Is drive-thru the future of coffee?
Sarah Charles
October 10, 2025
drive-thru coffee
A record 59% of US coffee purchases now happen at drive-thrus, up from 55% last year
7 Brew’s sales surged 163% in 2024, while Dutch Bros’ stock jumped 64%
Nearly 3/4 of all US restaurant traffic is now off-premises, with cars doubling as both café and sanctuary for increasingly solitary consumers
IN America, coffee culture is increasingly less about cafés and more about cars. Drive-thru coffee chains – Dutch Bros, 7 Brew, Biggby Coffee, Scooter’s Coffee, and Black Rock Coffee Bar – are multiplying across the country at a rate that rivals fast-food franchises.
A record 59% of coffee purchases are now made at drive-thrus, according to the National Coffee Association, up from 55% just a year ago. The model has been supercharged by the pandemic, post-pandemic inflation, and a broader societal shift toward mobility and efficiency.
Dutch Bros, which started as a pushcart in Oregon in 1992, now operates more than 1,000 outlets and opened 31 new shops across 13 states in the second quarter of 2025 alone. Drive-thru chain 7 Brew has more than doubled its locations to about 460 since Blackstone invested in 2024. In September, Franchise Equity Partners bought its second-largest franchisee and plans to add over 200 more stores. Black Rock Coffee aims to deliver an order within 90 seconds. The stores are tiny – some no bigger than 350 square feet – and deliberately stripped of seating, with their entire architecture built around vehicles.
For investors, the appeal is obvious. Small footprints, minimal equipment, and lean staffing allow for rapid franchising and lower costs than traditional cafés. Unit economics are strong: 7 Brew, the fastest-growing chain in the US in the last three years, saw its sales grow 163% last year, including 78% unit growth and strong volume growth. It now generates more than $500 million in system sales. The cherry on the cake is that construction costs are lower than for conventional restaurants.
For consumers, the draw is equally clear: speed – 90-second service – price, and the ability to never leave the driver’s seat.
“It’s not exactly clear what prompted this change in consumer preference, but there has been increased demand for drive-throughs over the years, and the pandemic seems to have accelerated the change drastically,” says Partha Sarathi Mishra, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at the Woody L. Hunt College of Business at the University of Texas at El Paso.
“It could be the rise in online deliveries, newly discovered convenience post-pandemic, or simply the need for speedy service from inside the car. That said, our findings from our working paper show this change is already reflected in increased visits and spending at drive-through stores post-pandemic.”
“Economically, drive-through stores achieve higher throughput per square foot. Cars spend an average of 5–8 minutes per order compared to much longer in-cafe durations that require more floor space and staffing. If the cost of serving is similar but the volume is higher, drive-through becomes a more efficient channel. This explains why we see chains reconfiguring store designs, like Taco Bell’s Defy concept in the fast-service restaurants and the rise of drive-through-only coffee stores are good examples of this strategic shift.”
The rise of these chains poses questions for incumbents. Starbucks, once the symbol of America’s café culture, has doubled down on its original “third space” strategy of offering a gathering place between home and work. Yet even as its executives extol the virtues of community, Starbucks is shuttering hundreds of stores and ceding ground to rivals whose model is built for throughput, not togetherness. In May 2022, Starbucks announced that 90% of all its new locations would feature a drive-thru.
The same pressures are being felt abroad: Costa Coffee, the UK’s largest chain, has also struggled to sustain the café-first model.
The divergence highlights a cultural shift. Where the late 20th century was about lingering with a laptop, the early 21st is about consuming coffee as quickly and frictionlessly as possible. Speed has become the new luxury.
Car time as “me time”
The success of drive-thru coffee cannot be explained by economics alone. It is tied to changing patterns of social life.
Americans are spending more time alone than ever before. The Atlantic reports that the share of adults having dinner or drinks with friends on any given night has declined by more than 30% in the past 20 years, while solo dining has risen 29% in just the past two years. The reason? “Me time.”
