Then came the legalities—since no one had done anything like this, there were no regulations on the books. The city of Lafayette sought to shut him down from the beginning. In one citation, the city said he violated the “open container” law prohibiting open drinks in vehicles. Amid some media fanfare, Ervin announced he had invented a sealed container: A piece of non-resealable freezer tape that covered the hole in the plastic lid where the straw went in. He unveiled the innovation to news outlets, and prevailed in court.
Drive-thru daiquiri shops attracted the attention of not just the local law enforcement, but also groups opposed to irresponsible drinking. This includes Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which was founded the same year Ervin came up with his idea. Perhaps surprisingly, even though Louisiana adopts a fairly laissez faire approach to alcohol, it’s not an outlier when it comes to drunk driving — 24 states have higher drunk driving fatality rates than Louisiana, including almost all of New England.
Ervin’s original drive-thru daiquiri shop closed in the late 1980s, a victim of the oil bust in an oil-dependent city, and the site is now a strip mall. But the concept—and legal precedents—have lived on. Dozens of drive-thru daiquiri stands are still found throughout the region, and Ervin, now a food technologist, still owns one in the New Orleans suburbs.
Bon Appétit spoke with him about how he built The Daiquiri Factory from the ground-up, and his memories of those early days touting the law and ultimately, building a lasting legacy.
It all started in college when I encountered a group of girls holding Styrofoam cups filled with frozen alcoholic drinks. They told me the drinks came from Wilmart, a liquor and convenience store on the outskirts of town. I thought these must have been made in a blender, but the girls said, no, that they came out of a machine. I drove down to see for myself. When I took my first sip, I was amazed—the ice crystals were incredibly smooth and silky, unlike anything from a regular blender.
I began thinking of ways to improve the experience. The walk-in service was inefficient—it was frustrating to get out of the car, go in, then stand behind customers searching for exact change or borrowing money from others. I thought selling the drinks out of a drive-thru window would speed things up and be more profitable.
I worried that a drive-thru would be illegal, so I went to city hall to find out. What I found was that no business was selling just frozen alcoholic drinks—drive-thru or otherwise. My store would be the first of its kind. I studied every relevant law, both state and city, but nothing I found suggested that a drive-thru alcoholic drink operation would be illegal.
Courtesy of David Ervin
Courtesy of David Ervin
My concept fell somewhere between a package liquor store and a bar, but it was neither. When I approached the clerk at city hall to ask about my plan, she couldn’t provide a clear answer—she just laughed and called the other clerks to come out and look at me as if I were a circus freak. To find out if selling drinks to motorists through a window was legal, I would have to just try it and see what happened. If I could survive one week without getting arrested, maybe that would serve as proof that my idea was legal.
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