Quick-service chains unveil new restaurant designs focused on convenience and the drive-thru

Quick-Service Chains Focus on Convenience

New, smaller formats boast smaller footprints, digital integration

By Marianne Wilson

The pandemic is causing some of the nation’s leading fast-food chains to rethink their restaurant designs, with an eye on convenience, contactless pickup and a drive-thru experience enhanced by technology.

The interior space is taking a backseat to exterior elements as consumers continue to favor online ordering and drive-thru lanes. In many instances, footprints are getting smaller as operators streamline customer access points.

“Retailers can learn a lot from quickservice restaurants that are enabling their digital-first customers,” said Michael Brown, partner and retail lead for the Americas at global strategy and management consulting firm Kearney. “Contactless and frictionless are preferred ways of payment. Consumers will expect BOPIS to evolve to in-vehicle curbside in every situation. Retailers who can successfully execute on in-vehicle curbside have the potential to convert consumers from ship-to-home to curbside, thus significantly reducing costs.”

Here’s a look at how several quick-service chains are reimagining their designs.

Taco Bell: The new “Taco Bell Go Mobile” concept, which will debut in the first quarter of 2021, is designed to enhance the digital and drive-thru experience for customers. It has two drive-thru lanes, including a new priority pick-up lane with quick service for customers who have ordered online via the Taco Bell app. (Customers can still walk into the restaurant and order at the counter.)

Taco Bell Burger King

To streamline the experiences even further, the eateries will also include tablet ordering in drive-thrus, which along with curbside pickup, will be operated by a “concierge service” of employee “bellhops.”

Other features include smart kitchen technology that is integrated with the brand’s app. The technology detects when customers have arrived and alerts them to the quickest route for pick-up: curbside, the express lane or carry-out.

At 1,325 sq. ft., Taco Go Mobile locations will have a much smaller footprint compared to the average 2,500-sq.-ft. Taco Bell.

McDonald’s: The fast-food giant is testing a number of drive-thru concepts and initiatives, including automating ordering and payments by identifying customers at the display screen. In addition, new technology will alert store employees to prep orders when customers are nearby, with dedicated parking spaces helping to ensure fast pick-up.

McDonald’s is also piloting a new express drive-thru lane that lets customers using its get their food even faster, with some stores delivering express drive-thru orders via conveyor belt.

Chipotle

Shake Shack

Burger King: The chain has two futuristic restaurant designs in the works that offer a “touchless” experience, with a footprint that’s about 60% smaller than a traditional Burger King restaurant site.

The new designs will feature dedicated mobile order and curbside pick-up areas, drivein and walk-up order areas, an enhanced drive-thru experience and exterior dining spaces. The reimagined restaurant blueprints also allow for mobile and delivery orders to be picked up from coded food lockers facing the exterior of the restaurant. The food will come straight from the kitchen to the pickup lockers.

One design option features a suspended kitchen and dining room above drive-thru lanes. There are three drive-thru lanes — with one exclusively for delivery drivers — and a walk-up window.

Orders will be delivered from the kitchen by a conveyor belt system. Customers eat their food in the dining room or covered outdoor area above the drive-thru entrance.

The other design has two drive-thru lanes and a shaded outdoor dining patio. Customers can also park their cars under solar-powered canopies and have their orders delivered directly to their vehicles after scanning a QR code at their parking spot and placing their order on Burger King’s mobile app.

Chipotle Mexican Grill: The new “Chipotle Digital Kitchen” is the company’s first-ever digital-only restaurant. With no dining or front service line, it fills pick-up and delivery orders only.

Customers must order in advance via the Chipotle website or app, or third-party delivery partners. Orders can be picked up from a lobby that includes all the sounds, smells and kitchen views of a traditional Chipotle restaurant.

Chipotle is also testing other innovations. The chain is piloting “carside pickup” at select locations, with plans to roll it out nationwide later this year. Online orders are delivered directly to customers’ parked cars. And “Chipotlanes,” the brand’s drive-thru digital order pickup lanes, are expected to be included in the majority of new Chipotle restaurants opening this year.

El Pollo Loco: The fast-casual, grilled chicken chain is debuting a format designed to enhance off-premise convenience. There are two versions of the new design, with one focused on drive-thru and pick-up. It features a take-out window, a dual drivethru, dedicated curbside pick-up parking spaces, and patio seating — but no indoor dining room.

The second version includes a dual drivethru, dedicated curbside pick-up parking spaces and a smaller than typical dining room that opens up to an expansive patio via flexible garage-styled doors. When the doors are open, the indoor and outdoor experiences “seamlessly blend,” according to the company, and increase the comfort level of the customers inside by enabling them to enjoy their meal in an airy, well-ventilated environment.