The car has become a refuge within this solitude. A New York Post survey found that millennials use time behind the wheel for self-improvement – listening to podcasts, reflecting on life – while Gen Z uses cars to decompress, even to nap. In either case, the vehicle doubles as a private sanctuary.
Coffee fits neatly into this ritual: a companion to podcasts, commutes, or stolen moments of quiet.
This is also the backdrop to “dashboard dining,” a trend where people increasingly eat and drink in their cars. From 2022 to 2025, the percentage of consumers eating limited-service meals in their vehicles rose across all dayparts, according to Technomic.
Social media amplifies the habit: influencers record Mukbang ASMR videos – also known as eating broadcasting, a trend that sees billions of subscribers heading to YouTube and Instagram just to watch other people preparing food and broadcasting their eating ASMR – sipping oversized iced lattes in their cars, normalising the dashboard as dining table.
Drive-thru coffee chains have leaned into this culture of solitude. At a 7 Brew in Connecticut, staff take car-side orders with tablets while Katy Perry music blares and baristas sing along inside a stand no bigger than a one-car garage. “We create an experience,” one young manager told the Financial Times. The model delivers stimulation without obligation – fun, fleeting, and contained within the car.
For consumers, it offers the illusion of connection without the burden of community. For operators, it aligns perfectly with a society where off-premises consumption now accounts for nearly three-quarters of all restaurant traffic.
“It’s hard to disentangle convenience from cultural change, but I do think solitude and comfort play a role,” says Partha. “The car has become a private, controlled space for consumption: a new kind of personal café.’”
The battle for the future
The implications for the coffee industry are profound. Starbucks, with fewer than half its US outlets equipped with drive-thru windows, is under pressure to adapt.
Analysts at Placer.ai estimate that the behavioural shift toward drive-thrus is akin to a quarter of Starbucks’ customers – and half its revenue – migrating to a different format. Its competitors, meanwhile, are growing at astonishing speed: 7 Brew’s sales surged 163% last year, while Dutch Bros’ stock has risen 65% in the past year. Starbucks’ has fallen over 9%.
The economic model of drive-thru chains is hard to beat. They require less space, fewer employees, and attract private equity eager for rapid franchising opportunities. When Black Rock Coffee Bar recently went public, raising $294.1 million and reaching a market value of roughly $1.32 billion, it became the first restaurant brand to hit the stock market in two years.
Drive-thrus also appeal to the post-pandemic consumer’s preference for low-contact service and mobile app integration. Ordering by phone, paying digitally, and receiving a customised latte within 90 seconds satisfies both the modern craving for convenience and the old desire for ritual.
Yet questions remain about sustainability. Coffee chains that orient themselves around speed risk reducing the product to sugar-laden fuel, eroding coffee’s cultural capital.
Critics warn of a “dilution effect”: younger consumers accustomed to giant iced lattes heavy on syrup and milk may lose the taste for coffee itself. Starbucks’ efforts to emphasise “connection” and a more crafted experience may look quaint and disconnected from their practices, but they also preserve the idea of coffee as more than a commodity or caffeine delivery mechanism.
The rivalry between café and car reflects a deeper tension in American life: between community and solitude, between slowness and speed. In the US, where commuting, suburban living, and inflation have entrenched dashboard dining, the trajectory seems clear. In Europe, where café culture remains a public good, the drive-thru has never taken hold with the same intensity – until now. It seems to be growing in the UK – Pret a Manger is launching its first ever drive-thru in the UK.
“My hunch is that both models will coexist, though I expect a greater share of customers to use on-the-go channels like drive-throughs,” says Partha. “Work-from-home patterns may partly be responsible for shaping this. Office work commuters tend to lean toward drive-throughs, while remote workers typically seek café environments as a change of workspace.”
“So far, we don’t have a single winner, so I do foresee both of these models co-existing with specific chains moving towards specialising in either of these models.”
Drive-thru may not kill the café, but it has become the dominant model in America’s coffee economy. Whether this represents the future of coffee worldwide, or just the Americanisation of it, will depend on how much of life people wish to spend in cars.
Coffee Intelligence