Via a partnership with longtime franchisee Border Foods, Taco Bell is set to launch a new store design the QSR chain says will “simplify drive-thru time significantly,” according to a press release sent to The Spoon. Dubbed Taco Bell Defy, the initiative was first announced at the beginning of 2021, when the store prototype surfaced.
Border Foods enlisted Minneapolis-based design firm Vertical Works to assist with conceptualizing the new building, which will be restaurant number 230 for Taco Bell and Border Foods, and the pair’s 82nd new build.
Speed of service via digital means is the emphasis here. The Defy location will include four drive-thru lanes, three of which will be dedicated to mobile orders and pickups for delivery. (One lane will function like a traditional drive-thru lane.) For these mobile-order lanes, customers will check in and order via QR code, then retrieve their food from a lift system that eradicates the human-to-human touchpoint during a traditional food handoff. The kitchen itself, meanwhile, will be elevated above the drive-thru lanes and staff able to communicate with customers via audio and video features.
Aspects of the Defy location are reminiscent of store design plans from another major QSR, Burger King. The Home of the Whopper unveiled a store prototype last year that also featured suspended kitchens, multiple drive-thru lanes, and a conveyor belt system that would deliver food to customers without an actual human-to-human interaction.
Other chains, including McDonald’s, have announced various initiatives over the last several months aimed at digitizing more of the drive-thru operation and in the process speeding up service times. Wait times at the drive-thru have progressively increased over the last several years, and the latest data shows that total wait time in 2020 was about 30 seconds longer than 2019 across the QSR sector.
So far, only the designs themselves have surfaced for these various store concepts. We have yet to see how these ideas function in real time, in real life, and just how widespread they wind up being in terms of the population’s QSR experience.
Taco Bell breaks ground this month in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, with plans to open by summer 2022.
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