Every float, marching band, and fire truck in Saturday's Brentwood Days parade passed a 16-stool diner that doesn't take credit cards. The parade followed a changed route this year.
Brentwood Days is the city's annual festival, held the third weekend of September, and this year's edition took place Friday, September 18 and Saturday, September 19 at the Brentwood Sports Complex. It's the kind of event that doesn't need much explanation if you've lived here more than a summer: carnival rides, a parade, live music, a Saturday night drone show that closed things out. What's different in 2026 is the theme, "Get Your Kicks on Route 66," and a changed parade route. This year's parade route passed directly by Carl's Drive-In at 9033 Manchester Road, a business the city describes as the only one in Brentwood still operating in its original location from the Route 66 era.
The Route 66-Era Diner on the Parade Route
Manchester Road has changed shape more than once since Route 66 ran along it. The alignment through Brentwood only lasted from 1926 to 1932 before the highway shifted south, and most of what stood along that stretch in the early automobile era is long gone. Carl's Drive-In is the exception, and it remains in its original location.
The building started as a Lubrite service station in 1918. In 1943 it became a hot dog stand called the Foot Long Hot Dog Company. By the 1950s it was Walter Breeden's Good Food Drive Inn. A tornado tore through in 1959, and rather than close, Breeden sold the damaged building to a 25-year-old named Carl Meyer, who rebuilt it and gave it the name it still carries. Curb service and a walk-up window came first. Indoor seating, all 16 stools of it, arrived in a 1962 remodel that also added air conditioning. The place has changed hands three times since Meyer, most recently in 2021 when David Kraemer bought it after years of eating there several times a week as a Kirkwood resident.
What hasn't changed is the menu, the cash-only register, and the root beer, made from a recipe Carl's still uses and one that reportedly served as the basis for the nationally distributed IBC brand. In 2022, Yelp reviewers named Carl's the best cheeseburger in Missouri. On Tripadvisor it currently holds a 4.4 rating and sits at #174 out of nearly 2,000 restaurants across the entire city of St. Louis, a notable ranking for a building with eight stools on each side of the grill.
the only Brentwood business still operating in its original location from that Route 66 era
That's how the city's own announcement describes it. The parade's route brought that history into view.
What Happened That Weekend
The Friday and Saturday schedule included the following beyond the parade:
- Saturday's parade stepped off at noon and ran past Carl's Drive-In as part of the Route 66 theme
- Carnival rides opened after the parade and ran through the evening, with wristbands available in advance for Brentwood residents and Brentwood School District and St. Mary Magdalen students and staff
- A drone show closed out Saturday night, replacing what used to be a fireworks finale
- The inaugural Cocktail Showdown made its debut this year, open to local mixologists, home bartenders, and two-person teams, with a People's Choice vote decided by festivalgoers sampling from the Biergarten
- A Route 66 trivia contest ran through the weekend for anyone who wanted to test what they actually knew about the Mother Road
The event's rules included no coolers, no dogs, and bags subject to search. Residents picking up wristbands at the Brentwood Community Center needed proof of residency, like an occupancy permit or a utility bill, and teachers needed a pay stub.
A City Mid-Rebuild, With a Parade Route Past One Block
None of this happens in a vacuum. Brentwood has spent the better part of a decade remaking itself. The city finished a destination playground at Brentwood Park, built a connector to the Great Rivers Greenway trail network along Deer Creek, and this July broke ground on a new KinderCare Learning Center near Porter Avenue that will serve 140 kids. The Manchester Road corridor itself has been the subject of a long-running redevelopment plan aimed at fixing decades of Deer Creek flooding while opening the door to new retail, office, and residential construction. Brentwood is not a place standing still.
Which is what made this year's parade route worth noticing. A city actively reshaping its commercial corridor sent its biggest annual event past a business that remains in its original location. Carl's isn't a plaque or a preserved facade behind glass. It's a working diner that still won't take your card and still fries burgers the way Frank Cunetto taught the crew to do it decades ago. The parade route can be read as more than nostalgia marketing: continuity is its own kind of civic asset, one that doesn't show up in a redevelopment plan but shows up in a 4.4-star rating and a line of regulars who've been coming since before the tornado.
At Brentwood Days that weekend, the parade route was worth watching for exactly that reason. It was more than a nod to history; it put a longstanding local business in the path of a major community event.
Brentwood keeps changing, and most of that change is worth watching too. If you're ever curious what any of it means for your own street, your own lot, or a property you've had your eye on, The Realty Shop is always glad to talk it through.
