{"id":288237,"date":"2026-04-27T14:48:59","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T14:48:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.franconnect.com\/?p=288237"},"modified":"2026-04-27T14:56:02","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T14:56:02","slug":"drive-thru-coffee-is-the-fastest-growing-segment-in-franchising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.franconnect.com\/en_au\/drive-thru-coffee-is-the-fastest-growing-segment-in-franchising\/","title":{"rendered":"Drive-Thru Coffee Is the Fastest-Growing Segment in Franchising. Here’s What the Winners Understand."},"content":{"rendered":"

Drive-thru coffee\u00a0isn’t\u00a0a trend.\u00a0It’s\u00a0becoming how people expect to get their coffee \u2014 and the numbers back it up.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dutch Bros reported same-store sales growth of 7.7% in Q4 2025, driven\u00a0almost entirely\u00a0by transaction volume, not price increases. 7\u00a0Brew\u00a0surpassed 300 locations across 31 states in under a decade. Scooter’s Coffee is deliberately targeting secondary and tertiary markets \u2014 smaller cities and suburban corridors that major chains have overlooked \u2014 and building fierce loyalty there. Across the industry, drive-thru now accounts for 55% of coffee shop revenue, and that share is climbing.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The brands leading this segment\u00a0aren’t\u00a0just picking good locations.\u00a0They’ve\u00a0figured out something more fundamental: drive-thru coffee is a different operating model than a traditional caf\u00e9, and the ones treating it that way are the ones pulling away.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Speed is the product<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

In a traditional coffee shop, the experience is layered. Ambiance, service, the quality of the drink, the feel of the space \u2014 all of it contributes to why a customer comes back. There’s room to recover from a slow day or an off interaction because the overall environment carries weight.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In a drive-thru, the product is\u00a0speed. A customer pulls in, orders, pays, and leaves \u2014 often in under two minutes. That single interaction, repeated hundreds of times a day, is the entire brand experience.\u00a0There’s\u00a0no atmosphere to compensate for a slow line. No table to linger at if the first impression falls flat.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So\u00a0throughput \u2014 seconds per car \u2014 becomes the metric that drives everything: staffing decisions, equipment layout, menu design, training priorities.\u00a0Every person has to be in the right position, executing the same way, every shift.\u00a0One bottleneck affects every car behind it.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dutch Bros has built their entire brand around getting this right. Their loyalty program now accounts for 73% of total transactions \u2014\u00a0nearly three\u00a0quarters of their customers have built Dutch Bros into their daily routine. That kind of loyalty\u00a0isn’t\u00a0won with a good drink.\u00a0It’s\u00a0won with a fast, friendly experience that feels\u00a0exactly the same\u00a0whether\u00a0it’s\u00a0your first visit or your hundredth.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

New markets\u00a0don’t\u00a0give you a long runway<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

The other thing that makes drive-thru operationally distinct is what happens when you open somewhere the brand is unknown.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A caf\u00e9 entering a new market can\u00a0build\u00a0gradually. Word of mouth, foot traffic, the slow accumulation of regulars \u2014 there’s time to find your footing. A drive-thru\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0work that way. The first few weeks set the unit’s trajectory. Customers who pull through and hit a slow, disorganized line move on. In smaller markets \u2014 where Scooter’s is doing some of its best work \u2014 a\u00a0rocky opening travels\u00a0fast.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is why Scooter’s strategy of saturating secondary markets with multiple locations is smart, but it only works if each location runs well from day one.\u00a0You’re\u00a0not building brand awareness through a flagship and letting it spread organically.\u00a0You’re\u00a0building it through every unit, all at once.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dutch Bros opened 154 new locations in a single year \u2014 including in states where nobody had heard of them \u2014 and still hit a record average unit volume of $2.1 million.\u00a0That’s\u00a0not luck. That means you\u00a0have to\u00a0run every opening the same way, whether\u00a0it’s\u00a0your 10th location or your 150th. The market is new. The playbook\u00a0can’t\u00a0be.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The infrastructure behind the window<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

What separates the drive-thru operators pulling away from the pack\u00a0isn’t\u00a0the coffee.\u00a0It’s\u00a0the infrastructure behind the window.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When\u00a0you’re\u00a0opening locations at that pace, in markets\u00a0you’ve\u00a0never\u00a0operated\u00a0in,\u00a0a lot can go wrong quietly. A franchisee who\u00a0isn’t\u00a0quite ready. A compliance step that gets skipped in the rush to open. A unit that’s three weeks in and already running slower than it should be, but nobody at the home office knows yet.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The brands getting this right have figured out how to keep the\u00a0whole system\u00a0tight even as it grows \u2014 opening workflows that work the same way every time, field operations that surface problems early, franchisee support that\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0depend on someone picking up the phone. Not because\u00a0they’re\u00a0being cautious, but because that consistency is exactly what makes the growth possible.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The opportunity\u00a0in\u00a0drive-thru coffee is real, and\u00a0it’s\u00a0far from over. The brands that understand\u00a0they’re\u00a0running a different kind of business \u2014 and\u00a0operate\u00a0accordingly \u2014 are the ones\u00a0who’ll\u00a0still be growing when everyone else is trying to figure out what went wrong.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a traditional coffee shop, the experience is layered. Ambiance, service, the quality of the drink, the feel of the space \u2014 all of it contributes to why a customer comes back. There’s room to recover from a slow day or an off interaction because the overall environment carries weight.\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":288238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-288237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-improve-performance"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franconnect.com\/en_au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franconnect.com\/en_au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franconnect.com\/en_au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franconnect.com\/en_au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franconnect.com\/en_au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288237"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.franconnect.com\/en_au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":288240,"href":"https:\/\/www.franconnect.com\/en_au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288237\/revisions\/288240"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franconnect.com\/en_au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franconnect.com\/en_au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franconnect.com\/en_au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franconnect.com\/en_au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}