Stuck in Traffic and Hungry? Burger King Wants to Bring the Food to You

Be honest, how often do you eat in your car? If you live in a car-centric country, like the United States, where owning a car is almost a requirement, then the answer is probably “very often.” Usually that’s because you only have a short amount of time on your lunch break to grab food, or you’re on your way home from work, running late, and don’t want to cook when you get home. But on the frequent days that you find yourself stuck in a traffic jam, you probably don’t want to lose time by pulling off the interstate to go to a drive-thru. That’s why Burger King wants to bring the food to the traffic jam.

That might sound like an April Fool’s Day joke that we came across months too late, but it’s apparently a serious idea that has already been tested in Mexico City. The idea is that you’ll be stuck in a serious traffic jam and hungry. If there is a Burger King restaurant nearby, you might see a billboard offering to bring a Whopper meal to your car. Then, all you have to do is pull up the app and order. Burger King will throw your food in a bag, and then send a motorcycle-riding delivery person to weave through traffic and bring your literal fast food to your car’s window using GPS coordinates from the app.

Burger King plans to roll out this “Traffic Jam Whopper” to other major, heavily-congested cities, including Las Angeles. It does, however, present some tricky legal obstacles that they may not be able to overcome. The whole point of delivering by motorcycles is that they can squeeze between stopped lines of cars. But California is the only state in the United States that allows lane-splitting, and it’s not clear if it’s legal for commercial purposes. That said, Burger King is confident in the idea and reported that their tests in Mexico City were successful. So your next Whopper may be delivered by someone on a Harley while you do your best not to have an aneurysm in traffic.