Faith Enokian loves road trips. The University of South Alabama senior loves them so much that she participates in them at least eight times a week.
Sometimes it’s just to get food. Other times, she asks an often-bewildered Starbucks barista to make “whatever your favorite drink is” and publish the interaction on TikTok.
“Maybe I’m lazy,” she said, “but it’s something about the car.”
Eating a meal through a car window began to define the country’s food culture as the founders of Burger inside and out installed a two-way speaker in 1948. But the drive-thru has never been as integral to the way America eats as it is today.
The pandemic has sent people to the comforting isolation of their cars to get tested for Covid, celebrate birthdays and even vote. And now it seems they don’t want to come out. At least to eat.
Drive-thru traffic increased 30% between 2019 and 2022, according to a report from foodservice research firm Technomic. Meanwhile, the number of people eating at fast food restaurants in the first half of 2023 fell 47% compared to the same period in 2019. Drive-thrus now account for two-thirds of all fast food purchases, according to a September report. by Revenue Management Solutions.
As momentum builds, the $113 billion fast food industry is getting involved. Popeyes executives are cutting the size of dining rooms in half. Taco Bell is experimenting with their complete elimination in favor of more lanes reserved for cars. Chick-fil-A plans to open a two-story location, four-lane drive-thru in Atlanta next year, capable of handling 75 cars at a time and delivering food from the kitchen on a conveyor belt.
Restaurants tailor their mobile menus to each customer, based on their past purchases. Some experiment with artificial intelligence who can take orders either Spanish or English, based on the first words out of a guest’s mouth.
Why this new wave of love behind the wheel? Because the experience has become faster and smoother, industry executives say. The pandemic has accelerated improvements already underway, including better mobile ordering, streamlined kitchens and smarter traffic management.
Others point to cultural shifts like the growing popularity of coffee drive-thrus among Gen Z and younger millennials, and even pet ownership, which has exploded during the pandemic.
“People don’t like leaving their pets at home,” said Diana Kelter, associate director of consumer trends for Mintel, a global market intelligence agency. “And you can’t bring your dog to Starbucks.”
But the most striking explanation may be a societal shift: People emerged from the pandemic with less tolerance for interactions with strangers.
“These are all kinds of ways that people prioritize safety. The drive-thru mentality keeps people physically and psychologically safe,” said Shelley Balanko, social scientist and senior vice president of the Hartman group, a research company that studies American eating habits.
“The other buyers are unhappy. The staff are just as unhappy and difficult to be around,” she said. “There are times when it’s not worth it.”
Ronald Gross, a retiree with three grandchildren who lives in Brooklyn Park, just north of Minneapolis, sat in his car in a Taco Bell parking lot on a recent sunny afternoon eating a chicken melt. chipotle.
Across the street was a Starbucks drive-thru. Behind him was a two-lane bank for drive-in customers. Next to it was a dump station with a banner promising that customers would never have to leave their cars. And above them, adorned with purple neon lights, was the futuristic two-story Taco Bell where Mr. Gross bought his lunch.
The company opened it last year and named it Defy, an innovation that aims to redefine drive-thru in the digital age. There is no dining room. The kitchen is on the second floor. Below, three of its four drive-thru lanes are reserved for delivery drivers and people ordering via app. Bags of food are zipped from the kitchen to the customer on a round tray a little smaller than a manhole cover that moves up and down through a system of plastic tubes.
The technology didn’t seem like a big deal to Mr. Gross. Having some alone time in the car did it.
Before the pandemic, he would eat at restaurants like McDonald’s. Now he sticks to the drive-thru. “I lost the habit,” he said. “I think I’m like a lot of people who don’t necessarily like being social anymore.”
Even at Chick-fil-A and Dutch Bros, two chains where employees armed with tablets navigate the lines happily take orders As the cars move forward, interaction is too difficult for people.
“I drive so I can be antisocial. Now are you forcing me to interact? Caleb Edwards, a rapper, lamented in to TikTok video about Chick-fil-A. “No, brother. Let me pass.
Caitlin Campbell worked in the Starbucks drive-thru when she was a student in Tucson, Arizona. Customers would often try to lure him into their lives, asking him to do things like draw a heart on a cup to cheer up a heartbroken passenger.
