The exterior of an In-N-Out restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.
The exterior of an In-N-Out restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.GDMatt66/Getty Images
A California city is moving to enact a permanent ban on new drive-thru restaurants, spurred on by a group of vocal locals who have organized to oppose a potential new In-N-Out location.
While many other cities (and states) openly court the privately owned, Southern California-founded burger chain in hopes of attracting its business, Culver City isn’t swayed by the scent of animal-style fries and mustard-grilled Double-Doubles. The stand-alone city within Los Angeles County voted on Monday to extend a recently enacted 45-day moratorium on any new drive-thrus for another 10.5 months, giving city officials a long enough runway to draft permanent legislation that will keep drive-thrus out of the city for good.
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That legislation, now in the works, will still need to be put through a planning commission hearing and then finalized, approved and enacted before the end of the current moratorium — but for now, it seems as though Culver City’s no-drive-thru plan is only a matter of time.
The call to change Culver City’s drive-thru laws started when a group of area residents banded together to oppose a potential new In-N-Out location at the Studio Village Shopping Center at the corner of Sepulveda Boulevard and Sawtelle Boulevard. The burger chain has been holding community meetings about the proposed site since early February, showing renderings for a familiar red-and-white, nearly 4,000-square-foot restaurant with a 61-space parking lot and a drive-thru capable of holding 26 cars at a time. Locals showed up to that February meeting in droves, offering mostly disapproval at the notion of a busy drive-thru in their part of town.
No official permits or approvals have been obtained by the company to begin construction.
Bubba Fish, Culver City’s vice mayor and the primary backer of the ban, told SFGATE that he’s not against In-N-Out itself. Rather, he’s got beef with drive-thrus in dense urban and suburban residential areas overall.
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Animal-style fries, a grilled cheese and a Double-Double at In-N-Out Burger at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco on April 25, 2023.
Animal-style fries, a grilled cheese and a Double-Double at In-N-Out Burger at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco on April 25, 2023.Lance Yamamoto/SFGATE
“I heard from so many residents that they were really, deeply concerned about this In-N-Out; the impacts on traffic, but also air quality from the idling cars,” Fish said. “The more I looked into it, I saw that there were other health impacts. Neighborhoods around these fast food drive-thrus experience higher rates of heart disease and diabetes, heart failure [and] other illnesses.”
A Change.org petition opposing the potential In-N-Out in Culver City currently has over 940 signatures and cites the same environmental and traffic concerns that Fish highlights. SFGATE reached out to In-N-Out to ask about these potential concerns and Culver City’s push for a long-term drive-thru ban, but the company did not respond before publication.
“We have a lot of initiatives around safe streets right now, as a community,” Fish added, saying he believes putting more cars onto Culver City’s streets is against the city’s public interest.
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“There’s really no place in Culver City where I think a drive-thru is appropriate,” Fish says. “This isn’t anything against those establishments, by the way, because, you know, I love a burger and fries just as much as the next person.” Fish says he believes drive-thrus should be confined mostly to freeway and highway-adjacent areas away from dense population centers.
In-N-Out does have some locations without a vehicle drive-thru lane, including a giant new rooftop outpost right on the Las Vegas Strip and another at San Francisco’s historic Fisherman’s Wharf. But the company, founded in 1948 in Baldwin Park, has historically been loathe to open new restaurants without them. For some customers, the drive-thru locations are a sign of both convenience and accessibility; for others, they’re considered a headache, often impeding street traffic with idling cars and reducing walkability within a neighborhood.
The In-N-Out at Anchor’s Landing in Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco on May 18, 2026.
The In-N-Out at Anchor’s Landing in Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco on May 18, 2026.Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE
The residents of Culver City, population nearly 40,000, do have one existing In-N-Out nearby, farther east along busy Venice Boulevard in LA, and that location has a busy drive-thru. The city has not permitted a new drive-thru restaurant since 1997.
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Other California cities have previously used a variety of local control measures to effectively ban new drive-thru restaurants, including Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and, in LA County, Santa Monica.
Overall, Fish says he believes “public health is the top of our priority list as leaders” for the city. “Cities are at an inflection point right now, where we’re realizing traffic is getting worse and worse every year,” he said, “and the only way out of it is making our streets more comfortable and safe for people to get around in other ways. And drive-thrus are really the antithesis of that.”
“Drive-thrus are great if you’re a multinational fast food chain,” Fish added. “They’re not so great if you’re a person that has to live next to one.”
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Would you want drive-thru restaurants banned in your town?
Steven
North Hollywood, CA
07/14/26
0
I'm not opposed to drive-thrus per se, but some restaurants - particularly In-N-Out - has poor planning for how the drive-thru is operated. Many locations have cars lined around the street, blocking local businesses and traffic (check out Lankershim Blvd location near Burbank Blvd). I call them In-N-Wait because it takes 30-45 minutes sitting in a line to get food, causing issues in the area it is located.