What are Drive-Thru Restaurants and Their Design Guidelines?

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Drive-through or Drive-thru means a restaurant, bank, etc. designed so that customers can use it without leaving their cars.

Drive-through facility is the platform to distribute products or services through an attendant or an automatic machine, to persons remaining in vehicles in the corridors. Drive-through facility can combine the common utilities and other uses, such as the financial institution or stores, personal services, or retail shop or enterprise to eat or gas stations.

Drive-thru restaurant is a type of service that restaurants provide and allow their customers to buy products without leaving their cars. Orders are usually made using the microphone and picked up personally from the window. Cars create a line and move in one direction. They usually do not stop, food is brought to the window by one called carhop, and the customer can stay in the parked car to eat. However, during peak periods, to keep waiting down and avoid traffic problems, drive-thru restaurants occasionally switch to an order-at-the-window where the customers eat in designed park areas.

Drive-through can replace drive-ins to save your time and to help not to be late. They now can be found in most of major fast food chains.

In drive-thru restaurants, there are signs of lanes through the drive to show customers the open lanes to go through. There are generally illuminated signs that change the “open” message to “closed” when the path is not available.

Restaurant chains, who spent a lot of time and effort to improve their technology, are starting to turn their attention to drive- thru. They add additional leans and additional windows.

“It may seem like a drive-thru,” says Tabassum Zalotrawala, chief development officer for Chipotle Mexican Grill, which is adding mobile-order drive-thru pickup windows called “Chipotlanes” to dozens of locations this year. “But I believe strongly that our version of the drive-thru allows us to keep our brand ethos.”

Restaurants should not only consider efficient traffic flow, but also provide a comfortable experience without entering the restaurant, with an estimated 60%-70% of sales in drive-thru paths.

Some design tips of drive-thru restaurants:

Direction and road signs

You should take into account the speed of the experience for drive-thru users without affecting the comfort of those who choose to go inside the restaurant. These are critical signs that help remove confusion about drive-thru, as well as ensuring that people who go inside the restaurant are not impacted by the drive thru line.

Pre-sell signage

It can increase sales of specific offers or limited-time offers, so placement is critical.

Orders platform

It is where the consumer must make the decision to buy, but it is also the first personal point of communication between consumers and the brand. Placing the menu board is critical.

Exterior signage

Exterior signage can help drive-thru customers as well as those who go inside the restaurant to make decisions about what to order and this contributes in increasing sales.

 

Architectural design guidelines:

• The design should respond to the elements of the context through means such as building height, setbacks, building orientation and architectural styles.
• You should locate buildings near the street to help determination the edge of the street.
• Providing a broad landscape, along with building orientation, to enhance streetscape and define the edge of the street.
• Most of the pedestrian façade facing the street should be very transparent with glass windows and the doors that animate public streets.
• Coordination of architectural details and architectural character within the concept of general design of all aspects and components of the building.
• Providing customer entry doors visible from public streets and can be accessed directly from the public pavement.
• Providing entry doors for customers near parking spaces.
• Providing a 2.0-meter wide pedestrian walkway between the public berth (and / or parking spaces) and building entrances.

So, drive-thru restaurants are the best choice that you can make use of it to save your time and to make comfortable experience with customers with lots of advantages.