Malt Shop

Brian (manager of The Greasy Fork): Britta, you promised that this private party would be done by eight. You're doing this during the peak business hours for nostalgia-themed diners.
Annie: Oh, is that true? Has that been researched?
Brian: It has, Annie. After they get frightened by the evening news, many seek the comforting foods and soothing music of a pre-racial America.

— Community

Obligatory bit of 1950s Popular History. All the kids hang out here, play Pinball, and listen to the jukebox play Nothing but Hits. 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 Time Travel story ending up in The '50s, often the first place gone into after the "Mister Sandman" Sequence (as in Back to the Future, for example).

There is some historical basis to these places; during most of the early-post-war era, from the mid-1940s to the 1950s, very few modern "chain" fast-food places were in business yet and the infrastructure to support them was still being built. As a result, there were a lot of privately-owned, short-order diner-style restaurants that served things like burgers and non-alcoholic malted beverages. Not all of them were hopping, hip places where the kids hung out, but pick a major suburb and you could probably find at least one. Many of the most successful ones would go on to become the major chains of The '70s and The '80s, driving their smaller competitors out of business.

The Greasy Spoon is the Malt Shop's less romanticized (but equally conventionalized) cousin. Watch out for the teenagers who are Sweetheart Sipping or the possible eruption of a Diner Brawl. In Australia and New Zealand, and in Great Britain in The '50s, these places were traditionally known as "milk bars."

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Examples:

Comic Books

• Pop Tate's Choclit Shoppe in Archie. While small diners do of course still exist, what really makes the place The Artifact is Pop's fashion sense (at least in the digests using the traditional Archie house style), since he looks like he just stepped through a time portal from 1949. But Riverdale just wouldn't be Riverdale without it or without him.
• The Retro Universe of Fawcett City in DC Comics' Power of Shazam! included a malt shop (possibly the same one from Captain Marvel's initial Whiz Comics appearances). It even played a plot point in the Black Adam miniseries.
• Kitty Pryde and Storm bond over milkshakes at The Malt Shoppe in Uncanny X-Men #130.
• In the reboot Legion of Super-Heroes Formula-Breaking Episode 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.
• The Archie pastiche in U.S.Avengers had Pappy Guggenheim's Malt Shoppe. (Guggenheim and Tate both being famous art galleries.)

Films — Animation

• Prominently featured in Make Mine Music's "All the Cats Join In" short, with its jazz soundtrack produced by Benny Goodman. The short features teens partying in a malt shop, doing swing dancing as a jukebox plays. The film was released in 1946, meaning this trope is a little bit Older Than They Think by at least a few years.
• On The Iron Giant, Hogart takes Mansley to the local drug store for a chocolate shake. Which he laces with some Choco-lax to get him off his tail.

Films — Live-Action

• Marty's Malt Shop in Our Miss Brooks.
• Mel's Drive-In from American Graffiti.
• Lou's Café from Back to the Future.
• Naturally, one of these shows up in Pleasantville.
• One is included (free of charge) in the 1957-set Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It winds up getting trashed in a Diner Brawl.
• A futuristic version of one of these appears in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, complete with a robot waitress and a fat Italian-American-sounding alien in an apron in the kitchen. George Lucas has stated that this is an homage to his earlier American Graffiti.
• Parodied in Top Secret!, when Nick Rivers and the Resistance fighters end up in a 1950s-style malt shop... in the middle of East Germany. Includes a dance number to jukebox music.
• The film of The Music Man sets one of its scenes in an ice cream parlor. The movie is from 1962, though the musical is set 50 years before that.
• Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead is narrated by a character in a malt shop, which also plays a minor role in the story.
• This is where Smith and the Hooker with a Heart of Gold meet up at the end of Shoot 'Em Up.
• The Malt Shoppe is the main hangout of the brainwashed honor students in Disturbing Behavior, with one of the characters pointing out the anachronistic nature of the location. It proves to be one of the first clues that something is seriously wrong with the town.
• In Pulp Fiction, Vincent takes Mia to Jack Rabbit Slim's, a 50's-themed nostalgia restaurant designed to resemble a malt shop. This one is a relatively fancy place, including classic cars as booths, waitresses impersonating movie actresses of the period, and a dance floor. Mia orders the Five-Dollar Milkshake.
• Naturally, a setting for several scenes in Grease.
• One appears at the beginning of School Ties.
• In The Best Years of Our Lives, Fred returns from World War II and takes up his old job as a soda jerk in the local drugstore. However, he finds this unsatisfying after his time as a captain in the Air Force.
• One scene in The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure takes place in a cow-themed malt shop where its proprietor, Milky Marvin, is willing to cater to anyone's taste in milkshakes.
• It's a Wonderful Life: George Bailey had an after school job at one as a kid that was also a drugstore. One of the important points in his life was stopping his boss from prescribing the wrong medication.

