Once seen as the ultimate of tomorrow’s customer service, drive-thru has become a drag both on the fight against the climate and on the profitability of many restaurateurs and on urban safety. Should we abolish it altogether?
This would not be unprecedented: in 2018, there were 27 municipalities in Canada that had adopted laws prohibiting or very strictly limiting this practice, born at a time during the last century when the automobile was the heart and soul of the economy. North American. Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver prohibit it. In all, 24% of the Canadian population lives in a city where driving is prohibited, in whole or in part.
In most cases, the ban is the result of a reflection on the safety and tranquility of the surrounding neighborhood, often made up largely of residential buildings. Anyone who lives in the suburbs near a restaurant that opens early in the morning knows how much the possibility of ordering a coffee without getting out of your car attracts motorized customers.
Customers often coming from outside. Many of these businesses are located at the intersection of particularly busy streets or highway ramps. This strategic positioning is required by the growth plan of some major fast food chains. The queue often stretches beyond the space reserved for it. So it ends up encroaching on sidewalks, bike lanes, and the road itself.
Even at very low speed, motorists forget to leave the public road free, which they will cut off for a few minutes – especially if this road is a cycle path.
A deserted window
According to industry data, it costs between $50,000 and $200,000 for a restaurateur to equip his business with a small sliding window intended for drive-through service. Not to mention the salaries paid for the employees who take care of it, day and night. Because its opening hours are often longer than those of the counter or the dining room.
Drive-thru, historically, is chargeable. This is sometimes the only truly lucrative part of a restaurant, which may only have one or two customers in its dining room and will still be profitable. It’s also the biggest source of wasted money: wrong orders cost American restaurateurs an average of US$54,000 in 2022, according to the 2023 edition of an annual quick-service restaurant industry survey by the firm Intouch Insight.
The shortage of labor further complicates, for many restaurateurs, the simultaneous operation of the counter, the room and the exterior window. Lack of employees is at least as painful in the restaurant business as it is in other industries. Result: establishments have stopped offering drive-thru service.
Not all of them clearly indicate this, so motorists needlessly queue for a few minutes, the time to understand that they will only be served if they get out of their vehicle to order inside.
Too many minutes
Summer or winter, these drive-thrus are heat islands that produce more than their fair share of harmful exhaust fumes. Motorists do not turn off their engines when queuing. In 2022, the average wait was 6 minutes 12 seconds for each of the customers who ordered a coffee or a meal at the drive-thru. According to Intouch Insight, the average drive-thru has 2.76 cars in its queue at all times.
If we combine these figures with statistics from the Department of Natural Resources Canada on the average fuel consumption and emissions of vehicles sold in the country, we get an idea of the environmental footprint of this practice. Letting your car’s engine idle for an hour consumes an average of 2 liters of fuel. This consumption is higher for SUVs and pickup trucks. There are more than 220,000 drive-throughs in North America, including about 20,000 in Canada.
In these queues were in 2022 vehicles that consumed at least 11.3 million liters of fuel… for nothing. At $1.58 per liter, the average price paid in the country in December 2022, $18 million goes up in smoke.
Let’s go further: each motorist who uses the drive-thru emits 414 grams of CO into the atmosphere each time2. In all, these are 23,000 tonnes of CO2 which are thus emitted, easily avoidable. This is the equivalent of the total pollutant emissions generated throughout their useful life by 10,000 vehicles.
In its report, Intouch Insight finds in 2022 a change in consumer habits that could mitigate the impact of drive-thru: the mobile application. Ordering in advance and then picking up your food at the counter is gaining popularity. It’s faster for the consumer and more productive for the restaurateur.
While this can make drive-thru less essential, the benefits are likely to be greater than one might think.