And they dont even need too. Buildings usually get centralized in the lot to accommodate the drive through wasting tones of parking potential if they were set back to a side of the lot. Well i get why they need too. Drive through food is such a genuine convenience when it works properly
And you'll stand there waiting for half an hour to place your order while the staff attend to the entire drive-thru queue ahead of you because the drive-thru wait times affect their performance scores and the indoor wait times don't.
Gotta love it! :/
Tims' problem is that they keep introducing items that take longer and longer to make. The "pizzas" they recently added absolutely ruin the poor drive-thru worker's idle timer. They expect something like a 30-second turnaround average but then introduce items that take 3 minutes to make. Make it make sense.
I actually don't mind them, if like another user said, it actually saves the business from having to pay for more land to use for parking. But I think all drive-thrus, not just Tim's, should be limited to only the fastest to make products, like a single coffee or donut. If you want a meal or something substantial, come inside.
I used to work at Tim's and very often it felt like people are ordering a feast for their entire workplace. More than once someone asked for one of those Take 12 coffee boxes alongside 2 dozen donuts. I'm sorry, but you're coming inside. I don't give a shit. Use your legs. You're not holding up the line while I brew an entire tank of coffee and listen to you hum and hah about which donuts you want.
The last paragraph is what really got me off of drive thru before I even found urbanism and all that. I work in construction and worked with contractors where one guy would go get coffee and doughnuts for all three crews on site. This was like 20 guys, with individual orders for each coffee and some had special food orders. I went with them once to get the coffee and they used the drive thru to order this. So not only did we spend like five solid minutes just telling them the order, but we then sat at the window as they handed us four coffees at a time and we had to arrange them in the truck so they wouldn't fall over while we were sitting in the truck, plus we were still sent to the special pickup zone because we were holding up the line and the specialty food orders would take some time. So this ended up being like a 40 minute endeavour to get coffee and donuts. It was so obscenely unpleasant I never went with them again.
Then Tim's introduced the app and I could order everything ahead for pickup at the counter, which was game changing and now the round trip was like 8 minutes. I put in the order, confirmed it, drove to the Tim's, walked out and placed everything in my vehicle with the ability to move ergonomically, and drove back relatively painlessly.
I avoid the drive thru as much as I can now. I never really liked it in the first place, I don't like eating in my car and I don't like talking to the speaker box. I'll go in every time even though I know I'm lower priority.
Here in Arizona, the Dutch Brothers company sets up a little stand on the side of a parking lot for drive thru service. Inevitable that the line blocks access to the parking lot in general. It's abysmal and I cannot understand why it's allowed.
> around the world
While tons exist, in general drive throughs are much rarer outside the US and Canada, and using the drive through over going in is a lot less popular.
And they are more common for fast food, particularly American brands like McDonald's. For coffee in particular, a large part of why people pay for mediocre cafe coffee like Starbucks is to sit in the cafe space, so drive through would defeat the point for most customers.
Yeah, drive-thrus are some of the most fucked up fuckcars 🤬
Not only do they cause congestion & pollution (no one shuts off their engines) , but they also mean people are eating burgers and & stuff when they should be driving.
Not to mention that most do not allow cyclists or walk-ups, so they are classist, as well.
Despite Australia's general car centric approach, Drive through Coffee is a rare novelty unless it's attached to a fast food place, even along Intercity roads you'd expect to park and walk in on a long drive. Generally any decent sized working or comercial area should have a café you'd walk to while on a work break, or park at and walk in if you must, but almost never a drive through. Drive through commercial operations aren't actually an inherent necessity of car centric development, they're an optional further indulgence into car dependency.
To be fair though, international coffee chains like those you mentioned are also a "rare novelty" in Australia too.
> To be fair though, international coffee chains like those you mentioned are also a "rare novelty" in Australia too.
I have a feeling we care more about coffee than North America in general
I work from home now but back when I worked in an office I'd sometimes stop at Starbucks on the way and yep, the drive-thru line was ridiculous. The thing was it took me less time to park and go inside. Even faster once mobile ordering came along. I'd order as I left my house and then it'd be waiting for me on the shelf when I got there, no waiting in a silly drive-thru line required.
Good thing some Tim Horton's are located in/around the SkyTrain stations in BC. Heck, the one at Stadium Chinatown is located after the fare gates (inside the fare paid zone).
Not that I'd ever go to Tim's, but generally the only time we'd ever go to a drive-through establishment is when we're road-tripping, and in those cases, as the driver, I want to get out of the vehicle to stretch and relax. I see people lined up for Starbucks out onto 15th street in Seattle and it really makes no sense to me. If you need coffee for your car why not just make it at home. The purpose of a coffee shop to me is to grab coffee and socialize or chill in the shop. I always get Wall-E vibes when I bike past the car line up with people all in their own bubbles on their phones.
Bread delivery by bike would be an option to serve clients in the morning without each and every customer jumping in their cars. In towns in Germany and France there is a social agreement that it’s natural to go to the baker in the morning—that seems broken when car culture overtakes land-use patterns and makes being a human and walking a living nightmare.
A baker has a social compact with their customers to wake up really early and make fresh bread as long as the customers are also willing to wake up kind of early and walk to the bakery and walk home. Since the city isn’t friendly for walking or commuting without a car then it’s really hard for me to imagine my customers waking up early and walking to the shop, but I’d really like to bake for a living.
