New York’s Drive-Thru Convenience Store! Do You Remember Dairy Barn?
America runs on convenience! We enjoy curbside pick-up at the grocery store, drive-thru windows at our favorite fast food joints and sometimes we even have meals delivered right to our doorstep so we don't have to leave the house.
Long before most of these services were common place New York had a chain of drive-thru convenience stores called Dairy Barn. Today it appears that only 1 of the original Dairy Barns exists in the Empire State. Let's take a look.
Driving through Long Island in the 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's you couldn't miss a Dairy Barn. Each structure was painted barn red with 2 distinct canopied drive-thru sections and everyone loved the little red silo attached to each sore.
According to LongIslandRestaurants.com, Dairy Barn became Long Island's first drive-thru convenience store in 1961. At one time there were as many as 70 Dairy Barn locations! Here is a look at the last of the originals at 50 Wall Street in Huntington, NY.
Untapped New York reports that Dairy Barn was sold and the new owners re-branded the locations as "The Barn". When the pandemic hit the Barn's business spiked as much as 40% due to the convenience of their drive-thru shopping.
From 2019 to 2022 several Dairy Barn locations became Greek from Greece Express, or GFG Express. In 2023 many of those locations were put up for sale. Several of these properties have been converted back to Dairy Barn-like stores but not the real deal. Like the one at 50 Wall Street in Huntington, NY.
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