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#THREAD Fast food drive-thrus were on the decline in 2019, as environmental advocates fought to reduce the footprint of personal car use.
Last year, the pandemic turned that trend upside down. https://thecounter.org/covid-19-saved-fast-food-drive-thru-mcdonalds-starbucks-taco-bell/
Last year, the pandemic turned that trend upside down. https://thecounter.org/covid-19-saved-fast-food-drive-thru-mcdonalds-starbucks-taco-bell/
Two years ago, as local municipalities adopted increasingly climate-friendly initiatives, dozens of cities in the U.S. and Canada instituted bans or moratoriums on the construction of new fast food drive-thrus.
Minneapolis was the biggest U.S. city to adopt such a policy, in late summer 2019. https://thecounter.org/minneapolis-drive-through-ban/
But when Covid-19 struck early last year, business-as-usual went out the window for the entire restaurant industry. Dining trends rapidly veered away from eating on-site, and more towards food pickup with minimal contact.
Since April 2020, 74% of Americans report using a drive-thru at some point, representing a 43% spike over the prior year. Meanwhile, 90% of customers surveyed would prefer curbside pickup to entering a physical restaurant to collect their food.
It’s no coincidence that Taco Bell, McDonald’s, and Starbucks introduced ambitious new plans to beef up their drive-thru offerings in 2021: 1) opening an aggressive slate of new drive-thrus, and 2) reconfiguring existing operations to be more car-friendly.
The most notable example may be Burger King’s “Restaurant of Tomorrow” concept, offering shaded parking spots for food ordering and in-car dining, multiple drive-thru lanes, and a T-shaped physical restaurant to accommodate—you guessed it—more cars.
This drive-thru explosion makes more sense in small cities and suburban areas where car culture is already strong. Additionally, fast food chains are better equipped to implement drive-thrus than most independent restaurants.
Mom-and-pop shops in suburban strip malls may be able to provide curbside service to 1 or 2 cars in a shared parking lot, but many independent standalone diners and cafes simply can’t retrofit their existing structures—or expand their footprint—to accommodate a drive-thru window.
Additionally, researchers are concerned that restaurants that focusing on drive-thru operations will leave behind millions of carless Americans. “As we design, zone, and plan for the future, car ownership should not be taken for granted,” says UCLA policy analyst @Maddz4planning.
Many of the chains’ drive-thru expansions predated 2020—the pandemic merely hastened them. The real question is, will they remain popular if/when the virus wanes, or will environmental concerns regain prominence in restaurant planning? Read more: https://thecounter.org/covid-19-saved-fast-food-drive-thru-mcdonalds-starbucks-taco-bell/