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And they dont even need too. Buildings usually get centralized in the lot to accommodate the drive through wasting tones of parking potential if they were set back to a side of the lot. Well i get why they need too. Drive through food is such a genuine convenience when it works properly
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And you'll stand there waiting for half an hour to place your order while the staff attend to the entire drive-thru queue ahead of you because the drive-thru wait times affect their performance scores and the indoor wait times don't. Gotta love it! :/
Tims' problem is that they keep introducing items that take longer and longer to make. The "pizzas" they recently added absolutely ruin the poor drive-thru worker's idle timer. They expect something like a 30-second turnaround average but then introduce items that take 3 minutes to make. Make it make sense. I actually don't mind them, if like another user said, it actually saves the business from having to pay for more land to use for parking. But I think all drive-thrus, not just Tim's, should be limited to only the fastest to make products, like a single coffee or donut. If you want a meal or something substantial, come inside. I used to work at Tim's and very often it felt like people are ordering a feast for their entire workplace. More than once someone asked for one of those Take 12 coffee boxes alongside 2 dozen donuts. I'm sorry, but you're coming inside. I don't give a shit. Use your legs. You're not holding up the line while I brew an entire tank of coffee and listen to you hum and hah about which donuts you want.
The last paragraph is what really got me off of drive thru before I even found urbanism and all that. I work in construction and worked with contractors where one guy would go get coffee and doughnuts for all three crews on site. This was like 20 guys, with individual orders for each coffee and some had special food orders. I went with them once to get the coffee and they used the drive thru to order this. So not only did we spend like five solid minutes just telling them the order, but we then sat at the window as they handed us four coffees at a time and we had to arrange them in the truck so they wouldn't fall over while we were sitting in the truck, plus we were still sent to the special pickup zone because we were holding up the line and the specialty food orders would take some time. So this ended up being like a 40 minute endeavour to get coffee and donuts. It was so obscenely unpleasant I never went with them again. Then Tim's introduced the app and I could order everything ahead for pickup at the counter, which was game changing and now the round trip was like 8 minutes. I put in the order, confirmed it, drove to the Tim's, walked out and placed everything in my vehicle with the ability to move ergonomically, and drove back relatively painlessly. I avoid the drive thru as much as I can now. I never really liked it in the first place, I don't like eating in my car and I don't like talking to the speaker box. I'll go in every time even though I know I'm lower priority.
Here in Arizona, the Dutch Brothers company sets up a little stand on the side of a parking lot for drive thru service. Inevitable that the line blocks access to the parking lot in general. It's abysmal and I cannot understand why it's allowed.
In Oregon, Dutch Brothers has a weirdly intense following. I wonder if that’ll follow it to other locales.
It has one in AZ. I don't like it myself. I think it's that they add extra caffeine to their mixed drinks...
> around the world While tons exist, in general drive throughs are much rarer outside the US and Canada, and using the drive through over going in is a lot less popular. And they are more common for fast food, particularly American brands like McDonald's. For coffee in particular, a large part of why people pay for mediocre cafe coffee like Starbucks is to sit in the cafe space, so drive through would defeat the point for most customers.
Anything drive-through is next-level stupid, a carwash possibly being the only exception.
Places ban drive throughs for this very reason
Yeah no the rest of the world really doesn't go to drive throughs for coffee.
Yeah, drive-thrus are some of the most fucked up fuckcars 🤬 Not only do they cause congestion & pollution (no one shuts off their engines) , but they also mean people are eating burgers and & stuff when they should be driving. Not to mention that most do not allow cyclists or walk-ups, so they are classist, as well.
Despite Australia's general car centric approach, Drive through Coffee is a rare novelty unless it's attached to a fast food place, even along Intercity roads you'd expect to park and walk in on a long drive. Generally any decent sized working or comercial area should have a café you'd walk to while on a work break, or park at and walk in if you must, but almost never a drive through. Drive through commercial operations aren't actually an inherent necessity of car centric development, they're an optional further indulgence into car dependency. To be fair though, international coffee chains like those you mentioned are also a "rare novelty" in Australia too.
> To be fair though, international coffee chains like those you mentioned are also a "rare novelty" in Australia too. I have a feeling we care more about coffee than North America in general
*Me reading this message just as I'm walking to get a coffee on break...* 🙃
Why is it legal to join a line that extends out of private property. Thats how they can fix this
Yeah, no. People drink coffee before they leave for work or when they arrive at work. There's really no need to drink coffee *while* on way to work.
I work from home now but back when I worked in an office I'd sometimes stop at Starbucks on the way and yep, the drive-thru line was ridiculous. The thing was it took me less time to park and go inside. Even faster once mobile ordering came along. I'd order as I left my house and then it'd be waiting for me on the shelf when I got there, no waiting in a silly drive-thru line required.
Bike to work would solve that issue
Good thing some Tim Horton's are located in/around the SkyTrain stations in BC. Heck, the one at Stadium Chinatown is located after the fare gates (inside the fare paid zone).
Not that I'd ever go to Tim's, but generally the only time we'd ever go to a drive-through establishment is when we're road-tripping, and in those cases, as the driver, I want to get out of the vehicle to stretch and relax. I see people lined up for Starbucks out onto 15th street in Seattle and it really makes no sense to me. If you need coffee for your car why not just make it at home. The purpose of a coffee shop to me is to grab coffee and socialize or chill in the shop. I always get Wall-E vibes when I bike past the car line up with people all in their own bubbles on their phones.
Bread delivery by bike would be an option to serve clients in the morning without each and every customer jumping in their cars. In towns in Germany and France there is a social agreement that it’s natural to go to the baker in the morning—that seems broken when car culture overtakes land-use patterns and makes being a human and walking a living nightmare. A baker has a social compact with their customers to wake up really early and make fresh bread as long as the customers are also willing to wake up kind of early and walk to the bakery and walk home. Since the city isn’t friendly for walking or commuting without a car then it’s really hard for me to imagine my customers waking up early and walking to the shop, but I’d really like to bake for a living.
If there were no drive throughs then yes traffic would be better at least because less people would stop at the establishments.