QSR October 2022

DRIVE - THRU

About a month later, Engler had in front of him a rendering of an elevated building with drive-thru lanes underneath it. It was initially called “High Top” and resembled a cross between a bank, toll booth, and, according to some, Taco Bell from the 1993 Sci-Fi Movie, “DemolitionMan,” where the chain became the “only restaurant to survive the franchise wars,” complete with parking valets and a live pianist. Regardless of how it’s labeled, though, the restaurant, which would eventually be dubbed “Defy” by Taco Bell corporate, rep resented the “holy grail of technology in a drive-thru,” brand president and global COOMike Grams says. And it was, with out much dispute, the most vivid manifestation of the restaurant of the future since COVID-19 reset the status quo. “You have to admit, it’s a wow moment,” Engler says. “It really puts you back on your heels and makes you say, these guys have rethought the industry in terms of how people not only access the brand, but experience the brand.” THE MAKINGS OF A REVOLUTION Strommen is the co-founder of Vertical Works and CEO of PD Instore, a design, production, and installation company that’s worked with retail giants like Apple, Indian Motorcycle, Samsung, and Sony on everything from custom f it displays to brand revivals. The fact the company hadn’t approached a quick-service project before allowed it to take a whitepaper dive into Taco Bell’s Defy, Engler says. “It was interesting,” he says, “because it really took someone outside thinking rather than inside thinking to come up with this idea.” The 3,000-square-foot, two-story building circulated social media like wildfire when it opened in June in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. The modernist, neon-lit ( in purple, naturally) res taurant claims it can reduce drive-thru service time to two minutes or less. And it would already be there, Engler says, if customers didn’t stop so often to take pictures. It’s a four-lane building with three dedicated specif ically for mobile orders and third-party delivery pickup. The fourth boasts a speaker box and menuboard. During the process, two-way audio and video technology enables customers to interact with employees, who are housed on the second story. For each of the three mobile order drive thru lanes, there’s a digital check-in kiosk where guests/delivery drivers scan a QR code so Taco Bell can identify the order and prepare it for pickup. Once made, an employee places the meal in a proprietary vertical lift system that transports it down to diners. Additionally, customers can park, walk inside, and grab mobile orders off a pickup shelf, if they choose, or order at the counter. There are digital kiosks inside, bringing the options to grab orders to nearly a half-dozen ways. Going back, Engler says the pandemic served more to uncover a growing reality than invent it. Pressure on the drive-thru arrived like an anvil. Consumers suddenly had more ways to access Taco Bell than ever, whether through third-party, tra ditional channels, web ordering, etc. “What it came to was there was always this single pain point of getting the food,” he says. “Ordering was relatively easy and there are many differ

ent channels to do that. But it funnels down to the one point of contact, and that’s really the drive-thru window.” The Defy concept was developed in partnership with Min neapolis-based Vertical Works Inc, a design company powered by WORKSHOP and the aforementioned PD Instore. The project came together quickly. It went from a clean sheet of paper and design concept in July 2020 to opening as a fully operational business two years later in June. Of course, myriad events unfurled between those points. Engler first asked Strommen if he was sure they could build the proprietary lift. “He said, ‘don’t worry about,’” Engler recalls. And then, Engler brought the idea to Taco Bell. Engler and Border Foods have been Taco Bell franchisees for 36 years. They dabbled in other brands but always returned to Yum!’s taco giant. Since 2013, the company hasn’t strayed. It will close out the year with about 240 locations, going along at a pace of roughly 10 new incremental builds a year and 20–25 remodels per calendar. Border Foods has no outside money or equity. Engler, who is 65, told Grams and Taco Bell CEO Mark King Border Foods would build Defy on its own nickel. Taco Bell was tasked with making the tech work and Strommen struck a deal with the chain on the lifts. Speaking of, the lifts were A1 on the task chart. They ran outside in the winter. Through rain. Everything a surly Mid western season could throw at it. Engler estimates the lifts spun 500,000 revolutions before getting green-lighted. Parallel, the parties met with Taco Bell for almost a year and a half, monthly, if not bi-weekly at times, for conference calls to work through the tech platforms and stack. “It was a perfect storm with the entrepreneurial spirit of the franchisee, the entrepreneurial spirit of a large corporation like Taco Bell, and, clearly, the outside thinking of what Mike and Josh [Hanson, co-founder of Verti cal Works and CEO of WORKSHOP], brought to this whole idea,” Engler says. “And it came across through a friendship.” Engler says he’s been asked why Defy wasn’t conceptual ized before by other brands. His answer: It was hiding in plain sight. “But part of the problem is that you only know what you know,” Engler says. “And these guys, they didn’t know what rules they could or could not break.” A VIEW INTO THE (NOT-SO-DISTANT) FUTURE Grams says COVID forced all brands to ask themselves where the consumer was going. Everyone started to experience the emergence of digital and delivery. The notion digital could mix a large percentage of transactions was no longer a white whale for restaurants. At Taco Bell, however, drive-thru was the furthest thing from a pandemic pivot. Before Glen Bell created the brand, he started Bell’s Drive-In and Taco Tia in the San Bernardino, California, area. “We believe we excel at drive-thru and do a really good job,” Grams says. “The challenge for us is how are you going to disrupt yourself, take digital business, and con vert it into a drive-thru when the drive-thru is already a pretty good experience that’s painless to the consumer.”

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OCTOBER 2022 | QSR | www.qsrmagazine.com