Burger King Adds Drive-Thrus Despite Hazy Future of the Channel

Burger King parent company Restaurant Brands International says it plans to sharply increase its drive-thrus in a bid to boost sales.

In speaking with analysts Thursday (Nov. 3) about its third-quarter financial results, the burger chain said the move comes as consumer habits that changed during the pandemic have stuck.

“We’ve gone from basically $5 billion in system-wide sales in [our top five international] markets to $6 billion, and a lot of it has come from the progress and improvements we made on the off premise-business,” Restaurant Brands International CEO José Cil said. “Our digital is getting stronger. We’re building more drive-thrus, and we’ve actually adopted our service modes to adjust to the customer behaviors, and that’s remained sticky.”

Certainly, the drive-thru channel saw enormous growth during the early stages of the pandemic. In fact, a study cited in PYMNTS’ June 2021 Order to Eat Tracker noted that nearly 75% of Americans had used a restaurant drive-thru since the start of the pandemic, up 43% from April 2020.

Indeed, many restaurants have been taking the same approach as Burger King, adding drive-thrus to capture this demand surge. In an interview with PYMNTS’ Karen Webster,  Rajat Suri, founder and CEO of voice, vision and touch automated technology firm Presto, cited several major brands that previously had no designs on the channel that have recently been investing in new drive-through capabilities. These included quick-service restaurant (QSR) Panda Express, fast-casual giant Chipotle, casual dining chain Applebee’s and even convenience retailer Wawa.

“There’s a ton of press of people wanting more drive through,” Suri said. “It makes a lot of sense for them to have that flexibility and that option.”

However, it would seem that not all restaurant brands are seeing that drive-thrus have “remained sticky,” as Burger King put it. The brand’s rival, McDonald’s, has observed just the opposite.

“Obviously, during COVID, we saw elevated ordering through off-premise channels like delivery and drive-through,” McDonald’s CFO Ian Borden told analysts on a call last week. “We’re getting … more traffic now back in restaurants. … Drive-thru is basically back to kind of what it was pre-COVID in terms of percentage of sales.”

In the United States, about half of all restaurants offer drive-thru pickup, according to data from PYMNTS’ 2022 Restaurant Friction Index. The study, which drew from a survey of more than 500 managers of QSRs and full-service restaurants (FSRs) across the United States, found that almost two-thirds of those that do not offer this ability plan to invest in adopting the feature in the future.

Get the study: Restaurant Friction Index

Whether or not drive-thru is the best bet going forward, Restaurant Brands International has certainly been making progress on its digital business. In the quarter, digital sales saw 26% year-over-year growth, and these channels accounted for a third of all sales. With Burger King, for instance, Cil noted that one major strength is “digital being at the center of the business model internationally.”

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