The story behind this name, “Sonic Drive-In restaurant”, is very intresting. In 1953, when the concept of a drive-through restaurant was almost nowhere, the first drive-in restaurant opened in Okla with the name Top Hat. This restaurant became very famous for two reasons.
- Visitors were able to order burgers without even leaving their cars
- Get their order quickly; technically, start calling it “sonic.”
Due to speed delivery, this restaurant became very famous, and customers started calling it Sonic, which was not the only reason the company changed its name. The name changed due to the copyright conflict. The Top Hat restaurant was already copyrighted by someone else so in 1959 owner of this chain Smith and Pappe changed the name to Sonic.
You can read more about it from wikipedia.
