Menlo mainstay: Hoot ‘n Toot Car Hop Cleaners

While the address for the Hoot ‘n Toot Car Hop Cleaners is on Santa Cruz Avenue, the brand promise when it opened in the 1960s (earlier?) was “car service,” thanks to its back entrance (which most people think of as the front entrance) in the parking lot shared with another Menlo mainstay, Draeger’s Market.

That kind of white-gloved service was too expensive for this contributor’s always penny-pinching mother, but memories of uniformed employees bringing the laundry/dry cleaning orders out to the waiting autos remain. The car hop feature is now a part of the cleaner’s history, but its fans continue, making it one of less than a dozen of Menlo mainstays (retail esablishments that have been in business at least four decades).