Dick’s Drive-In Is Finally Sending Its Burgers South to Kent

Dick’s Drive-In, the 63-year-old local chain known for its vintage design and near-constant mobs of diners buying cheap burgers and fries, will set up shop in Kent’s Midway Shopping Center late next year following an online poll to help determine the location. The expansion follows the rough plan set out by Jim Spady, president of Dick’s and son of founder and namesake Dick Spady, in an interview with Eater four years ago, when he said that the next restaurant would “either be the eastside or south Seattle-ish,” hopefully within five years.

In March of this year, Dick’s held three weeks of online voting to help determine its next location; the process was so popular it drew 100,000 voters on the first day and crashed the chain’s website, reports The Seattle Times. South King County won out, though Dick’s has only just now announced that it has zeroed in on Kent as the winning municipality.

Dick’s has five restaurants in Seattle: Wallingford, the oldest; Capitol Hill; Holman Road; Lake City; and Queen Anne. The forthcoming drive-in will be only the second Dick’s outside of Seattle; the other opened in Edmonds in 2011 after its own online vote. A Bellevue restaurant was unsuccessful, operating from 1967 to 1974, but Spady told Eater the company may eventually return to the Eastside. “Land is expensive there, but if we had a good opportunity, we'd certainly look at that,” he said.