QSR October 2022

FAST CASUAL ’ S FUTURE

Months later, McAlister’s franchisee Richard Osborn spoke about the benefits of having the “call-ahead pick-up window” at the Midland restaurant. Osborn said the window—essen tially a drive-thru lane without a speaker system and designed explicitly to accommodate carryout orders—was accounting for 15 percent of the store’s sales and was servicing 75–85 cars during a busy hour, easing congestion in the dining room and heightening convenience for customers. It was, Osborn concluded, an unquestioned success, so much so he promised any future McAlister’s units built by his South west Deli Group would include a pickup window. After a dozen years, a global health pandemic, and a tech nological revolution that sent digital orders at quick-service and fast-casual establishments soaring—thereby replacing the aforementioned phone-in order with a mobile order—one in four McAlister’s Deli locations host a pickup window today. Shelley Harris, senior vice president of operations for McAli ster’s parent company Focus Brands, calls the pickup window, “a critical feature” in all new restaurant construction. “The pickup window is a natural extension of how con sumers’ expectations, preferences, and def inition of service has evolved,” Harris says, adding that guests’ hunger for con venience expedited the implementation of pickup windows at McAlister’s and its fast-casual peers in the Focus portfolio, which includes Schlotzsky’s, Moe’s Southwest Grill, and Jamba. “The pickup window experience allows guests to engage with our restaurants in a way that can help simplify and stream line their experience.” While fast casuals once largely shunned drive-thrus, a bold line distinguishing their more polished, sophisticated posi tioning from traditional fast-food players like McDonald’s or Burger King, the pickup window has emerged a mighty tool in recent years. Investing heavily in digital ordering technology and seek ing to address consumers’ constant hunt for convenience, if not safety in the COVID-19 era, fast casuals from coast to coast have

embraced the pickup window (or, alternatively, the pickup lane) to deliver speedy, safe service for the contemporary consumer. In the process, fast casuals have been able to challenge—if not top—the convenience and ease many drive-thru-powered quick-serves have long championed to consumers. QSR talked with f ive fast-casual brands about integrating pickup windows into their store design, what the windows pro vide, and why they are here to stay. CHIPOTLE: Providing a more efficient, discrete, and modern experience To increase access and convenience for guests while also sup porting the brand’s rising digital business, it began testing its so-called “Chipotlane” in early 2018, a drive-thru pickup lane designed to accommodate mobile orders from guests wishing to stay in their cars rather than entering the restaurant and plucking their order off the store’s dining room pickup shelves. A quick success at Chipotle’s Ohio test site, Chipotlanes are now present at more than 400 Chipotle restaurants and quite intentionally not called drive-thrus—a distinction Chipotle chief development off icer Tabassum Zalotrawala considers important as some jurisdictions prohibit drive-thrus. Chipotlanes enhance access, ease, and satisfaction for guests and, as a result, have generated strong results for the brand. In fact, new restaurants featuring a Chipotlane open with about 15 percent higher sales compared to their non-Chipotlane peers launched during the same period, Zalotrawala reports. Yet more, Chipotlane orders represent the brand’s highest margin transactions.

After f inding success with the pickup window in suburban areas, Chipotle re envisioned the Chipotlane for dense urban areas with high foot traffic and conceptu alized a walk-up window where vehicular lanes were not feasible. The brand began testing its first walk-up window near Chi cago’s Wrigley Field in late 2019 and now has nearly 20 in operation. “Chipotlanes are a key growth strategy for the brand and we are building a real estate pipeline that will accelerate new unit growth in the range of 8–10 percent per year, with greater than 80 percent of new restaurants having a Chipotlane,” Zalotrawala says. This includes the new Chipotlane Dig ital Kitchen in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, a digital-only prototype that serves guests exclusively through a Chipotlane and a walk-up window. Zalotrawala refers to Chipotlanes as “the digital drive-thru of the future,” a pickup lane eschewing the traditional

“CHIPOTLANES” ARE OFF AND RUNNING AT THE 3,000-UNIT BRAND.

CHIPOTLE

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OCTOBER 2022 | QSR | www.qsrmagazine.com