Food fables: How Renault's baguette basket helps drive away hunger

Driving around Goa, you learn to keep cloth bags in your car. There are always old folk along roadsides selling bananas, breadfruit, leafy greens and other produce grown in their gardens, or foraged from forests. It is fresher and cheaper than buying in the market.

I’ve been thinking of adding a cooler box. In this monsoon season, when sea fishing is suspended, Goa shifts to the abundant fish in its rivers, ponds and paddy fields. Every bridge has a patient line fisherman, and now they are joined by those wielding nets at river margins or sluice-gates, or spearing catfish that slither through mud. Others sell snails collected from fields or shellfish from lagoons at low tide. You can never predict finding them for sale, but a cooler helps store them when it happens.

Goa’s auto sellers could offer customised fish containers, taking inspiration from the iconic Renault 5, which last year launched its electric version with a bread basket. This was an elegant wicker cylinder that fits by the centre console, ideal for France’s long baguette loaves. It was an inspired, quirky cultural customisation and it’s no surprise that Luca de Meo, Renault’s CEO, has just been poached by Kering, the luxury conglomerate.

The baguette basket is the rare acknowledgement from auto manufacturers of how much food purchase and consumption happens in cars. The cup holder is another, spurred by the case of Stella Liebeck vs McDonalds Corporation (1994) where the fast-food company had to pay huge damages to a lady who severely burned herself by spilling a cup of their hot coffee in her car. Auto companies quickly created spaces for cups.

Liebeck bought her coffee at a McDonald’s drive-through window. This creation of the USA’s love of cars and convenience, where get service without exiting your vehicle, didn’t start with food. In 1928, a bank in Missouri, faced with small business owners rushing in just before closing time to deposit daily receipts installed a fortified roadside box where they could make deposits whenever they wanted, without even leaving their cars. Another bank added a live teller at a window, and soon other services started offering such in-car options.

For food service, the drive-in was initially more popular. People parked and waiters came to them – sometimes on roller skates! – and served food on trays that clipped to their car windows. The concept came to India at places like Drive-In Woodlands, a much-loved Madras eatery. It worked in that era, before the city became Chennai, partly because there were just a few car models. When a restaurant owner tried relaunching the format recently, he found it hard to find trays that could fit the many models available now, and people didn’t want to risk the trays scratching their expensive paint jobs.

Drive-through has generally replaced drive-in, but it required a push from the military. A McDonald’s franchise in Arizona first installed a drive-through window in 1975 to cater to a nearby military base which had a policy preventing soldiers in uniform from exiting cars they were driving for civilian purpose. The drive-through window rapidly became popular with all customers, leading McDonald’s to roll out the concept. People were commuting more and even working from their cars. Gadgets were created to help with eating in cars, like trays that fit around steering wheels and a French Fries holder that slots into the cup space.

High-end cars like limousines have long had options of tables and fridges (though Donald Trump’s personal model rather morbidly stores bags of his blood type). Rolls-Royce offers customised picnic hampers with spaces for cutlery and wine glasses. At the cheaper end there are food heaters that connect to the car battery, allowing you to keep a meal warm or even cook, with pre-mix chai and ramen packets. For those caught in endless traffic jams this might be one way to help drive away hunger and thirst.