Dick's Drive-In

In 1954, three men by the names of Dick Spady, H. Warren Ghormley and Dr. B.O.A. Thomas started the whole thing on N.E. 45th Street in Seattle's Wallingford neighborhood [1]. Raymond Peck, an architect of note around Seattle, drew the original building, and nearly every later one followed that drawing, Queen Anne being the exception [1]. A second site came along in 1955 on Capitol Hill, then Crown Hill in 1960, Lake City in 1963 [1]. Bellevue followed in 1965, the first one placed outside Seattle, and it shut down in 1974 once a Herfy's with indoor seating turned up across the street [1]. Queen Anne opened that same year [1]. Ownership narrowed to the Spady family, which then let the public vote on where to go next; the sixth site in Edmonds opened in 2011, and the Kent one arrived in 2018 after more than 177,000 votes [1]. Federal Way opened in 2023, the ninth location [2] [1]. The menu has stayed simple and largely unchanged through all of it [1].