Deep in the heart of Texas… before there was McDonald’s…. before there was Sonic…. before there was In-N-Out… there were Pig Stands.
Do you remember? If not, you can read all about it here. Or, read on if you – and your coronary arteries – dare:
A Dallas entrepreneur named Jessie G. Kirby built the first Pig Stand along the Dallas-Fort Worth Highway in October 1921. It was a roadside barbecue restaurant unlike any other. Its patrons could drive up, eat and leave, all without budging from their automobiles. (“People with cars are so lazy,” Kirby explained, “they don’t want to get out of them.”) Kirby lured these car-attached customers with great fanfare and spectacle. When a customer pulled into the Pig Stand parking lot, teen-aged boys in white shirts and black bow ties jogged over to his car, hopped up onto the running board—sometimes before the driver had even pulled into a parking space—and took his order. (This daredevilry won the servers a nickname: carhops.)
Soon, the Pig Stand drive-ins replaced the carhops with attractive young girls on roller skates, but the basic formula was the same: good-looking young people, tasty food, speedy service and auto-based convenience.
That first Pig Stand was a hit with hungry drivers; it soon became a chain. (The slogan: “America’s Motor Lunch.”) Kirby and his partners made one of the first franchising arrangements in restaurant history. Pig Stands began cropping up everywhere. By 1934, there were more than 130 Pig Stands in nine states. (Most were in California and Florida.) Meanwhile, the chain kept innovating. Many people say that California’s Pig Stand No. 21 became the first drive through restaurant in the world in 1931. Food historians believe that Pig Stand cooks invented deep-fried onion rings, chicken-fried steak sandwiches and a regional specialty known as Texas Toast.
(O.M.G: So much nutritional goodness!)
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Pig Stand Restaurant #41 on Calder Ave. in Beaumont, Texas – demolished in 2012 to make way for a convenience store.
But wartime gasoline and food rationing hit the Pig Stands hard. After the war they struggled to compete with newer, flashier drive-ins. By the end of the 1950s, all of the franchises outside of Texas had closed. By 2005, even the Texas Pig Stands were struggling to survive—only six remained in the whole state. The next year they had all disappeared.
On This Day in History, November 14, 2006, state officials closed the last two of Texas’ famed Pig Stand restaurants, the only remaining pieces of the nation’s first drive-in restaurant empire. The restaurants’ owners were bankrupt. They owed the Texas comptroller more than $200,000 in unpaid sales taxes.
In 2007, state bankruptcy trustees found a way for one Pig Stand, in San Antonio, to reopen. It will probably never be as popular as it once was. Customers now have to get out of their cars and go inside to eat. Yet the restaurant remains a sentimental favorite of many Texans.
