QSR October 2022

DRIVE - THRU

Again, Engler says, Defy is getting guests through the jour ney in under two minutes when they follow the path. When Steve Hoffman, writing for The Washington Post, dropped by, it took a minute and 46 seconds from QR scanner to drive off. Customers keep shooting fodder for social media, though, Engler laughs. “Every millennial in the car is taking a video, and, of course, they’ve got to have their friends in it,” he says. ONLY THE BEGINNING Engler visited Defy in July and realized it’s become more than just another build, to put it lightly. The most photographed store in the chain’s 7,021-unit domestic portfolio is in Pacifica, California, a unit that feels like a beach bungalow. Next is the Cantina in Las Vegas where people can get married with sauce packet bouquets. But the social inquires and postings of Defy, Grams says, has exceeded both. “It’s become a destination,” he says. “When we were out there … there were some stories of people parking their drones, taking pictures of it.” “It’s like when you see the Empire State Building for the very first time,” Grams adds. “The pictures [online] are great and everybody is excited, but they don’t do it justice.” While he couldn’t divulge exacts, Grams says the uptick in the sales sustainability has been “pretty incredible.” “We’re only going to get better at operating it,” he says. “That’s what’s exciting.” Engler adds the excitement level remains high. As does trial. People want to sample the “tacos from the sky,” as Hoffman put it in his article. The customer feedback to Defy, from the same third-party metrics Taco Bell generally deploys, has been three times higher than the Minnesota market, “which is already really high results,” Grams says. It’s been seven times higher than the brand overall. “So when you look at how they perceive cleanliness, hos pitality, product, speed, and accuracy, it is seven times higher than the average Taco Bell,” Grams reiterates. And on the same ratings, which cover “probably about 17” brands benchmarked in Minneapolis, Border Foods is No. 1 in overall execution across all of the bars Grams noted. The location opened up far stronger than any other Border Foods’ restaurant incrementally built, Engler says. So much so, the company is now in the process of measuring what it thinks it can do with a scrape and rebuild. Only this time, with a hybrid of a small dining room. That will allow the company, Engler says, to capture the lunch trade in markets where there’s a solid rate of foot traffic inside restaurants. “We don’t want to alienate those customers and force them to do something that’s out of their character,” he says. “So were adapting the asset to have a dining room that will seat the appropriate amount of people for that daypart, as well as doing three lanes.” With a dining room factored in, Taco Bell can shed a lane from “Defy 1.” Engler believes this will be the true measure of the through

put boost Border Foods feels it can achieve through the genesis of Defy’s main characteristics. And the experiment will be aided by the fact the Englers own more than 50 percent of their port folio and real estate, which opens f lexibility. This next iteration of Defy will look just like the first, in terms of the purple light and elevated design. The exterior will mir ror the original, but there will be a dining room on one side with windows. “What I think you’ll see as a brand as we work with Lee and other franchisees to actually branch out and hybrid some dif ferent models of Defy,” Grams adds, “while keeping the base principles alive on it.” Throughout Taco Bell’s franchise system, there’s been an excitement and eagerness to learn from Defy and, of course, be a part of it. It’s a model that’s learnings are going to shape the future of the drive-thru experience for Taco Bell, Grams says. Still, the brand will continue to build Go Mobile and other formats. “But the Defy, certainly, will be part of the future,” Grams says. “And elements will start to show up in some of the remodels and retrof its across the system as we sale it out and continue to grow at the pace that we’ve been growing at.” WHERE THE INDUSTRY STANDS Defy, as much as anything, signals a shift in foodservice tides. If you go back decades, much of the sector, especially quick ser vice, was unchanged since inception. No place was this truer than the drive-thru. It’s why technology was never as preva lent in restaurants as other fields. In the 90s, the point of sale was the revolutionary disruption from the cash register. Then came kitchen display systems. Yet overall, retail has long felt ahead of restaurants. What’s happened, however, Engler says, is technologies amid COVID triggered broader access to brands. So operators are rethinking the traditional model and how it works. Can you make getting food as frictionless, fast, and intuitive as order ing from Amazon? “That’s why I believe it took outside thinking to really look at our industry and say hey, this industry needs to evolve in terms of how it does what it does,” Engler says. “So what does that look like? And quite honestly, I think our competitors, includ ing ourselves … it wasn’t in their realm of thinking.” Defy cracked open an opportunity to elevate the experience and promote and provide what the quick-service consumer really wants, Engler says. Dressed down, it gives them choice. “I think we’re going to provide full f lexibility in that expe rience for our guests,” Engler says. Grams adds none of this would have come to light without communication between Taco Bell and franchisees. “You can’t as a brand be the only one who comes up with these ideas to make the brand better,” he says. “It takes healthy franchisees who are progressive, who think about the future, and are beyond the nuts and bolts of the business and into where the consumer is going. They need to push the brand to say, hey, we’ve got to go.” q

Danny Klein is Food News Media’s editorial director. Contact him at danny@QSRmagazine.com .

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OCTOBER 2022 | QSR | www.qsrmagazine.com