We are taking over a bank that has an existing drive thru and we are trying to work it into our operation. Anyone have any experience, good or bad…
I’m interested in this too.
Both of my shops have a drive thru window. Nothing wrong with them. Customers love to use them - as long as they know about it. AC (after Covid) use has skyrocketed since we closed our lobby for a period of time. Make sure you have a good notification system. Either a motion sensor of possibly a doorbell they can ring when they pull up. A video camera on it w/ a monitor somewhere in the store is good so that you can see if someone is there and the tone did not go off. If the drive thru is convenient to the rest of the store it is a plus. If it’s far out of the way I am sure it would almost take more time to serve a customer - get their name & money, then run to get the food, then run back to give it to them.
We have one that was a former bank as well and it has been great!
No real downside for us, as it accounts for 30-40 percent of our pickups and speeds the process along.
Picture is before opening last October.
There really isn’t a con. One of my locations is mainly carryout delivery. I have a very small dining area. I closed inside and went to drive thru and delivery only. Well, here we’re are and I’ve kept it that way. This store runs 3 Percent less labor than my others. Sales continue positive growth.
I would make sure if you have a drive thru window (like mentioned before) make it as convenient to the rest of the operation as possibly. Don’t want to walk to across the store away from everything else to hand out the pizzas, etc. Make 2 trips to greet the customer then go grab their food.
I’ve always envisioned the nightmare of someone getting in the drive thru line way before their order was ready, making everyone else behind wait.
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I think that is just a ‘can you pull up over there, we’ll bring it to you’.
I think if I was building from scratch, it would be a doorway you can walk out to hand the pizza out
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