Last day: Dick’s Drive-In offers 19-cent burger deal to celebrate another year in business

This week, Dick’s Drive-In is celebrating the chain’s 71st anniversary with 19-cent hamburgers and cheeseburgers.

On Thursday, the locations in Edmonds, Kent and on Holman Road in Seattle will sell the 19-cent burgers.

Three drive-ins per day between Tuesday and Thursday featured the anniversary deal. On Tuesday, the locations in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood, on Broadway and in the Lake City neighborhood housed the special.

On Wednesday, the restaurants in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood, Bellevue’s Crossroads and Federal Way hosted the deal.

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Dick’s sets the rules to get 19-cent burgers

The chain notes on its website one burger will be sold per customer. So, if a family of five shows up at the window, each family member can get a burger for 19 cents. The site also specifies that “a single customer will not be able to receive two 19-cent burgers if (a) friend is waiting in the car.” Dick’s explains that it has set those limits to “ensure there will be enough burgers for everyone to be able to celebrate our 71st anniversary with us.”

Dick’s also states online the special burger deal will not be available on DoorDash and, going further, “DoorDash for each location will be turned off on that location’s (19 Cent Day) — to ease confusion.”

The chain also suggests customers make sure they go to the right location if they expect to take advantage of the burger deal as it will only be available at the dates and locations listed in this story and on its website.

10th Dick’s Drive-In will open in Everett in 2025

As The Daily Herald in Everett explained last spring, Dick’s Drive-In announced in September 2023 it had plans for a new location in Everett near the corner of Airport Road and Evergreen Way.

Located at 1629 Center Road, the property used to be a restaurant called Corazon Restaurante Mexicano & Cantina. It is near the Home Depot in that area.

Dick’s spokesperson Lena Duckworth told the Herald in an email last year, the new Everett location will be serving customers by summer 2025, “if all goes well.” The Dick’s Drive-In website states that the restaurant will open this summer.

Duckworth added that a new structure will be built at the Center Road address.

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A quick look at the history of Dick’s Drive-In

As Dick’s Drive-In explained in an earlier news release sent to KIRO Newsradio, the original founders, Dick Spady, Warren Ghormley and Dr. B.O.A. “Thom” Thomas, opened the first restaurant in Wallingford on NE 45th Street on Jan. 28, 1954.

When the eatery opened, they sold hamburgers for 19 cents in “Seattle’s first quick-service hamburger restaurant.”

“The local price for hamburgers at the time was 35 cents,” Jasmine Donovan, president of Dick’s and granddaughter of Dick Spady, said in the statement. “Not many people believed that selling burgers for 19 cents, especially with a commitment to quality ingredients, could succeed. But for our customers it was love at first bite and here we are 70 years later.”

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During an appearance on “The John Curley Show” Tuesday, KIRO Newsradio Resident Historian Feliks Banel reported live from the scene at the first Dick’s Drive-in in Wallingford. He brought “fries, ketchup and context” to the conversation, noting Dick Spady jumped on a trend seen elsewhere when he opened Dick’s.

“The 19-cent burger chain came out of California. It was a trend and a fad in the late 1940s,” Banel said while at the Wallingford location. “Dick Spady saw that and opened this restaurant here at this location and then built a big chain all around it. But it was the rise of American car culture right after World War II. We were also in a recession in early 1954. Eisenhower had been in office for about a year. The Korean War had wrapped up and there sort of a post-war recession …”

Head here or tap on the player below to listen to the entire segment live from the first Dick’s Drive-In in Seattle.

Editors’ note: This story originally was published on Tuesday, Jan. 28. It has been updated and republished since then.

Steve Coogan is the lead editor at MyNorthwest. You can read more of his stories here. Follow Steve on X, formerly known as Twitter, here and email him here.