The amazing thing about theme parks is that they’re often packed with detail and history
that can go completely unnoticed by guests.
Take food for instance.
Like any other park, Universal offers all sorts of dining options.
One of them, appearing frozen in time, is a place called Mel’s Drive-In.
Many guests might eat there without giving it a second thought.
To them, it’s just a quintessential 1950’s era diner where they can grab a burger before
heading back out to the rides.
But like many aspects of Universal Studios, Mel’s Drive-In is not just a random location.
It is both a piece of cinematic history as well as a piece of real history.
Drive-In restaurants, as an idea, dates all the way back to the early 1920’s.
In September of 1921, in Dallas, Texas, an entrepreneur by the name of Jesse Kirby opened
a barbecue drive-in called The Pig Stand.
The idea was that it combined two things that people loved: good food and their new fancy cars,
The concept was popular with diners.
It was different and exciting.
That novelty allowed the chain to grow throughout Texas in the 1930’s.
As with many industries, it was slowed down in the 1940’s by World War II.
Troops were overseas in Europe and resources grew scarce in order to supply the war effort.
However like many industries, it saw a comeback right after the war, in part due to the post-war
American economic and manufacturing boom.
In fact, those post war conditions set up a strong comeback for the drive-in.
Cars were growing cheaper to produce and purchase, suburbs were making them more of a necessity,
and the baby boom was creating a whole new generation who would eventually embrace them
and build a culture around them.
Drive-In’s eventually made their way to southern California and mostly stuck to that
southwestern region.
The climate of the area made drive-ins perfect year-round business.
As the story goes, during a trip down to LA, a man by the name of David “Mel” Weiss
was introduced to the idea of the drive-in restaurant concept.
Weiss loved the idea so much that he wanted to take it back home with him.
So he did.
Along with his business partner and co-founder, Harold Dobbs, Mel opened the very first Mel’s
Drive-In on Van Ness Ave in San Francisco on December 23rd, 1947.
It was not only the first Mel’s in San Francisco, but it was the city's first drive-in as well.
The restaurant had indoor seating for 75, and room on the lot for up to 110 cars.
Weiss and Dobbs were betting big that San Francisco would love the drive-in idea as
much as Mel did.
As it turns out, it was a good bet to make.
Mel’s Drive-In was a hit.
The first month’s sales at the location were allegedly so good that it covered their
startup costs, which is almost unheard of for a restaurant.
San Franciscans flocked to the new burger spot to eat and socialize.
With the business booming, Mel eventually began to expand to other locations in the
San Francisco area.
Mel’s son, Steven, even began to work at the company’s third location as a soda jerk
during high school.
Business was great for Mel.
By the mid 1950’s the company was pulling in a reported $4 million a year and was serving
up 20,000 burgers a day across all of it’s locations.
The success led to other business ventures.
Weiss and Dobbs would introduce a new restaurant chain in the area in the late ‘50’s called Red Roof.
A new series of bowling alleys called Mel’s Bowl would spring up, and in the mid-60’s
Mel would go halfsies on a club called Whiskey-A-Go-Go.
All the while, Mel’s Drive-In continued to expand to more locations.
The restaurant even had a small part in the 1967 film, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,
which starred Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier, and Katharine Hepburn.
However as the 60’s became the 70’s, the popularity of drive-in restaurants began to
wane, and for a number of reasons.
The biggest among them was the explosive growth of the fast food industry.
For as nice of an experience as the drive-in was, people were turning towards the likes
of McDonalds and Burger King.
From a business perspective it also made sense that they were growing more common.
While drive-ins at the time typically operated with an average profit rate of 6%-12%, fast
food was operating at a profit rate of 10%-20%.
Better profits meant more fast food, and more fast food meant an eventual shift in the public’s
mind when it came to dining out, which only perpetuated the cycle.
Beyond that, the same car culture that inspired drive-ins was leveling off.
Cars were obviously as important as ever in America, but they had settled in as a means
of getting around rather than being the actual activity.
There just wasn’t as much novelty in driving for the sake of driving anymore, and so eating
in your car lost its luster.
In March of 1972, with the writing on the wall and an offer that was supposedly too
good to pass up, Mel sold the chain’s 11 locations, along with the two Red Roof’s,
to a cafeteria chain called Fosters West.
It was not too long after that a 28-year-old George Lucas was looking for a classic drive-in
restaurant to use as a location for his upcoming film, American Graffiti.
The film was set in his hometown of Modesto California, and it was a love letter to the
age of cruising and car culture that he had grown up with in the late 50’s and early '60's.
John: The whole strip is shrinking.
Ah, you know, I remember about five years ago, take you a couple of hours and a tank
full of gas just to make one circuit.
It was really somethin.'
A key part of that culture was the drive-in, and that was largely thanks to Mel’s.