Literature

• A milk bar appears briefly in David S. Garnett'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.)
• A Clockwork Orange has the Korova Milkbar, but we don't really get a sense of what the place looks like— and the movie's version is about as complete an aversion as they come.
• Robert A. Heinlein used this several times:
  • In Have Space Suit – Will Travel, the main character works as a soda jerk in a drugstore which also has a soda fountain, and which serves "thirty-five-cent malts"; the protagonist proudly claims to make "the thickest malts in town".
  • In Job: A Comedy of Justice, the main character purchases and then runs one in the epilogue.
• Ghost Roads: Malt shops, diners, and Greasy Spoon roadhouses are a staple, as the protagonist is a hitchhiker ghost who died in the '50s. As such, she's drawn to such places and the presence of her and other road ghosts actually serves to help keep them around when they'd have otherwise faded and closed.

Live-Action TV

• Marty's Malt Shop in Our Miss Brooks. It's across the street from Madison High, and is virtually an institution among the students and faculty. Notable in that this is a series that was actually made in the 1950s.
• Arnold's from Happy Days was probably the most important place in the show. It's where all the kids hung out, Fonzie's office was in the bathroom, and it's owner, first Arnold then Al, were major supporting characters.
• The Pie Hole in Pushing Daisies resembles one of these, in keeping with the show's Retro Universe aesthetic.
• The Groovy Smoothie in iCarly is a modernised version, used as the Local Hangout. It is frequently mentioned early on but doesn't actually appear until halfway through the second season.
• Parodied on a MADtv (1995) sketch with a "nostalgic" diner which for the sake of period accuracy refused to serve black customers.
• Bizarrely, the first round of time travel on Supernatural, where Dean sees his youthful parents-to-be on a date to one of these... in 1973. Possibly the influence of his mother's protective father.
• The Twilight Zone (1959) 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 season 3 of Punky Brewster, Henry sells his photography shop and opens a little restaurant he names "Punky's Place."
• While not set in the past, The Max from Saved by the Bell has all the trappings of one.
• Monica in Friends worked in a 50s-themed malt shop in early seasons.
• The Spoon in Andi Mack has this aesthetic, huge retro exterior sign and all.
• The Legends of Tomorrow episode "Night of the Hawk", set in a 1950s Everytown, America called Harmony Falls, features one, where Jax goes on a date with a girl called Betty. Professor Stein is nostalgic, but Jax and Sara remind him of how terrible the 1950s were for everyone else.
• At one point in The Partridge Family, Shirley, who wants the kids to have a "normal" life, orders Danny and Chris outside to shoot baskets, and tells Keith to "go down to the Malt Shop, or wherever young people hang out." Keith quips that he should meet Betty Sue there before the sock hop at the gym.
• Pop Choclit Shoppe appears in Riverdale, and it looks even more anachronistic than it does in the comic. Pop's outfit is still a throwback, and he makes all his male employees wear the same outfit (though all the female waitresses wear tight t-shirts and short-shorts). For some reason the lighting is always terrible.

Music

• "Weird Al" Yankovic: "And I burned down the Malt Shop where we used to go just because it reminds me of you!"
• The Everly Brothers: "That's Old Fashioned, That's the Way Love Should Be" mentions the protagonist and his girl's fondness for one such place as an example of why their friends think they're a couple of squares. Which means the malt shop was a slice of '50s nostalgia as early as 1963!

Pinballs

• Bally's Eight Ball is set in one of these.

Theater

• Shows up in the musical Reefer Madness, which is technically set in The '30s but has more of a 1950s feel in general.
• Not shown in the opera Street Scene, but discussed in a sextet in praise of the drug store and its ice cream.
• One of the later scenes in West Side Story is in Doc's drugstore. The jukebox plays the same "Mambo" heard at the gym dance.

Theme Parks

• Every single Universal Studios park has a Mel's Drive-In restaurant, in reference to American Graffiti.

