Summary
SB-918 modernizes California’s retail food safety laws to allow drive-through restaurants to use full-size “cockpit doors” or hybrid doors as approved service openings, improving worker safety and operational efficiency while maintaining existing food-safety protections.
Background
California has strict rules about the windows used at drive-through restaurants. These windows are tightly limited in size (roughly 237 square inches), must open and close automatically rather than being manually operated, and must include an air curtain or similar barrier to prevent pests, dust, and exhaust from entering the food preparation area. Because the current health and safety code is written around these small service windows, it effectively prohibits full-size sliding or swinging doors (“cockpit doors”) from being used as drive-through openings.
In practice, this means that restaurants with two drive-through lanes often cannot serve both lanes directly from the building. Team members must exit through a side or front employee door, walk around the building, and cross active drive-through traffic to hand food to cars in the outer lane. During peak hours, some restaurants station employees outside for extended periods to hand food directly to vehicles, which increases labor needs and puts workers at risk from moving vehicles and bad weather.
This problem is especially challenging in California. Many fast-food restaurants have added two lane drive-throughs because more customers wanted this option during the pandemic. Other states like Utah, Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, and New Mexico already let restaurants use full-size "cockpit doors" with built-in air curtains and automatic closing features. These doors let restaurants safely serve both drive-through lanes faster while using fewer staff outside. Limited to drive-through service only (not as public or employee entrances), they would still use air curtains and other barriers to keep food just as protected from pests and contamination as traditional small windows. Updating California’s code to recognize these doors will bring the state in line with modern drive-through design while preserving the strong food-safety protections that current law is meant to ensure.
Proposal
SB-918 updates California’s health and safety code to explicitly allow drive-through restaurants to use full-size “cockpit doors” or hybrid doors as approved service openings, without reducing existing food-safety standards.