Our situation is different because we serve breakfast, lunch and dinner. We are about ready to open our drive thru and will probably not have pizza pick up at the window. Breaking new ground, there will be mistakes and adjustments. We do want to serve slices from the drive thru in addition to our scaled down drive thru menu.
I have not researched pizza drive thrus in California but that will be coming up. I talked with someone who owns two Little Caesars locations in the LA area. They installed a drive thru (maybe two) and are quite happy with the results. But the dynamics are different with Little Caesars obviously with their “Hot n” Ready" or whatever they call it. I guess their customers would order and get their pizzas immediately. I did research drive thru restaurants in Phoenix and Houston and even called some just to get a sense of the operations and results. I targeted only unusual and mostly one off concepts. There is a restaurant in Phoenix called Federal Pizza. It is a high end restaurant serving wood fired pizzas and other entrees. They appear to be very successful. They are in an old converted bank building. Looks to be a first class operation.
The thing that has concerned me the most is the almost inevitable longer wait time. We have a large menu over three meal periods. It is not going to be fast food speed by a long shot. The only other restaurant whose menu remotely compares with ours is Moe’s Southwest. I called many of their drive thru locations around the country and talked with whoever would talk to me. Definitely longer wait times but surprisingly few complaints. I guess people are happy sitting in their cars doing their thing on their cell phones.
There were a couple of particularly interesting drive thus in Phoenix I called. I was interested in how operators would deal with timing as in your pizza (or any other food type) order. Difficult to mix the somewhat unpredictable times for pizza with other food that can come out quickly. Both of the places I called had an area where customers could wait in their cars but out of the regular drive thru lane. When their food was ready an employee would run it out to them. In reading reviews of these restaurants there were virtually no complaints about having to wait off to the side. One other factor I think contributed to the customer satisfaction with this approach. There were many reviews about the nice and considerate employees.
Buy the way, I found several pizza drive thrus in the mid west. Maybe the weather is a factor here. Snow, hurricanes, tornados, heavy rain. Probably any kind of menu would work for a drive thru in those conditions. One thing is very clear…there are a lot of people out there now who simply do not want to get out of their cars to get their food. It has definitely created more acceptability of longer wait times. Maybe not for the traditional fast food guys but definitely for the rest of us.