Video Games

• The various pizza joints in EarthBound (1994) are designed to resemble these, fitting with the Eagleland setting.
• One of the various locations in The Labyrinth of Time. Since the titular labyrinth spans across time and space, it's somewhat justified.
• Nancy Drew Secrets Can Kill has such a restaurant, albeit not a very good one. Their menu has some rather disturbing items, the staff never notices you entering the kitchen, and their solution for patching a leaking gas line is to prop the pipe up with a pair of bolt cutters.
• In the 1960s-flavored Street Rod racing series, you meet and challenge your fellow racers at a malt shop. The first game has one called Bob's Drive-In, while the sequel has one named Burger's Bungalow.

Visual Novels

• The main setting for Daughter for Dessert is a diner with a 1950s look.
• The protagonist of Melody once takes the title character on a date to a 1950s-style diner if on her romantic path.

Web Animation

• My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Summertime Shorts: The "Coinky-Dink World" music video shows that Pinkie Pie's part-time job is at such a place. It has a jukebox, records hanging from the walls, serves hamburgers and milkshakes, and the waitresses have rollerskates. It seems very popular among modern-day teens, but it is to be noted that there are also a few middle-aged couples around.

Web Comics

• Akbar's Malt Shop in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!. Akbar seems to be one of the saner people in the town.

Web Videos

• The Misadventures of Skooks: Fred is fond of getting the gang to meet back at the malt shop.

Western Animation

• The Scooby-Doo 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. This still gets reference in modern adaptations.
• A frequent locale in Heyyy, It's The King, a segment from animated anthology CB Bears. The main characters often hang out there; one of them, Zelda, is even a waitress there.
• Futurama had this in its time travel episode to 1945.
• An episode of Family Guy features a restaurant with a retro 1950s malt shop motif. Cleveland, being black, was not allowed to enter.
  Cleveland: (being sprayed by the police) This takes me back.
• Schoolhouse Rock!:
  • Seen in the segment "A Noun is a Person, Place, or Thing" as the narrator engages in some Sweetheart Sipping with her "best friend."
  • The "Conjunction Junction Diner" seen in the intro of every video is probably also this.
• The Candy Bar in The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius.

Real Life

• Although many of them have completely abandoned the "traditional" trappings, honestly, pick a famous fast-food chain today; an overwhelming number of them began life in, essentially, this format with a single location. Prominent examples are McDonald's, Wendy's, Jack-in-the-Box....
• Johnny Rockets is a national chain of sit-down hamburger restaurants with a 1950s motif, including waitpersons with paper hats and checkered aprons, chrome finish on everything, and 5-cent jukeboxes.
• Sonic Drive-In is a chain of drive-in diners that began in the '50s and has survived and thrived into the present day, complete with carhops who wear roller skates. In Northern U.S. cities, they're known primarily for the fact that they advertise even though the nearest Sonic may be tens or even hundreds of miles away (Northern weather isn't that conducive to drive-in diners).
• The Classic 50s is a one-of-a-kind drive-in in Norman, Oklahoma, that is more or less identical to Sonic^note because the building used to be a Sonic except even more nostalgic of the 1950s. Kids' meals even come in cardboard replicas of classic cars!
• There is one down in Hillsboro, Oregon. That area is the sort of place where specialty businesses crowd around.
• 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 The '50s. 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.
• Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia has their own chain of this style of restaurant called Silver Diner. Many of the locations have jukeboxes on the tables, and milkshakes served in metal cups.
• Route 66 lives and breathes 1950s nostalgia, so there are plenty of old drive-ins and malt shops along the route to cater to tourists.
• Even the United Kingdom gets in on the act with the Ed's Easy Diner chain, which seems to toe the line between being a nostalgia cafe based on a malt shop, and being an affectionate parody of one. It has the jukeboxes, art-deco motif and malt shakes, but they also have a menu of practically nothing but variations on hotdogs, chili and burgers, signs on the walls such as 'No dancing in the aisles', and the shakes themselves are enormous.
• The Chicago based Portillo's restaurant chain has several different themes to their restaurants including a malt shop theme.
• The Atlanta version of this would be The Varsity. A classic place that's more modern, and even has a gift shop, since The Varsity is known in the south.
• This trope is principally applied to the 1950's, but if you know where to look, you can find pictures of restaurants using this motif and menu as early as 1941. The Seabreeze Inn (formerly Vic and Irv's) in Rochester still has preserved pictures of customers in military uniform before shipping out to fight in World War II, 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. In other words, the trope dates back to at least before Pearl Harbor, even if it only became fixed in the minds of TV Land much later.
• The Pink Motel in Sun Valley, California was once a played-straight example of this trope, which has since evolved to a popular movie set seen in films and advertising.

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