Drive-Thrus Are Booming. Why Are Cities Banning Them?
Despite increasing demand, cities across the U.S. are pushing bans on new drive-thru restaurants in the name of reducing traffic and promoting walkability.
Drive-thru windows have made a massive comeback, and—much like Zoom, remote work, and grocery delivery services—they show no signs of retreating in popularity in the post-pandemic world. The move toward drive-thrus has proven to be a sustained shift in consumer behavior, so naturally, the government has stepped in to do what it does best: regulate, restrict, and ban.
Last year, The New York Times reported on the post-pandemic durability of drive-thrus, noting that their traffic increased by 30 percent from 2019 to 2022, showing that Americans preferred staying in their cars even after the public health emergency began to wane. It's unremarkable that drive-thrus accounted for 70 percent of fast-service restaurant sales during the time of social distancing rules, but even with the public health emergency in the rearview mirror, two-thirds of fast-food transactions still happen in the drive-thru lane.
Researchers at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management used cellphone data to track the average time spent at McDonald's, Dunkin' Donuts, and Starbucks—which make up roughly 10 percent of all fast-food stores in the U.S—and have confirmed that short drive-thru visits increased during COVID and stayed up; longer sit-down visits to the same restaurants went down and stayed down.
Yet even while Gen Zers are frequenting drive-thrus and filming their visits for a TikTok trend, city governments are veering hard in the other direction. Nearly every month, news comes of another city moving to ban new drive-thrus. Minneapolis kicked off the trend in 2019 by banning new drive-thru windows citywide. In 2023, Atlanta followed suit with its own ban on new drive-thrus within a half-mile of the Beltline. Cities such as St. Paul, Minnesota, and Annapolis, Maryland, have recently jumped on the bandwagon with proposed bans.
Whereas prior attempts to curb fast-food culture centered on fighting obesity, today's rationale is different: traffic congestion and efforts to promote walkability. Planners bemoan the traffic snarls caused by long lines of cars waiting for their Starbucks or Chick-fil-A fix and argue that the automobile-centric design of drive-thrus undermines efforts to promote alternative forms of mobility like biking, walking, and public transit.
For modern urban planners, walkability is the goal. "The more drive-thrus you build, the more car-centric you become—as opposed to something that has more mobility options," said Keba Samuel, chair of the Charlotte Planning Commission in North Carolina. "It doesn't make sense to have this multi-billion investment in light rail and still encourage an auto-centric environment. It's contradictory."
In other words, light rail is in, drive-thrus are out. But the reality is more complex. While critics may argue that drive-thrus cater to greedy corporate interests, in truth they are what customers are demanding. For many restaurants, the drive-thru model is the only thing that has kept them alive both during and after the pandemic.
The Kellogg study found that fast service restaurants with drive-thru windows saw a modest 4 percent decline in sales from 2019 to 2022. Meanwhile, those without drive-thrus experienced a devastating 50 percent drop. That is comparable to 25 percent of Starbucks customers—and 50 percent of the chain's total revenue—transitioning to drive-thru-only outlets.
Drive-thru bans also overlook the market responses already addressing traffic congestion issues. Taco Bell opened its first "Defy" outlet in 2022, which features a two-story layout with four drive-thru lanes and food delivered via tubes. (As The Verge described it: "Think a drive-thru bank but you get a Chalupa and Baja Blast instead of cash.") Chick-fil-A is rolling out its own elevated drive-thru, designed to handle double or triple the volume of a traditional drive-thru, and utilizing conveyor belts that can deliver food orders as fast as every six seconds.
If policy makers really were concerned about traffic, they'd be embracing these high-efficiency designs. Instead of a drive-thru ban, local governments could institute two-story zoning allowances by right for any drive-thru businesses seeking to open in the area.
A final consideration lost in the drive-thru debate is the vital role many fast-food outlets play in their communities. In some lower- and middle-class areas, restaurants like McDonald's have become a crucial "third place"—venues where locals gather for everything from Bible studies to bingo.
Drive-thrus might not fit the vision of many urban planners, but the reality is they are becoming more important, not less.
