The 2 Texas Fast Food Chain Locations Where You Can Play Pickleball Before Eating

Many of us remember running around McDonalds' colorful playgrounds as kids before hungrily digging into our Happy Meals. The PlayPlace heyday is in the past as many of them have disappeared, but another chain is embracing the idea of a fun activity — except this time its for the adults. Sonic has two locations in Texas with pickleball courts so people can work up an appetite playing the rapidly growing sport before eating.

Both Sonics have three outdoor pickleball courts with lights for nighttime play and an adjacent covered seating area where people can order and eat their food. The first one debuted in Canton in 2023 while a second one opened up in Bridgeport in late 2024. Reservations can be made for free via the CourtReserve app. For those without their own equipment, paddles and pickleballs are available for sale. There's no word if Sonic will be putting pickleball courts at more of its nearly 3,500 U.S. locations (spread throughout all but three states).

Attracting customers to stay on site for an extended period of time isn't exactly foreign to Sonic's drive-in format, but it is an interesting innovation on the format since now there's an activity for customers while they wait and there isn't as much of a gross factor involved with eating in your car. At most locations, patrons pull into a spot, order, wait for carhops to bring their food, and eat in their car. That, or they use the drive-thru. But the chain where Drew Barrymore gets her favorite fast food order is apparently betting on the pickleball courts drawing new customers and potentially eating more as they stay longer.

Sonic is the only major fast food chain that's opened its own pickleball courts, but the industry has been paying attention to the game's booming popularity. Burger King Japan debuted a Pickleball Burger in May in partnership with the Pickleball Japan Federation. The burger is made with 3 beef patties and 11 pickle slices on rice patty buns. Chick-fil-A sells a $70 pickleball set with two paddles, a tote with a pickle slice pattern, and green pickleballs. In 2023, Subway had a limited-time Pickle Club sandwich in tandem with its sponsorship of the Pickleball Slam tournament.

Smaller businesses have been much more aggressive in featuring pickleball courts with food available. These types of businesses have been popping up all over the country to take advantage of the pickleball craze. Perhaps most prominent is Chicken N Pickle, which has 13 locations in Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado. Its chicken-focused menu features a handful of pickle-y items including a Pickled Chicken sandwich, NKC Hot Chicken sandwich with spicy slaw and pickles, and fried pickles. That's a lot of pickle.

Pickleball was created by two friends in 1965, but its popularity has only begun to explode in recent years. It's played on a court about half as big as a regular tennis court and uses paddles which are something of a cross between a ping pong paddle and a tennis racket. The name pickleball actually has nothing to do with pickles, the food. It's from crew racing's pickle boat, in which non-starting rowers compete together. It's a deeply niche reference to pickleball's cribbed pieces gathered from different sports.