A few weeks ago, a friend and I approached the Wendy’s drive-thru on the corner of Cambie and Broadway. It was late. There was no place else open, and we had the shameful hunger for fast food.

Unfortunately, there was a problem: we were riding bicycles.

The illuminated speaker did not respond to our attempts to place an order; we hollered and yelled but were met with silence.

What could possibly justify turning away customers based on their mode of transportation? After all, our money was the same and our love of fast food, indiscernible.

Discussions with restaurant representatives did little to clarify the situation. Denny Lynch, senior vice-president of communications at Wendy’s, told me it was a matter of safety and security. “What happens if someone drives into you when you are waiting in line?” he asked.

McDonald’s and Burger King representatives had similar explanations. It was a liability issue, they said, since bicycles are uninsured.

David Hay, a Vancouver bike lawyer for more than 20 years, dismisses this explanation. If a driver were to strike a cyclist, he explained, the driver’s insurance provider would have to cover it, not the restaurants.

And the bike ban isn’t universal. Walgreens allows bicycles through their drive-thru windows. So, too, do McDonald’s in Germany, who wrote to tell me that it is “irrelevant” whether a customer in the McDrive is a cyclist, pedestrian or Autofahrer.

So what’s the hang-up in North America?

Matthew Paterson, a political science professor at the University of Ottawa, has studied the cultural and political underpinnings of automobile dependency. He suggests the explanation has to do with the bureaucracy of the fast-food industry.

“A lot of the [fast food industry’s] logic is fundamentally about routine,” he told me. “The original business model of McDonald’s was to standardize absolutely everything. It has become routinized that there are a certain set of rules: this is who this restaurant is for, this is the type of the people we serve, this is the meal we give them.”

He pointed out that McDonald’s developed during the post-war period in the emerging sprawl of Southern California.

“The very function of a fast-food restaurant was to serve people in cars,” he said. “As soon as you go through on a bike you are signalling that you have not adapted yourself to [these rules]. You are doing something odd. It doesn’t fit; therefore, they want to get rid of you as quick as they can.”

Whether or not this makes rational sense––after all, Wendy’s can process a cyclist’s order in the same amount of time as a driver’s––is beside the point, argues Kenneth T. Jackson, Columbia history professor and author of “Crabgrass Frontier.”

“That’s the importance of history,” he said. “Once you start doing things one way it kind of assumes a logic all of its own.”

The unfortunate part, Jackson argues, is that failing to serve cyclists is doing nothing to help society evolve away from cars. “We’re not going to re-orient the way we live until people can bike to go get a fast-food hamburger in the middle of the night––not because they want exercise but because that is how we get around.”

If fast food restaurants are too archaic to cater to cyclists, Amanda Felt, owner of Portland’s Black Sheep Bakery, is only too happy to fill the niche.

Since January of this year, cyclists have been welcomed at the city’s first bike-thru window. There, they can order coffee, espresso, tea, chai, sandwiches and a variety of delicious vegan pastries.

They even have a running special: $6 for a 12-ounce coffee, a muffin and a tire patch kit. Handlebar-mounted coffee holsters are also available.

“I used to hear from people all the time how it was so hypocritical [of fast-food restaurants] that they’re turning away customers who they could be selling to,” she said.

And the response has been fanatical. “Someone said that for the two minutes you are [at the window], you are like a minor celebrity; everyone in the building is so excited to see people using it. I knew people would be excited to have it.”

Located in Southeast Portland, the bakery is a block from the heavily used Hawthorne bike-commuter route.

“The thing I don’t get is that this city is so tremendously bike friendly. I couldn’t figure out why this has never been done before.”