“You are an avatar for their particular experience,” she said.
These days, she works from her home in Portland, Oregon, handling mergers and acquisitions for a software company, but she still hits the Starbucks drive-thru.
“I read this feeling of not wanting too much interaction,” she said. “Working from home for three years really destroyed my social skills.”
At least the fast food industry has always known how to meet the mainstream exactly where it is, said Adam Chandlerjournalist who published “Drive-Thru Dreams: A Journey Through the Heart of America’s Fast-Food Kingdom” in 2019.
Although in the 1950s Jack in the Box allowed customers to speak into a clown’s head to order, the 1970s saw the dawn of true mass drive-thru culture. Wendy got just opened its first, and McDonald’s and Burger King quickly followed. Americans adopted the idea as a practical and family-friendly novelty.
In the 1980s, when middle-class wages were falling and more families had two working parents, the drive-thru offered a quick and inexpensive solution to dining out. The 1990s saw a race to the bottom, as fast food companies attempted to offer the cheapest meals possible and some communities began to oppose drive-thrus as a way to combat obesity .
In the 2010s, the reaction hardened. Many cities prohibited passageways for reasons of pedestrian safety, public health and reducing car emissions. Accidents on the tracks have become so frequent law firms began to specialize in them.
But the drive has managed to remake itself and be reborn. Even though Minneapolis banned new drive-ins in 2019, the law has legal challenges And complaints of disabled people. Companies like Starbucks and Cookieville are becoming more creative and building smaller restaurants that create fewer traffic jams and integrate better into neighborhoods.
In October, McDonald’s said in its quarterly earnings report that 40 percent of its sales came from customers ordering digitally. He opened his first drive-thru restaurant without a dining room late last year in Fort Worth.
Danny Klein, editorial director of QSR magazine and author of its annual report Drive-Thru Reportcalls it the “age of drive optimization.”
The quality – and price – of drive-thru food increases as wait times shorten. “Drive-thru is no longer a compromise that’s just quick and cheap,” Mr. Klein said. “Now it’s really about technology. It’s about being accurate and having a good experience.
A generation that likes to personalize controls on an app, expects speed, and wants to post an experience on TikTok. Social media is full of videos exploring all kinds of drive-thru culture, from random outbursts of violence to pranks like a car rigged to drive through the queue without a driver.
Eric Decker, the YouTube star who goes by the name Airrack, recently visited drive-ins of 100 different restaurant brands. His quest took him and a few friends three days. The result 23 minutes the video has nearly 10 million views.
The Gen Z customer has revolutionized the drive-thru experience, said Scott Mezvinsky, Taco Bell’s North American president. “It’s a lesson in how to make a functional object cool.”
Even fast-casual restaurants that once eschewed drive-thru culture and targeted urban customers willing to pay more for fresher, less processed ingredients have jumped on the bandwagon.
Shake Shack, which started as a hot dog stand in a Manhattan park in 2001 and now has more than 500 restaurants worldwide, opened its first drive-thru in December 2021 in Maple Grove, Minnesota. It now has 22. Sweetgreen, a company built on custom salads with a philosophy of being less carbon-intensive, opened a Sweetlane last year in Schaumburg, Illinois.
“The drive-thru culture has really been one thing, and we’re happy to help make it another,” said Nicholas Jammet, co-founder of the chain.
Many independent restaurant owners have opened drive-thru lanes to weather the pandemic. And some have had them forever.
“The drive-thru culture is just part of the landscape here,” said the author and Los Angeles Times columnist. Gustavo Arellano. “You learn to drive and eat at the same time. The problem is how to put the salsa on it, but you do it.
He has a particular fondness for the chili Relleno burrito at Lucy’s drive, but it’s not just about food, he said. The drive is a delicious way to take some time for yourself.
“For less than two minutes, that person at the window should focus on you and only you,” he said. “Then you grab your burrito and go on with your day.”
This experience is unlikely to lose its appeal.
“Despite the war on the gasoline engine, we are all stuck in cars and we are all pressed for time,” he said, “so all roads for Americans ultimately lead to the drive-through.”
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