Faster food
The drive-thru has been a fixture of American life for decades, but throughout its roughly 50 years of existence, it looked pretty much the same: cars pull up to the speaker box, drivers place their order with an employee, pull up to the window, and collect their food. Since the onset of the pandemic, though, things have changed. Consumers’ increased focus on third-party delivery (like Uber Eats), mobile order pickup (with orders placed through an app), and generally staying the hell out of restaurant dining rooms has left the fast food industry racing to keep up with emerging trends, innovating new ways to get cheap eats into customers’ hands at lightning speed. In these massive corporations’ endless quest for efficiency, artificial intelligence, and other technical advancements have become the go-to solution.
While these emerging technologies might have some clear upsides—streamlining kitchen operations, making sure the food is hot and fresh at handoff—there have been some high-profile hiccups in their rollout, too. And since the drive-thru is a proven way to drive profits, more businesses are starting to embrace it, meaning that your local Chili’s, Denny’s, and even some steakhouses might soon operate more like fast food chains than full-service ones.
Thank you, drive thru to the rest of this email.
Brief history
1970: Wendy’s adds a pick-up window for customers to grab their food on the go; the chain claims this was the world’s first modern drive-thru.
1975: McDonald’s opens its first drive-thru location in Sierra Vista, Arizona. The location arose in part because soldiers at the nearby Fort Huachuca Army Base were not permitted to leave their vehicles while in uniform.
1987: Bob Charles, a McDonald’s franchisee, pioneers the two-lane drive-thru concept, which he alleges more than doubled the amount of cars the restaurant was able to serve per hour.
2018: Chipotle begins testing its first “Chipotlanes,” or modern drive-thru lanes intended for mobile pickup only (i.e., you can’t place your order within the drive-thru).
2020: Data by market research firm The NPD Group finds that drive-thru visits went up 26% in April, May, and June of 2020, when many dining rooms were closed due to the pandemic.
2021: McDonald’s begins testing AI-powered voice recognition software in the drive-thru lane at 10 pilot locations.
2022: Taco Bell opens Defy, a two-story restaurant concept with a whopping four drive-thru lanes, as well as “digital check-in screens for mobile order customers’ unique QR codes” and “a two-way audio and video technology service for customers to talk to team members on the second floor.”
2022: Applebee’s president John Cywinski tells CNN that the brand plans to expand its investment in drive-thru pickup windows at its restaurants.
2023: Chick-fil-A is the latest to announce a new restaurant design focused on optimizing drive-thru service. This design, like the Taco Bell Defy, features an elevated kitchen situated above the drive-thru that delivers food to the customer via a “meal transport system.”
By the digits
310.76: Total average time, in seconds, for drive-thru customers at Chick-fil-A to receive their order, according to the 2023 QSR Drive-Thru Report
2 minutes or less: Total service time Taco Bell is aiming for at its new “Defy” restaurant location
16.8k: Number of likes on a TikTok video in which a McDonald’s customer explains how the AI-powered drive-thru allegedly failed so badly at voice recognition that asking for Diet Coke to be removed from the order translated to the addition of…
9: Sweet teas instead
90%: Share of new Starbucks locations that will include a drive-thru, according to former CEO Howard Schultz in 2022; these will involve new technologies including “handheld point-of-sales devices”
🎧 Listen up
The Quartz Obsession podcast is back for Season 6!
🍟 In Drive-thrus: Fastest food, Angela Pagán steers host Thomas Germain through the fast lane of instant meal gratification. Part history lesson, part future forecasting, part educating Thomas on what, exactly, a McDonald’s Snack Wrap is (it’s coming back, by the way), this episode is impossible to listen to without fries on the side. You’ve been warned.
🎙️ Listen now on Spotify | Apple | Google | Pandora
Quotable
“I think what’s most shocking are the second-order effects in terms of the overall experience. How much better it feels when you’re in the store as well as the consistency and quality of the product.”
—Sweetgreen CEO Jonathan Neman, speaking in 2023 about the company’s new Infinite Kitchen robotic production system with self-service kiosks
Pop quiz
What now-ubiquitous car feature do we have drive-thrus to thank for?
A. Cup holders
B. Power windows
C. Wider seat design
D. Bass tuning—everyone in line should hear your beats
Drive slowly down to the bottom to pick up your order—the correct answer.
Fun fact!
It was not until 2010 that The Associated Press announced its stylebook would accept the spelling “drive-thru” for the first time; previously, the news agency only accepted “drive-through.”
Watch this!
A golden (arches) idea
In Scotland, PA, a 2001 film directed by Billy Morrissette, underachievers Pat and Mac (played by Maura Tierney and James Le Gros) work at a burger joint in the 1970s. When their boss has an idea for a way to expand profits by taking orders through a radio and handing meals to people without them having to get out of their car, they dispatch the burger king, steal the idea, and take over the greasy kingdom. One murder leads to another. Pat has a stubborn rash on her hand that won’t go away. And an inspector named McDuff (played by Christopher Walken) is on the case. Oh, and there’s a trio of hippie witches.
Is this plot starting to sound familiar? Here’s the trailer.
Take me down this 🐰 hole
Though it is still staffed by human employees, the drive-thru at CosMc’s is exemplary of many modern innovations. The McDonald’s spin-off restaurant opened its first (and so far, only) location in Bolingbrook, Illinois in December 2023, and many of the fast food juggernaut’s ambitions for the brand are on display there.
For one thing, CosMc’s is a small-format, “beverage-led” concept, meaning it’s focusing on putting out lots of fun and eye-catching lemonades, teas, coffees, and slushes—a clear attempt to keep up with its rival, Starbucks, whose elaborate frozen drinks account for 74% of the brand’s beverage sales. It boasts four drive-thru lanes operating simultaneously, all feeding toward a pickup window on the side of a location with no dining room whatsoever.
Even in the press release announcing the new restaurant, McDonald’s focused on how technology would set CosMc’s apart. “CosMc’s blazes its own path with a uniquely seamless digital and Drive Thru experience,” the announcement reads in part. “Guests are invited to take a break from earthly stressors and use the dynamic menu boards and cashless payment devices to breeze through the ordering and payment process, allowing for guided exploration and customization along the way.” Really, we’re just in it for the Churro Cold Brew Frappé.
Poll
Do you drive-thru?
- Yes, but mostly for coffee
- Yes, sometimes you just need your meals fast!
- No, I’m more of a sit-in kind of diner
Serve us your hot take! You won’t even have to roll down your window.
💬 Let’s talk!
In last week’s poll about Pro Tools, most of you (70%) definitely don’t think the technology is overused—let the masses make their music!
🐤 X this!
🤔 What did you think of today’s email?
💡 What should we obsess over next?
Today’s email was written by Angela L. Pagán (favorite drive-thru order is two double cheeseburgers from McDonald’s) and Marnie Shure (recommends the McPops at CosMc’s, but not the 90-minute drive-thru line), edited by Susan Howson (will take an Oreo Mint milkshake from Cook-Out, please), and produced by Morgan Haefner (one Culver’s ButterBurger with cheese!).
The correct answer to the quiz is A. Cup holders. Gotta put that supersize drink somewhere!