"Eat at Joe's" signs were popular in cartoons and lore of the 1930s and 1940s and 1950s. They symbolized ubiquitous advertising, especially on highways.

It probably all began with Joseph Sartori's popular "Joe's Restaurant" in Brooklyn (long defunct). It is not known when the first "Eat at Joe's" sign appeared at Coney Island.

28 August 1949, New York Herald Tribune, pg. 44:
Joseph Sartori
Dies; Ran "Joe's
Restaurants"

Was Active in Brooklyn
Civic Affairs, Ardent
Huntsman, Art Fancier

Joseph J. Sartori, sixty-seven, a retired restauratuer who formerly operated three of Brooklyn's best-known eating establishments under the name of "Joe's Restaurant," died yesterday at his home, 39 Plaza Street, Brooklyn.

31 May 1947, Chicago Daily Tribune, pg. 10:
No rural byway recks with prose
Convincing us to "eat at Joe's,"
11 August 1959, Chicago Daily Tribune, pg. B5:
"It would be illegal, for instance," he says, "to stamp on a dollar bill the words, 'Eat at Joe's restaurant.' The law also prohibits the attachment of advertising matter to paper money or to coins."