Drive-through businesses: Other Businesses

Drive-through businesses

Drive-through businesses: Food and Gas

Founded in 1901, Walgreen’s introduced the concept of freestanding stores with drive-through pharmacy service in 1992. This was a significant development that made it more convenient for customers to drop off and pick up prescriptions. After 1994, most new Walgreen’s stores included this service. In 2008, Walgreen’s was the nation’s largest retail pharmacy chain, and 80 percent of its stores offered drive-through service. This innovation became an industry standard. In 2001, CVS offered drive-through service in twelve hundred of its forty-two hundred U.S. stores. In 2006, drugstore chain Rite Aid offered the service in 43 percent of its stores.

The drive-through concept revolutionized American banking. The first drive-through bank, the Exchange National Bank of Chicago, opened on November 12, 1946. Customers could deposit or withdraw money at drive-through teller, windows.

Richard Hollingshead opened the first drive-in movie theater on June 6, 1933, in Camden, New Jersey. After World War II, drive-ins, which provided a leisure activity the whole family could enjoy, reached their peak in popularity, with more than four thousand such theaters in the United States in 1958.With the invention of videocassette recorders in 1971, drive-in theaters started to fade in popularity.

By the twenty-first century, the drive-through concept permeated the American economy, in mom-and-pop operations as well as in national chains. Drive-through businesses included dry cleaners, car washes, liquor stores, coffee shops, casinos, and even a wedding chapel: In 1991, Charolette Richards created a drive-up window at her Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas, Nevada, to accommodate handicapped patrons. The novelty soon became popular, especially among film stars and celebrities.