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Comment by dawnerd | Hacker News Reader

People drink in their car all over the world, what makes it "very American"?

> A drive-through or drive-thru (a sensational spelling of the word through), is a type of take-out service provided by a business that allows customers to purchase products without leaving their cars. The format was pioneered in the United States in the 1930s by Jordan Martin,but has since spread to other countries.

> In 1981, Max Hamburgers opened Northern Europe's first drive-in in Piteå.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive-through

American infrastructure is built around cars, more so than many (/most?) other countries. Towns/cities in Europe are generally built to be walkable.

At least here in Norway it would be very unusual for a coffee cup to be left in the car and anyway many of those who do drink a lot of coffee on the go use a reusable cup bought from a petrol station that gives you a year of 'free' coffee. See https://www.circlek.no/koppen for instance.

That's pretty cool. How much is that? "Costa Coffee" (a UK chain) machines are in lots of petrol stations nowadays, but I'm not aware of any kind of subscription.

Pret a Manger has a coffee subscription program in the UK, at £20/month. Not quite the same model as petrol stations, but close.

For the standard 240 ml cup it costs 349 kr a year including the cup, if you reuse last year's cup it's 299 kr and they apply a sticker to the cup to say which year it applies to. Or you can buy a fancy vacuum cup at 499 kr a year. If you register for Circle K Extra and use more than a 1000 litre of fuel a year (800 litre if you pay with a Circle K Mastercard) then you get the standard cup deal free. 1 GBP = 12 kr at the moment. So the standard cup is a bit under 30 quid, 25 to renew. So if you use it even only once a week it pays.

Here in the UK it's quite unusual for a coffee shop to have parking facilities. Drinking takeaway coffee is practically always done by people who are walking somewhere.

It might be unusal for them to have dedicated parking facilities (though there are a good number of Starbucks and Costa drive thrus now) but outside of London and city centres there is almost always shared parking close by.

I'm in the UK too, and I've found there are separate coffee shops that are focused on pedestrians vs car users. The first are your typical shops on the high street (which yes you could park near to but that's not really the focus) while the second are in motorway services or in a retail park built around a car park (what Americans would call a "strip mall"). If you're a regular user of either one then it's quite easy to imagine the other doesn't exist but actually they're both very common.

It probably happens more in America than elsewhere in the world. Simply because Americans probably spend more of their lives inside a car than people from other countries.

I*m not convinced. Pretty much every gas station here in Norway has a convenience store that sells coffee - not really much different in that regard from the US (I'm from the US). Not as many fast food restaurants, though the gas station fare is better here than the US.

In France as well coffee is available in gas stations, highway rest areas, etc. But people usually drink their coffee before going back to their car, not while driving.

I'm in the UK, but was going to say the same thing. I agree with the GP - drinking while driving, or even just the idea of drive-through coffee, are very American things.

I don’t have stats to back me up but are they cup holders or drink holders? Because I think in many parts of the world people mainly put cans and bottles there, than paper cups.

No, they don't. Non-american cars don't even have the hole for the cup (that Ford ones for example have). So, not remotely common, at all.

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