Forget fancy food menus. The must-have amenity for drive-ins? Jumper cables. In decades past, drive-in customers listened to audio on a clunky externally powered speaker box that was affixed to a car window.
Now, sound is transmitted via an FM channel, which means cars must leave their radios on. Picturehouse chief Bob Berney — whose new company arranged a dozen pop-up and drive-in promotional screenings this summer for Fatima — quickly learned that dead batteries are a common problem.
It's a phenomenon that's been happening for years, although it wasn't until the novel coronavirus pandemic that drive-ins became headline news.