Death of a drive-thru? The 2007 best selling hardcover book titled, The Starbucks Experience, by Joseph A. Michelli makes only one slight reference to drive-thrus, as it fleshes out the magic behind creating the kind of welcoming atmosphere customers quickly adopt as their "third place.".

Despite the incredible Northwest growth and success of stand alone, double sided specialty coffee drive-thrus since the late '90s, Starbucks still only had a proportional handful of coffee houses with drive-thrus in North America as it entered the 21st-Century.

Finally accepting that America moves at a maddening pace and specialty coffee is as much a fuel as a medium for social interaction, Starbucks woke up to customer demands for stop and go service. At a Starbucks 2002 annual stockholders meeting, company leadership proclaimed that one of its key growth strategies was to dramatically boost its number of North American coffee house/drive-thru combinations.

Today it is hard to find a new Starbucks coffee house that doesn't have a drive-thru window. In The Starbucks Experience, Michelli states, "By listening to our customers, we recognized the convenience of drive throughs, and in turn that listening has had a huge impact on our business."

How then--in all the green coffee beans--in the world, can The Brand Coaches even suggest that today's drive-thrus face certain death?

Worse yet, while stand alone double sided drive-thrus once only multiplied in the Northwest like rabbits in heat, today they are popping up everywhere from coast-to-coast. Gas station and carwash chains are even waking up to the jolt in increased sales and profits by dropping a drive-thru on their properties. To top it off, the hottest and most active franchise category for specialty coffee is stand-alone drive-thrus, based on initial investment cost and promise of quick return on investment.

Have the Wheels Come Off Our Minds?

Not a chance. The (training) wheels are coming off America's drive-thrus. The evolution of the drive-thru has accelerated from an A to Z revolution. Bottom line: Dive deep into today's drive-thru game, or face a certain death. Step up or step out!

Before we look at where the progressive drive-thru chains of today and tomorrow are rocketing, we need to look at where far too many of today's drive-thrus are stuck, with few options but radical change, if they want to survive and thrive.

Space, Space and Less Space

Just a few years ago, and even today with some misguided prefab small box concepts, it cost less than $50,000 to open your own drive-thru business. If you think these sad looking little places look small from the outside, with their tiny little service windows, you can't imagine what it is like for two baristas (of normal size and weight) to bang around inside these humble abodes. Just pray that nobody ate chili for lunch. Speaking of those two baristas, they seldom wore branded aprons, let alone professional uniform shirts. Menu signage is either homemade or just above that level of quality and customer impact. Service windows are plastered with vendor point of sale and handwritten signs. The service windows are so small they could serve as gun turrets.

There is virtually little room for storage, and much less for a closet or bathroom. Nevertheless, in the Northwest where the stand-alone drive-thru was born, the majority of today's drive-thrus comfortably fit into this behind the curve description. Google drive-thru franchises on the Internet, and you can still find a number of franchisors that are luring in franchisees with buildings of little size and even less architectural character. To quote Vicky and Art Pedersen, owners of the Northwest-based Cool Bean Drive-thrus, "In 1998 we just threw up a 94-sq. ft. one window drive thru with no running water or sewer for under $30,000. We had four baristas working in that space doing daily sales of over $1,000 by the end of the first month."

Fair enough, that was true less than five years ago in the Northwestern part of Ohio, how the game has changed today. When it came to Cool Bean building a second location in 2003, they bit the bullet and increased the square footage to 325-sq. ft. for a total building, equipment and land cost nearing $300,000.

"We are watching the little places drop like flies around us," Olson said. "As each of the little guys disappears, we are picking up 1-2% revenue. A lot of the small places that were doing over $800/day are now choking on just over $200/day. You can't pay the barista and sales tax with that, let alone product costs." When asked what the Pedersen's growth strategy is, they answered, "Outlive the small guys. They are dying fast."

Scott Olson, principle at Office Go Architects LLC (www.officego.com), has specialized in drive-thru design since they started in the Northwest. Today, Scott's firm designs drive-thrus for single locations and chains from coast-to-coast.

In merging The Brand Coaches experiences, and the design firm's mandatory list for today's drive-thrus, we concluded that you need seven things to have a successful and growing business:

1. Professional Looking/Acting Staff

"Corporate confidence" is what we sum up a potential customer needs to feel when they see your drive thru. The service staff has to look and act as friendly, caring and polished as Starbucks.

The seasoned architect underscored that in today's rapidly maturing drive thru market the design and size of the building must make a stand out impression beyond maximizing on signage as big as city ordinance allows. This signature building design must be so distinctive potential customers would know it was you, even if all the signage was taken away.

"Sometimes people walk into my office and ask for a drive thru that will cost around $50,000. Though I don't say it, I am thinking they should just get the cash out of the bank and use it for fire starter-get the pain over with quick," Olson said.

2. Big Is Better.

He noted that in the past, drive-thrus were mere converted sheds or trailers roughly 7' x 10'. To compete today they need to range from 12' x 26' to 20' x 30.'

Today's building must be self sufficient, providing ample room for a bathroom, office area, storage and most importantly, two drive-up windows.

3. Taller and Taller

The majority of the building the architectural firm designs now average around 2-' tall to the top of the roof, providing bold visibility from the road. The height of the building can compensate for highly restrictive signage, a major challenge in branding your building.

4. Quality Building Materials

Today's exterior building materials must be quality with ease of maintenance. Cedar, for example requires more maintenance than metal or stucco siding, but may fit the brand positioning. Popular materials today include stone veneers to upscale the appearance of the building.

5. Large Service Windows

While the customer-barista relationship in a drive-thru ideally lasts no longer than three minutes, one of the huge keys to creating an environment conducive to creating bonding relationships is the amount of clear, unobstructed glass. They should they be as large as possible. The more the customer can see into their drink being made and maintaining eye contact with their favorite barista, the faster the bond can be formed.

6. Professional Menu

If you read our last Brand Coach column, which boldly stated that the fastest track to increasing daily sales is the creation of a professional menu with professionally photographed signature drinks.

This seems obvious, but the majority of North American drive-thrus have poorly designed menu boards with too much small type and no photographed signature drinks.

7. Perfect Location

As important as the building is, the first step is to find a quality site. With today's buildings often costing over $150,000, it is a huge investment that has to also be supported by the perfect site. Like any commercial venture in today's specialty coffee marketplace, the site must look great with parking and attractive landscaping.

Drive-thru 101 requires that the site needs to be on the going to work side of the road, as it is a 6-10 a.m. peak business. Preferably, the site is on a corner and absolutely needs easy in and out access. As far as the drive-thru lanes, there is no perfect design. They inevitably cross each other at some point. The rule to follow is that they should be at least 11' wide with a wide turning radius. Allow for three or more auto-stacking spaces per drive-up window (allow at least 15-20' per car).

Sounds overwhelming and outrageously expensive to enter this rapidly maturing market segment, ready to compete with Starbucks or anybody else? Don't let it. Bet on coffee's bullish future and build it right to ensure a successful and growing business for years to come.

Lon L. LaFlamme

David J. Morris

Tea & Coffee columnists Lon and David provide brand and profit building consultation to a number of coffee, retail and b2b businesses across North America. For more information on the Brand Coaches go to: www.thebrandcoaches.com