by Lev Hladush
It is safe to say that Covid-19 pandemic changed the way we live forever, but probably the biggest changes affected the restaurants and food consumption. A lot of people prefer taking out to eating in, especially if it is a fast food chain restaurant, not a regular. It leaves them with two options – order food digitally with the help of official or third-party applications like Uber Eats and then wait for the delivery straight to their place. But initial spike in popularity of such method is decreasing, because more and more customers are unsatisfied with the cost of delivery fees. Actually, both customers AND restaurants are unsatisfied – restaurants are charged too, and sometimes their profit is cut by more than two times because of the fees. However, we also have a second option – Drive Thrus. A record breaking 90% of sales in McDonalds USA is made at the drive thru windows. And fast food restaurants are doing a lot to improve the efficiency of this method and to shorten the wait time. Many QSR(quick serving restaurants) are reducing the number of menu items present on the display or invest in permanent structure renovations of their buildings to add more driving lanes and reduce the sitting space in halls. And out of all the companies, Taco Bell are the ones who are embodying the most fundamental changes.
Firstly, they are opening the so-called Taco Bell Go Mobile locations, which will get rid of dining room alltogether, resulting in a building that is 47% smaller than a traditional Taco Bell restaurant.
But much more interesting thing is their first of its kind restaurant Taco Bell hopes to build in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. The franchisee claims that Taco Bell Defy is a concept “so different that it has never been constructed anywhere before.” There is no dining room. There are designated curbside pickup spots for mobile orders. And it has four drive-thru lanes(one lane for over-sized vehicles and three lanes passing directly beneath where the kitchen is, with orders getting lowered to the customers on a special elevator system. What is even more impressive is that Taco Bell is willing to cooperate with other fast food chains, to work as the cooking facility for them to prepare food on the same kitchen for different companies as a ‘ghost kitchen’. If it is successful, then they can enlarge their production capacities simply by prolonging the building itself, thus creating more space for more driving lanes for more customers. So the whole process is like a snow ball, or an avalanche.
It would also lower the costs of delivery, because instead of going to different places for different restaurants, the delivery driver can pick up all the delivery order from one window. Plus if the place becomes large enough it can even launch it’s own app-delivery service and reject third-party delivery apps alltogether.
Other commercial businesses could use this concept as well. The highest cost of delivery for companies like Amazon is the ‘last mile’, when packages are shipped directly to the home address of client. So having such a contactless distribution center capable of serving personal vehicles would come in handy for grocery stores, furniture stores and, in general, multi-purpose companies like Amazon or IKEA.
All in all, even though Taco Bell Defy is yet to open(approximately it will happen this summer), if everything goes the right way, we can expect that once again certain shopping habits and aspects that we were and are used to will transform drastically.
Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbuoZYZLipc&t=760s&ab_channel=TheFoodTheorists
https://www.foodandwine.com/news/taco-bell-defy-restaurant-drive-thru-concept
https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/taco-bell-franchisee-plans-2-story-store-with-4-drive-thru-lanes-in-minneso/594928/