Russell C. Wendell sold donut machines for a living. Watching how well drive-in burger restaurants were doing in postwar Southern California car culture, he reasoned that the same idea would work for donuts.
He founded a chain called Big Do-Nut Drive-In — the hyphen is original — and built ten locations across Los Angeles County during the 1950s: in Westmont/Los Angeles, Inglewood, Gardena, Compton, Culver City, Lennox, Bellflower, North Hollywood, Van Nuys and Reseda.
The shops themselves were plain box-shaped drive-in buildings. What made them unforgettable was the enormous donut mounted on the roof: rolled steel bars covered in gunite, the same material used to line swimming pools, and angled toward the intersection so a driver could tell what was sold from several blocks away without stopping to read a sign.
You did not have to read the sign. From a few blocks off, at the wheel, you could see what was for sale.
Wendell later opened Big Taco Drive-Ins near his donut shops, and in the 1970s he sold the donut shops off to concentrate on Pup 'n' Taco, another chain of his.
Five of the ten buildings still stand.