'Motormat' drive-in restaurant, Los Angeles, 1949

NO TIPPING

My plans to topple the Motormat by flipping it on its side have been foiled!!

That's not a demand. It's saying you can if you want but you don't need to because there is no server.
Still shitty that it's a perk but still.

Only in America lol.

- Primary difference being you sit in your car versus at a table, of course.
  That's a big difference! Literally, I mean: 10'x20' for a parking space vs. what, maybe 6'x6' for a 4-person table?
- It's not meant in a bad way. It's just the concept is pretty funny IMO, and it's crazy USA did this in 1949, when many countries, even countries that weren't poor, were still rationing after WW2. My father was a child back then, and only 2 people in the small town he lived in had cars, and this is Denmark, we were not a poor country.
- The primary difference is what it's all about. You can ignore similarities with other restaurants like there's food involved and such. The fact they are sitting in their cars is the point.

US in that time period is pretty wild! They have:

restaurants where you dine in your parked car
movie theaters where you watch movies in your parked car
camping grounds where you sleep in your parked car

What else do I miss? Was there any other popular activities done in parked cars?

I’m surprised there isn’t something like this being done now in the Bay Area as a “revolutionary, employee-free, AI-powered robotic dining adventure”. Of course the screen would still flip around to show:

20% 25% 30%

What the hell were they trying to do with those lines that are impossible to park between?

I think it's so you get centered as much as possible so you can reach the conveyor on the first try. When cars were more standardized in width. And so they don't waste space.

NO TIPPING

Cool but I wonder how they enforce that

The point is you don't have to tip a server not that they disallow tips. It's advertising it's cheaper.

We’ve been lazy pieces of shit longer than I’d realized.

full article with explanations and more pics--

https://www.vintag.es/2023/06/motormat.html

Damn, I'm almost certain I've had a dream about a place like that. Looks too weird to be real.

That's not going to need a lot of maintenance.

it's just simple conveyor belts in a region of mild weather... not a lot to go wrong, there
- It's clearly not simple conveyor belts. Look at the picture. There are big boxes the food goes into that have to be pushed out and then back. And then multiply that by the number of cars and you've got something that's going to add too much maintenance costs onto a low margin restaurant.