Fears of snarled traffic were an exaggeration, after all.
In-N-Out opened its South Salt Lake location on Thursday to relatively little fanfare, at least by wildly popular drive-thru chain standards.
The new burger joint saw steady traffic throughout the afternoon, while its double-stacked drive-thru lanes — snaking across the former site of the Mad Greek near South Salt Lake’s new “downtown” — handled traffic from people looking to grab some food on the opening day of the chain’s newest location.
The day one response didn’t live up to the madness that ensued across the street when Jack in the Box opened its first location in June 2023, when people sat for hours in a queue that stretched down State Street and into the parking lot.
That’s the type of response that has been seen when In-N-Out enters a new market and people sit in their cars for hours to eat.
The In-N-Out originally was slated to be built on the site that eventually became the Jack in the Box, across the street in Salt Lake City’s Ballpark neighborhood. But city regulations blocked that from happening, and developers moved across the street to South Salt Lake, which has been aggressively adding suburban retail outlets in the immediate area.
The In-N-Out location was the latest drive-thru addition to an area South Salt Lake once saw as its key to building a thriving urban downtown.
It has also seen the construction of a drive-thru Chipotle and a drive-thru Raising Cane’s near the sprawling parking lot of its anchor tenant WinCo.
Part of the relative calm may have come from a lack of PR hype before the location’s opening. There was no readily available information about the opening on the company’s website or elsewhere online until the morning of the opening.
It also could be that — unlike Jack in the Box — there are other options to eat at In-N-Out a short bike or bus ride down the road. There are 13 other locations in Utah.
Either way, the location helped to further cement 2100 South west of State Street into a car-dominated landscape well into the future.
0 Comments