In my opinion, this should be illegal or businesses fined. Their drive thru leaks onto public infrastructure (the road) reducing its throughput and potentially creating a dangerous situation.
If the shittiness of Tom Hortons coffee isn't going to stop people using the drive-through, I don't know what legislation is going to do. /s
Things I think have a legitimate use case to retain drive-throughs: Car-washes, Oil changes, Tire changes, gas stations. Basically anything where the car is what is being worked on.
Yes, it should be illegal. This happens with all the cult-y fast foods places out here. In N Out, Whataburger, Hate Chicken (aka Chick fil A), Dutch Bros, etc.
Parking, getting out, and going inside will easily save you 50%+ wait time.
Weren't parking minimums supposed to prevent this? :-D
Then again, the worse the traffic jams the more people may consider alternatives.
If anyone's going to get a fine there it would really be the individuals. While the business is creating the demand, there isn't really any process they could put in place to stop people lining out onto the road.
Also, if we were going to forbid it, what would be the substantive difference with forbidding just parking on the public road? Which, yeah, that's definitely a conversation we should have and a direction we should move towards—it'd probably have a greater effect anyway. But it's not clear that there's really a great mechanism for specifically banning queueing.
What really annoys me is that it's pretty obvious that places will prioritise the drive-through over in-store customers. You can go in and watch car after car get served at the window while you wait for your meal.
The drive thru is perfect for the fast food owner. Most of the time they dont have to worry about guests using tables, using the washrooms, dirtying the floors etc. It processes the customer and gets them off their property faster.
The USA isn't the only country in the world so you take care of your shit in your own country and seeing the number of omnibus bills that pass Congress, I'm sure it could very easily pass without anyone noticing, just like most stupid laws do in your country.
They actually reworked a parking lot here a couple times to extend their lanes so it didn't fuck anything up. Probably depends on city and location, but they can't really control assholes that are willing to fuck you for some tendies.
In WA they've had to close one because morons would back up onto the street, down an offramp, and onto the freaking interstate. For a chicken sandwich.
Of course it's in a non-walkable spot, across the interstate from all of the businesses and offices so everyone drives there