From a Small Shop in Portland to Over 50,000 Drive-thru Coffee Stores Across America

When we think of drive-thru coffee today, we picture the familiar morning ritual: a quick pull-up to a window, a friendly barista handing over a steaming cup, and the satisfying first sip before merging back into traffic. But rewind to 1990, and the concept barely existed. Coffee was still something you walked inside to get, rain or shine, convenient or not. That is, until Jim and Patty Roberts decided it didn’t have to be that way.

Jim grew up in Oregon, eventually attending the University of Oregon for his undergraduate studies. After college, he and his wife, Patty, took jobs at Coffee People, a local Portland coffee shop that embodied the early West Coast specialty coffee culture. They immersed themselves in the craft, learning the rhythms of roasting, retail, and customer habits. Over the next five years, they worked their way up and eventually purchased a majority interest in Coffee People. But it wasn’t until Jim began paying closer attention to customer behavior that he noticed an opportunity hiding in plain sight.

A Simple Observation That Changed Coffee Forever

Portland is known for many things: great food, eclectic culture, and, of course, rain. Lots of rain. Day after day, Jim watched customers pull into the Coffee People parking lot, begrudgingly step out into the drizzle, stand in line, place their order, wait again, and then hustle back to their cars while juggling hot cups and soggy jackets. What stood out wasn’t their patience; it was the fact that many of them weren’t there for ambiance, pastries, or a sit-down moment of calm. They wanted the coffee. And they wanted it efficiently.

This observation sparked an idea that was radical for its time: What if you could get high-quality specialty coffee without leaving your car? In the fast-food world, drive-thrus had been around for decades. But in the specialty coffee world, where cappuccinos, mochas, and espresso shots were still something of a novelty, no one had reimagined the experience around convenience. Jim believed it was not only possible but necessary.

Motor Moka: A Revolution in a Parking Lot

In 1990, Jim acted on that instinct and opened the world’s first drive-thru specialty coffee concept: Motor Moka, located at 525 Northeast Grand Avenue in Portland. The setup was simple, functional, and groundbreaking. Instead of walking into a shop, customers pulled up to a window and ordered their drinks directly from their vehicle. It was fast, warm, dry, and, unexpectedly, fun. Portlanders, always appreciative of innovation and always needing a good cup of coffee, embraced it immediately.

Word spread quickly. Morning commuters began factoring a Motor Moka stop into their daily routes. Parents appreciated not having to unload kids from car seats. Workers with tight schedules loved the efficiency. And coffee enthusiasts discovered that convenience did not have to mean sacrificing quality.

From One Window to a Regional Chain

Motor Moka grew rapidly, and Jim and Patty expanded their network of locations across the Portland area. Before long, they were operating a dozen units, each serving a growing base of loyal customers. Their small experiment had become a blueprint for what would eventually become one of the most recognizable formats in the modern U.S. coffee industry.

As Motor Moka’s popularity surged, it attracted the attention of larger coffee companies looking to scale innovative concepts. Eventually, Jim and Patty sold their chain to Diedrich Coffee, a prominent specialty coffee roaster and retailer. Diedrich was later sold to Starbucks, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Today, fittingly, the original Motor Moka site at 525 Northeast Grand Avenue hosts a Starbucks café with, of course, a drive-thru window. The location that sparked an industry shift continues serving customers in the very format that Jim envisioned decades earlier.

Something Brewing in Seattle

While Jim and Patty were pioneering drive-thru espresso culture in Portland, something entirely different but equally transformative was unfolding just a few hours north in Seattle.

The year was 1971, and three friends, Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker, opened a small store in Pike Place Market. Their shop didn’t serve lattes or mochas. It didn’t even brew coffee by the cup. Instead, they sold freshly roasted beans, tea, and equipment, drawing inspiration from Peet’s Coffee in Berkeley. Their store was called Starbucks.

In contrast to Portland’s emerging drive-thru experiment, Starbucks grew from a purist’s philosophy: introduce customers to high-quality beans, emphasize origin stories, and elevate the craft of home brewing. For its first decade, Starbucks was a retailer, not a café. It wasn’t until Howard Schultz joined the company in the 1980s, after returning from a trip to Italy, that Starbucks shifted toward espresso beverages and café culture.

What’s remarkable is how these two stories, Motor Moka and Starbucks, ran almost parallel without intersecting until much later. Starbucks focused on the café as a destination, a place of community and conversation. Motor Moka focused on convenience, efficiency, and the experience inside the car rather than the café. Portland birthed the drive-thru model; Seattle shaped the modern café model. Together, these two Pacific Northwest experiments would help create the American coffee landscape as we know it today.

How Drive-Thru Coffee Became an American Staple

The innovation Jim and Patty pioneered set the stage for a massive industry shift. The idea that you could get artisan, hand-crafted espresso beverages through a small window without stepping out of your vehicle was, at the time, almost unthinkable. But once the idea proved successful, it began spreading rapidly.

By the early 2000s, drive-thru coffee concepts, many of them independent, many located in small kiosks or prefabricated huts, were popping up across the Pacific Northwest and eventually across the country. Today, brands like Dutch Bros, 7 Brew, Human Bean, Scooters, and countless regional chains owe part of their success to the groundwork Motor Moka laid.

And the timing could not have been better. As American lives grew busier, as commutes lengthened, and as demand for specialty coffee increased, the drive-thru model fit perfectly into consumers’ lifestyles. Even large brands, most notably Starbucks, eventually integrated drive-thrus into their growth strategies. The format that began as a simple solution to rainy-day inconvenience became the dominant channel for coffee sales in many markets.

A Legacy Brewed in the Rain

More than three decades later, it’s astonishing to consider how a simple observation, customers getting soaked on their way to a cup of coffee, helped reshape an entire industry. Jim and Patty Roberts didn’t just create Motor Moka; they introduced a new way of thinking about coffee itself. Not as a destination, not as an errand, but as a seamless part of daily life.

Every time someone orders a latte without leaving the comfort of their car, they’re participating in a small piece of that history. Drive-thru coffee is now woven into the fabric of modern American culture. But it all began in Portland, in 1990, with a modest idea, a rainy parking lot, and a belief that the best ideas are often the simplest.