little stripper). IIRC both served foot long hot dogs, and root beer in big glass mugs. Basically A&W knock-offs. The appeal was mainly as high school hang outs, as all of the servers were our sisters and girlfriends and cousins. They both shut down during the winter months. No skating involved.
The food was better than what you get today in chain fast food places because it wasn’t the end result of decades of mass production and time and cost efficiency models. Instead it was regular restaurant supply cooked at the time of order.
And, it’s only been in the past ten years or so that Sonic finally expanded into colder-weather markets, like the Midwest. For a long time, people around here complained, “how come I see Sonic ads all the time, when there aren’t any around here?” (Answer: Sonic bought ads on cable channels, effectively giving them a national ad buy.)
I was confused. Their tag line is “Sonic, America’s drive-in”
I thought forsure they were everywhere.
Once again taken in by the power of the Ad professional.
Sonic is fucking nasty. Sorry, Beck.
I never got an A&W root beer in a glass mug, no way they’d do that anymore.
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How dare you, sir!
Longer than that. They’ve been in Colorado Springs for a good 20 years, if not longer.
Far longer than that in the midwest. They’ve been here longer than I have, and I’m just a few months away from 60.
Depends on your definition of the “Midwest,” I suppose. It’s been a gradual move eastward and northward for them; they’ve only been in the Chicago area for about a decade.
We frequented one in or around Fullerton, CA in the late ‘60s when I was a kid. I used to watch the (all young and all female) car hops through the window as we ate indoors. I was fascinated by the change makers they wore on their belts. The food was on par with Bob’s Big Boy. I assume the plates, glasses and cutlery was the same legit stuff we used indoors but I’m not certain. I kinda remember roller skates but that might be a detail I picked up from Happy Days.
Hey, I actually love Sonic. Just because of the ham breakfast burrito at any time of day.
I can still get an A&W root beer in a mug here in Canada. But the Canadian A&Ws and the US A&Ws split off from each other some years ago, so that may explain it.
I’ve still got an A&W Root Bear stuffed toy somewhere.
They still exist! I’ve been to two of these in the past few years, both in the Midwest: one in Ohio, while going from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati, where I randomly pulled into a “Swensons” Drive-Thru after reading/hearing about it as one of the great fast food burgers in the US (didn’t even realize it’d be a drive-thru until I got there, as I was on a motorcycle!). And the other, a hot dog place in Chicago called “Superdawg”, when I was there for a long weekend and wanted to hit up Chicago style pizza and hot dog places on some kind of Top Ten list I found.
There is an A&W drive-in in Middlebury, VT, which still has car hops on skates - in-line nowadays, rather than the older style skate.
I never saw a Sonic until a few years ago, when they put one in one Route 1 north of Boston.
I tried it, and was severely unimpressed.
Don’t recall seeing any when I lived in New Jersey, New York, or Utah, either.Calling themselves “America’s Drive In” is like the Bolsheviks calling themselves that (it means “majority”) when they were actually the minority party. It helped that their opponents idiotically called themselves the Mensheviks (“minority”). Within a couple of years, they were.
I just used the carhop service at an A&W this past summer and got a nice big frosty glass mug of root beer. A&W is still going pretty strong in WI.
I can’t see the local place doing it. It’s a rundown shack and there’d be broken glass all over that parking lot. They don’t have window trays or anything like that either, they probably never get those mugs back. They do have some picnic tables you can eat at, maybe they’d give you a glass if you sat down. I hear the Sonic is cutting into their business. They’ll close soon for winter if they haven’t already, and nobody is all that confident they’ll open in the spring.
Oh sure, I imagine at any A&W if a rowdy/sketchy group drives up the carhop might opt for a regular fountain cup instead of the glass mug. And might do away with them entirely if broken/stolen mugs are a problem.