The two designs share an enhanced digitized experience, including a double drive-thru with digital menu boards and GPS-enabled curbside pick-up. Customers will have the option to go fully contactless and pick up their mobile to-go orders from designated cubbies inside the restaurant. The digital features are all integrated with the company’s mobile app.

Shake Shack: The fast-growing eatery will open its first-ever location with a drive-thru later this year, at the Vineland Pointe outdoor center in Orlando, Florida. The 3,300-sq.ft. unit will feature a digital menu board, a two-lane ordering system, a separate walk up window for picking up online orders and a patio. The company expects to open five to eight Shacks with drive-thru lanes during the next two years.

In addition, Shake Shack is also adding digitally enabled interior and exterior walk-up windows to select locations.

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Supporting Inclusion in the Workplace

Making ALL employees feel at home

By Sarah Alter

The Network of Executive Women was established in 2001, and since that time most would say that workplaces have gotten better for LGBTQ+ people. Yet there is still a major disconnect at many organizations between stated progress and the day-to-day experience of being an LGBTQ+ person at work. [LGBTQ+stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (or questioning) and others.]

In 2018, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) published its “A Workplace Divided’ study and it stated that the number of employees who were closeted at work had dropped. Unfortunately, that number had only dropped by 4% — from 50% to 46% — during the 10 years since their previous study in 2008.

As the HRC stated in it’s report, “LGBTQ workers lack faith in accountability systems, sometimes with good reason.” They found that workers primarily don’t report hearing their coworkers speak negatively about LGTBQ+ people because they simply don’t think anything will be done to stop it. They also fear harming their relationships with coworkers.

For LGBTQ+ employees to be their full selves at work, organizations need to prove they are worthy of their employees’ trust. And that starts at the top.

Zero tolerance for intolerance

The HRC reported that one in 10 employees has heard a supervisor making negative comments about LGBTQ+ people. This leads to employees who feel excluded from company culture, 31% of whom state that they feel depressed at work. Knowing you may have depressed employees who feel denigrated by their supervisors for who they are should be enough to prompt any employer to take swift and decisive action.

Allyship [the state or condition of being an ally] can only begin when accountability has been established. LGTBQ+ employees need to hear clearly stated policies from their employer which ban discriminatory language from the workplace, and encourage who that hear it to report it via an unbiased accountability system. Forty-five percent of LGBTQ+ people agreed with the statement that “enforcement of the non-discrimination policy is dependent on their supervisor’s own feelings towards LGBTQ people,” adding to the pressing need for an impartial resource outside their direct supervisor.

Fifty-percent of LGBTQ+ workers stated they believe they are the only LGBTQ+ person in their workplace. Ensuring that employees who feel isolated are secure in the knowledge that their identity will be respected could not be of more critical importance for their comfort, happiness and retention. outsized impact on the well-being of those around you. One such resource was created by the NYC Department of Social Services and it does a wonderful job.

Remember, educating yourself should be the order of the day along with arranging for professional education for your team. Relying on LGBTQ+ coworkers to educate you adds additional stress to an already stressful situation. Some wonderful online resources you can lean on instead include the Human Rights Campaign and the University of California San Francisco’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Resource Center.

Stand by your team and they’ll stand by you

After education, however, comes action. Allies need to be willing to speak up at work when they hear a coworker, fellow supervisor, or even fellow board member denigrating LGBTQ+ people. “It’s just a joke” is never an excuse for making members of the LGBTQ+ community feel they don’t belong in your workplace.

Twenty-percent of LGBTQ+ people working in an unwelcoming environment said they were looking for other jobs, and 17% of LGBTQ+ people report being exhausted with trying to hide their identity at work. If

If nothing else, the cost of replacing employees lost to prejudice — and the strong evidence that diverse workplaces lead to better business outcomes — should motivate businesses to respond.

Allyship — actions mean more, but words matter

Allyship begins with education, and there is no better way to start than with robust education for employees on unconscious bias and the realities of the LGBTQ+ community. Fifty-three percent of LGBTQ+ people reported hearing jokes about their community at work, while just 37% of non-LGBTQ+ employees heard them. This gap shows unconscious bias in the minds of many non-LGBTQ+ employees, which, while unintentional, can only change with education.

Respecting pronoun use is another way to show your allyship. There are many wonderful resources out there to help explain why this small sign of respect can have nothing else, the cost of replacing employees lost to prejudice — and the strong evidence that diverse workplaces lead to better business outcomes — should motivate businesses to respond.

The report cited in this article is from 2018, and there can be no doubt that the COVID-19 epidemic has wrought many changes on our workplaces since. But with our coworkers more involved in our lives than ever — seeing our dogs, our homes, and our children over Zoom — everyone deserves to be as open as they would like to be at work.

— Sarah Alter is president and CEO of the Network of Executive Women, a non-profit learning, leadership and gender equality advocacy organization that counts more than 300 national and regional corporate partners.