The movie called for a fictional drive-in restaurant by the name of Burger City, but
when it came time to film, the “Mel’s” sign was left up.
With that decision Mel’s Drive-In was immortalized in the world film, because Graffiti was a hit.
With a production budget of only $775,000, the film earned a reported $55 million at
the box office, making it the third highest grossing film of 1973.
It gave Lucas the funds and the clout to focus on his next film project, a sci-fi space opera.
Though despite the big-screen fame that Mel’s had earned that summer, it’s new owner,
Foster’s West, wasn’t doing so well.
In January of 1976, the IRS closed one of Foster’s cafeterias in San Francisco for
their nonpayment of taxes.
Fosters, at least outwardly, wasn’t too worried about the situation.
They assured the public that it “just involved a small debt of a few thousand dollars”,
that it would be paid quickly, and that the location would be open again the very next day.
The IRS told a somewhat different story, citing that the lien against the restaurant was due
to an unpaid tax bill that amounted to over $153,000.
Instead of quickly reopening, the IRS would go on to close four more locations.
The very next month, with just two days warning, Fosters West announced that they were closing
their 17 locations, including Mel’s Drive-Ins.
In total 350 employees lost their jobs over Foster’s “small” debt of a few thousand
dollars.
It seemed like the era of Mel’s Drive-In had come to a close.
Yet the spirit of Mel’s lived on in other ways.
Mel’s had popularized that sort-of Normal Rockwell era drive-in diner.
It helped inspire the settings of shows like Alice, which was set in a roadside diner called
Mel’s Diner, and was also said to be inspiration for Arnold’s Drive-In on the ABC show, Happy Days.
And while the drive-in concept itself had faded, these shows, in turn, inspired the
creation of other diners across the country that aimed to capture that same spirit.
Mel’s created this cultural ripple effect that had a long lasting impact even after
it was gone, and perhaps it was that same ripple that bounced back and helped give Mel’s
a second chance.
A decade later, in the late 1980’s Mel’s son Steven, now grown and a businessman himself,
felt a sense of nostalgia for the days of his father’s restaurants.
Foster's West was no longer in the picture, and so he revived Mel’s Drive-In.
Beyond just bringing back Mel’s, he even managed to secure some of the lots that were
once home to original locations that his father owned.
In 1986 he opened an old location on Lombard Street, and the following year he opened the
Geary Blvd location that was once the home to his after-school job.
Interestingly enough Mel himself, after a reported conflict of interest, was taking
his own trip down memory lane and had started his own chain of restaurants in the region
called Original Mel’s.
Now this is about when Universal Studios began to reach out to Steven to secure the rights
to use the “Mel’s” name in their parks.
Universal Studios Hollywood was in the midst of a slow transformation into a full-blown
theme park, and Universal Studios Florida was just a few years away.
Theme parks need themed places to eat, and Mel’s had become this iconic drive-in featured
in a Universal film that had done extremely well.
It was a perfect match.
For Weiss, it was an opportunity to help promote his chain of restaurants.
Beyond the notoriety, he was looking to use on-set photos that Universal owned of the
famous American Graffiti shoot at his locations . It was a core part of Mel’s story and
something he wanted to display proudly in his restaurants.
So the two traded.
Universal gained a perfect restaurant tie-in that clicked with one of their films, and
Mel’s got free publicity and the ability to tell a part of their history in all of
their locations.
With the deal in place, Mel’s Diner opened in Universal Studios Hollywood, and along
with the opening of Universal Studios Florida, guests were treated to Mel’s Drive-In.
It even features some of the cars seen in American Graffiti parked out front.
The theme park representation would eventually travel overseas to Universal Studios Japan
in 2001, and then to Universal Studios Singapore a decade after that.
Today Mel’s Drive-In is still around, and co-ownership has been extended to the third
generation of the Weiss family, with Mel’s grandson, Colton.
They have eight locations in total, with four in LA and four in San Francisco.
And interestingly, world events have inspired some of those ripples to once again bounce
back to the center of the Drive-In.
As a response to the COVID pandemic, Mel’s has revived the drive-in model at two of their
San Francisco locations.
Granted, it’s for very different reasons than the original drive-ins of the 1940’s,
but today customers can pull up to a Mel’s and enjoy a meal in their car just like they could
over 70 years ago.
According to Weiss, the experience is so well received that the idea might stick around
in the long run.
History is a funny thing.
When Mel decided to open his first drive-in back in 1947 he probably just wanted to create
a good restaurant.
After all, that’s what most restaurant owners want to do.
I think it’s safe to say he probably wasn’t expecting for that restaurant to be forever
immortalized in the world of film, and he definitely wasn’t expecting to end up in
four theme parks in three countries around the globe.
But as is often the case when you cause a ripple effect, you usually don’t know how
large it’s going to be.