Payment is made up front in cash, credit card or voucher form.

A car pulls into a drive-through (or for the pedants, drive-thru,) and selects a meal from a menu, either from a conventional fuzzy sounding operator or a computer based interface. Hell, you could even have a site available via WAP phones to order in advance.

Cars are then told to line up their car with a marking on the road, the rear, driver/passenger side window must be wound down. A net should be placed just on the inside of the open window.

The customers are then told to accelerate at a constant speed through to the firing range.

Perhaps with the aid of advanced AI technology programmed to recognise car windows or some sort of apparatus that the user is instructed to affix to the top of their open window, a cannon lines up, and fires the food at the car. The net catches the food and everyone is happy.
-- sdm, Oct 15 2001

This could be installed on motorways (interstates) so people don't even have to get out of a traffic jam (gridlock) in order to get some food.
-- Aristotle, Oct 15 2001


sdm: You probably wouldn't want to be accelerating at a constant rate, but instead driving at a constantish low speed. It would make the aiming easier.

I think that you could do better than a net, though. The food might bounce straight out again. If you're not careful with the implementation, the food could also turn out to be either (a) rather crumpled; or (b) all over the passenger window.

I also hope that this might stop people asking some variation on the theme of "Do you want fries with that?" ... Either that, or they web interface will do what Amazon.com does and say "most people who ordered what you did also bought fries and coke".
-- cp, Oct 15 2001


cp, //If you're not careful ... the food could also turn out ... rather crumpled// I still don't see how this differs from the average trip to McDonalds. <insert: McDonalds is shit rant>
-- sdm, Oct 15 2001


Point taken. However, unless McDonalds' standards have been dropping even lower than normal, the food tends not to be splattered all over the windscreen, car door or wall due to any number of minor faults in the device.
-- cp, Oct 15 2001


Why not have the ordering microphone thing at a central location, and then a couple of blocks away at each set of traffic lights, a collection point. You'd go "Two gristleburgers and an filet-o-piss, and I'm heading North", and head off. This may be stupid, but it's no stupider than going to MacDonalds. Either that, or phone ahead.
-- pottedstu, Oct 15 2001


Ha, phone ahead indeed. I used to have a friend who was an MC - he had the word power to prove it. We spent some Saturdays watching this guy as he called different McDonalds', KFCs, and such, and tried to scam free food.

It was a lot more fun than prank calling, plus, if we were good at it, we would get free food. Once we even got a couple of pizzas delivered.
-- sdm, Oct 15 2001


A rapper. He bust dem rhymes! Y'all.
-- sdm, Oct 15 2001


One of those cornucopia thingys for the image of a Big Mac hurtling at 240 mph in through the rear window of a vehicle doing 65 mph.

McDonald's burger cannon operator "Launsssch one, launsssch two, launsssch drinkshh, eight shec'nshh to impacsshht, shicsh, fifve, four, shthree, two, one. Good hit! Good hit! Good hit! Can we try a shupplementary on the drinksshh?"

Perhaps you could use a laser guidance system like the military do on operator-guided gravity weapons?
-- A Farrago Of Calumnies, Oct 15 2001


// Perhaps you could use a laser guidance system like the military do on operator-guided gravity weapons? //

I can see it now: a kids on a moped chasing after your car and reflecting a laser off your rear window to guide your dinner home. What about re-usable homing missiles? You get a discount if you bring one back at the same time as you order.

AFOC: Apologies if you're joking, but that cornucopia thing is a croissant. I know it takes some people a while to work it out.
-- pottedstu, Oct 15 2001


Oops.

I just assumed this would involve ringing ahead, a transponder on the car (individual IFF signals for each vehicle) and a fixed point which you drive past. As you do so some kid with a killer joystick technique paints your car with the laser and ZOT!, there's a 'burger embedded in the head of your rear seat passenger*.

* Mental note: Ensure mother-in-law is in rear seat of car when next I order driveby 'burgers.
-- A Farrago Of Calumnies, Oct 15 2001


Forget the net. Just face the open window and open your mouth.
-- beauxeault, Oct 15 2001


How do you handle the drinks? Just fire the liquid into a bucket on the roof?
-- Cedar Park, Sep 18 2003


virtual croissant to A Farrago Of Calumnies for the possible alternative title "drive-by burgers"
-- yamahito, Sep 18 2003


Launched by Tacobel's Canon?
-- RayfordSteele, Jul 17 2004


Great opportunity for toll booths on highways. Whilst the driver pays the road toll, food is delivered.

In the classical way, the driver hits a button on the box while the vehicle is halted to pay and a standard order of burger and fries/chips is fired in through the passenger window,

With wireless payment, there are two lanes: 'telepass' and 'telepass with burger', no need to phone ahead anymore. As the idea grows in popularity, more lanes could be provided to offer different menu items. The huge roofs of toll plazas could be used to provide solar power for the reheating
-- OldBoltonian, Nov 02 2006



random, halfbakery