Kwik Way Drive-In - Oakland

Kwik Way before. photo CC BY 2.0 by Hitchster

As of 2022, the former Kwik Way is now a vegan soul food restuarant, Vegan Mob. Apparently the building has been saved from development because of its historical importance

7/23/2016 UPDATE: Plans are moving forward to build a mix-used, 50-unit building on the site. ¹

1/13/15 UPDATE: As of some time in January, 2015, there is a Merritt Bakery offshoot housed here selling baked goods.

08/2014 UPDATE: CLOSED (again). The operator of the Kwikway abruptly packed up and left at the end of July 2014, apparently without notifying his landlord. The owner of the property reportedly hopes to find a temporary restaurant tenant for the space, but may eventually tear down the distinctive building to build a retail and housing complex on the site. [Source] Word on the street is that it may become condos. [Source]

Kwik Way Drive-In was a local Oakland burger-joint chain through the 1970s. The main restaurant was located between Grand Avenue and Lakeshore Avenue on Lake Park, a few doors down from the Grand Lake Theater. (Another, at 22nd and Telegraph, is now a Giant Burger.)

During the late 1950s – early 1960s, long before McDonald's homogenized the burger business, Kwik Way served delicious, inexpensive burgers, fries, huge apple pie slices and malted milk shakes made with real ice cream that schoolchildren, teens on dates and families could afford. Grand Lake Theater moviegoers would carefully fill their coat pockets and purses with Kwik Way food to sneak into the theater for movie meals.

Don’t think it was health food, however. By the 1970s, prices remained low, but ~~victims~~ patrons could expect limp, grease-drenched fries, paper-thin burgers smothered in a nauseatingly zesty, heartburn-inducing pinkish-orange secret sauce (“Out of secret sauce? Ehh, put some more mayonnaise out in the sun”— Herschel Krustofsky), and shakes made of only the finest chemicals Dow, American Carbide or Monsanto could synthesize. Stuff was still crazy delicious though; we relished every bite, and at lunch would invariably swarm any kid whose parents forgot to make a proper lunch and brought them Kwik Way instead.

Slowly but surely, their food continued to worsen. As healthy eating gained awareness, Kwik Way faded away, became run down and finally closed in 2007. Neighbors complained about the "blight."

Newfangled Kwik Way. photo CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 by Jamie ManleyAn “all new” Kwik Way reopened in 2011 under the ownership of Oakland restaurateur Gary Rizzo, serving more modern (and, it must be noted, completely unrelated) diner fare.