History Main / MaltShop

* The protagonist of ''VisualNovel/{{Melody}}'' once takes the title character on a date to a 1950s-style diner (one her romantic path).

* A milk bar appears briefly in David S. Garnet's "The Only One", which starts off as {{Steampunk}} and then, every time the protagonist travels back in time to change his past, the setting moves ''forward'' in time. So the tearoom where he first met his wife has become a milk bar. (It goes on to be a coffee shop, a pub, and eventually some kind of {{Cyberpunk}} drug den.)

** In ''Literature/HaveSpaceSuitWillTravel'', the main character works as a soda jerk in a pharmacy which also has a soda fountain. It is never explicitly stated to serve malts, but ice cream is mentioned.

* ''Creator/RobertAHeinlein'' used this several times:
** In "Have Space Suit Will Travel", the main character works as a soda jerk in a pharmacy which also has a soda fountain. It is never explicitly stated to serve malts, but ice cream is mentioned.
** In "Job: A Comedy of Justice", the main character purchases and then runs one in the epilogue.

Obligatory bit of [[TheFifties 1950s]] PopularHistory. All the kids [[LocalHangout hang out]] here, play {{Pinball}}, and listen to the jukebox play NothingButHits. Carhops are optional. The Malt Shop may also be referred to as a diner, a soda fountain, a drug store or a café, but the general look is always basically the same. In a TimeTravel story ending up in TheFifties, often the first place gone into after the MisterSandmanSequence (as in ''Film/BackToTheFuture'', for example).

* Lou's Café from ''Film/BackToTheFuture''.

* Parodied on a ''Series/{{MADtv}}'' sketch with a "nostalgic" diner which for the sake of period accuracy refused to serve black customers.

Obligatory bit of [[TheFifties 1950s]] PopularHistory. All the kids [[LocalHangout hang out]] here, play {{Pinball}}, and listen to the jukebox play NothingButHits. Carhops are optional. The Malt Shop may also be referred to as a diner, a soda fountain, a drug store or a café but the general look is always basically the same. In a TimeTravel story ending up in TheFifties, often the first place gone into after the MisterSandmanSequence (as in ''Film/BackToTheFuture'', for example).

The GreasySpoon is the Malt Shop's less romanticized (but equally conventionalized) cousin. Watch out for the teenagers who are SweetheartSipping or the possible eruption of a DinerBrawl. In UsefulNotes/{{Australia}} and UsefulNotes/NewZealand, and in Great Britain in TheFifties, these places were traditionally known as 'milk bars'.

* ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'': Parodied in ''[[Recap/MysteryScienceTheater3000S04E02TheGiantGilaMonster The Giant Gila Monster]]'' Crow and Tom stop by Joel's new malt shop, converted from a broom closet, they derail Joel's script, [[NotSoStoic angering him]], he askes Gypsy for help, then despite Crow warning her of the place being too small, she accidentally knocks everyone over, including the entire set.

* ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'': Parodied in ''[[MysteryScienceTheater3000S04E02TheGiantGilaMonster The Giant Gila Monster]]'' Crow and Tom stop by Joel's new malt shop, converted from a broom closet, they derail Joel's script, [[NotSoStoic angering him]], he askes Gypsy for help, then despite Crow warning her of the place being too small, she accidentally knocks everyone over, including the entire set.

* The A&W chain of fast-food joints have become known for marketing based on nostalgia: They base many of their commercials, and even the interior on the "classic fast food joint" look of UsefulNotes/TheFifties. Of course, it's not a Malt Shop ''per se'', but it has many elements of one, including ice cream/root beer floats and nostalgic black-and-white photos on the walls. The motif is broken a little at co-branded locations as the design elements have to share space with boating materials (Long John Silvers) or pictures of Colonel Sanders.

* Ditto the Eddie Rocket's chain in Ireland.
* Ruby's Diner is a chain based on this motif, albeit more from TheForties.

* This trope is principally applied to the 50's, but if you know where to look, you can find pictures of restaurants using this motif and menu as early as 1941. Seabreeze Inn, former Vic and Irv's, in Rochester, NY, has preserved pictures of customers in military uniform before shipping out to fight in World War Two, standing in front of a malt counter identical to the ones you'd see in any campy 50's throwback episode of a sitcom or reality show. So the trope dates back to before Pearl Harbor, but only became fixed in the minds of TV Land much later.

* The various pizza joints in ''VideoGame/EarthBound'' are designed to resemble these, fitting with the {{Eagleland}} setting.

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* In the reboot ''ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes'' SomethingCompletelyDifferent issue where the time-lost Legionnaires are relocated to a small town in the fifties, with memories to match, Cosmic Boy's dad runs the malt shop. A more "spacey" malt shop called "Brande's" also appears at the end of the Universo storyline, as Universo's mental prison.

* In the reboot ''ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes'' SomethingCompletelyDifferent issue where the time-lost Legionnaires are relocated to a small town in the fifties, with memories to match, Cosmic Boy's dad runs the malt shop. A more "spacey" malt shop called "Brande's" also appears at the end of the Universo storyline, as Universo's mental prison. Both of these are probably nods to the reboot's FanNickname of "The ''Archie'' Legion".

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone'' episode "Walking Distance" features a malt shop when a man returns to the town he grew up in to see that nothing has changed. He first realizes something strange is going on when the malt shop is still selling milkshakes for a dime, and comes to realize that he's somehow traveled back in time.

* In ''Film/PulpFiction'', Vincent takes Mia to Jack Rabbit Slim's, a nostalgia restaurant designed to resemble a 50's malt shop. Mia orders the Five-Dollar Milkshake.

* In the reboot ''ComicBook/{{Legion of Super-Heroes}}'' SomethingCompletelyDifferent issue where the time-lost Legionnaires are relocated to a small town in the fifties, with memories to match, Cosmic Boy's dad runs the malt shop. A more "spacey" malt shop called "Brande's" also appears at the end of the Universo storyline, as Universo's mental prison. Both of these are probably nods to the reboot's FanNickname of "The ''Archie'' Legion".

* In the reboot ''ComicBook/LegionOfSuperheroes'' SomethingCompletelyDifferent issue where the time-lost Legionnaires are relocated to a small town in the fifties, with memories to match, Cosmic Boy's dad runs the malt shop. A more "spacey" malt shop called "Brande's" also appears at the end of the Universo storyline, as Universo's mental prison. Both of these are probably nods to the reboot's FanNickname of "The ''Archie'' Legion".

[[folder: Literature]]

* Bizarrely, the first round of time travel on ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'', where Dean sees his youthful parents-to-be on a date to one of these... in ''1973''. Possibly the influence of her protective father.

* The ''Franchise/ScoobyDoo'' gang visited these quite a bit in parts of the plot that would normally have taken them to a bar. Also, the Scooby gang would often start an episode in a malt shop (in the 1969-80 series), when they weren't on a beach.

-->'''Cleveland:''' This takes me back.