When Dallas-based Pizza Patron opened its latest location in San Antonio in October 2008, the chain known as it its fast service pizza idea, or QSP. The restaurant has a drive-thru window and an outside menu board. Clients order by talking right into a microphone, then drive a number of extra toes to a window to choose up their pizza. Andrew Gamm, director of brand name growth for the rising chain (which is approaching 100 items on the time of this writing), says the corporate needs to vary the way in which folks purchase pizza. “Our objective is to ship drive-thru service that rivals the non-pizza QSR phase,” he says.
Whereas drive-thrus are widespread amongst burger and different fast service eating places, few pizza operators provide clients the comfort of ordering pizza, then not having to go away their automobiles to choose it up. Pizza takes quarter-hour or longer to prepare dinner, an period of time that drive-thru customers may not tolerate. They’re accustomed to filling their orders in two or three minutes.
Pizza Patron dealt with the pace of service problem by working with an organization to develop an oven that bakes a pie in 4 minutes. The restaurant additionally narrowed the drive-thru decisions to about 5 menu gadgets. “Quickness and effectivity supersede customization,” Gamm says.
For many different pizza operators, drive-thru means the client orders by telephone or on-line, then drives to the restaurant to choose up the meals at a window. That methodology is one technique to encourage folks to choose up their pizzas, as a substitute of getting the restaurant ship. “You’ll be able to cut back bills by placing in a window,” says Mark Ulrey, proprietor of the six-unit Flyer’s Pizza & Subs in Columbus, Ohio. The lowered bills come from hiring fewer supply drivers, and probably having decrease insurance coverage prices and different prices related to supply. 4 of the Flyer’s areas provide drive-thru service, which accounts for about 35 % of these shops’ gross sales. “Most of that enterprise has been taken away from supply,” says Ulrey.
Moreover, he notes, there are bills related to drive-thru. The situation needs to be a standalone or an finish cap constructing. “These value a pair extra {dollars} per sq. foot,” he says. Two Flyer’s areas are finish cap and two are standalone. There are different constructing necessities. The window needs to be sufficiently big to accommodate an 18-inch pizza field. That’s bigger than a drive through window at a burger place. The work space close to the window must have its personal money register. The kitchen would possibly have to be redesigned to place the staging space or the holding space nearer to the window.
There’s additionally know-how to alert employees {that a} automotive has pulled into the drive through space. That could possibly be a magnet system constructed into the pavement, just like sensors that set off a visitors gentle, or an ultrasonic detector that sends a excessive frequency sound after which detects when the sound bounces off a automotive.
Daren Haas is vp of promoting and new enterprise growth for HM Electronics (HME), a Poway, California-based firm that makes ultrasonic detectors and different drive-thru associated know-how reminiscent of headsets and timers. He says new know-how will make it simpler for eating places to develop their drive-thru processes. “You may get an embedded RFID tag in your bank card or cellular phone so you possibly can faucet and go for cost, and there’s additionally cellular phone and on-line ordering that shops your preferences,” he explains.
Haas provides that, on the whole, some areas usually tend to see expanded drive-thru than others. “In Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and different open areas, it’s large. It’s nearly non existent in California due to zoning legal guidelines and actual property may be very costly.”
Some drive-thru areas are low tech. Kim Trotta, whose husband opened Trotta’s Pizza and Drive-Via in Cincinnati in 1996, says Trotta’s is in a constructing that was a automotive wash. “Among the drive-thrus listed here are in outdated barns,” she says. “Ours may be very engaging.” The world has companies that promote donuts, quick meals, groceries, even beer and wine by means of drive-thru home windows.
Columbus, Ohio-based Donatos has 176 areas. Spokesperson Tom Santor says greater than 70 % have drive-thru home windows, and in these areas, drive-thru accounts for 15 to twenty % of gross sales. One problem is to teach clients concerning the drive-thru possibility. “The largest factor is simply the nomenclature of it,” he says. “On the again of our menu, now we have a phone icon and we confer with the call-ahead drive-thru window.” The knowledge is on the Donatos Web page too.
Ulrey says Flyer’s workers lets clients know they’ll decide up orders at a window. “You educate them,” he says. “On the telephone we are saying, ‘Is that this going to be pickup, supply or drive-thru?’ ” Junk mail items additionally point out the drive-thru. Gamm says opening the QSP entailed altering the mindset of Pizza Patron staff. Many have been used to clients calling, then ready for supply or arriving twenty minutes later. “Now an order is available in and the clock is working,” he says. “You’ve got a couple of minutes to get it executed.”
The chain plans to open extra QSP areas. The following one will probably be in a former Popeye’s Rooster location that has a drive-thru. Gamm says the brand new format offers the chain extra choices in website choice. “We will get into actual property that wouldn’t work with our mannequin beforehand,” he says. “It’s solely going to get higher. We’re very optimistic about progress.” ?
Discuss to the Signal ”
Drive-thru clients need to communicate to somebody or one thing. That’s not as a result of they’ve a criticism, however as a result of they’re used to yelling right into a microphone to position an order. Sadly for these frequent customers of drive through quick meals, the pizza drive-thru is totally different. With pizza, “drive-thru” normally means “name or order on-line, then decide up at a window.” There isn’t any microphone exterior.
“It’s a long run ongoing schooling,” says Tom Santor, spokesperson for Columbus, Ohio-based Donatos. “They drive up and ask, ‘Do I speak into this signal?’ ”
Kim Trotta, of the household owned Trotta’s Pizza and Drive-Via in Cincinnati, Ohio, says she has seen a number of folks speak to the signage exterior the constructing, a former automotive wash. “If you first proceed into the doorway of the drive-thru, there’s a small signal that claims our hours. It’s humorous … typically folks speak into it. We allow them to speak into it, then we stroll over to them.”
Nora Caley is a contract author specializing in meals and enterprise subjects. She lives in Denver, Colorado
