Sweetgreen will operate a drive-in restaurant as part of the suburban push

Salad restaurant chain Sweetgreen will open its first location with a drive-thru lane next year, ordering from parking lots as it expands out of cities to suburban America.

It joins the stream of restaurant businesses that have unveiled new designs inspired by the coronavirus pandemic. Fast food chains like Taco Bell from Yum Brands and Burger King from Restaurant Brands International have focused their new designs on making delivery and digital orders even easier.

But the fast-casual segment, including Sweetgreen and Chipotle Mexican Grill, has been influenced by the success of drive-thru lanes. According to The NPD Group, drive-thru orders grew 24% in the restaurant business in October. Like Sweetgreen, Shake Shack will open its very first drive-thru lane in 2021. And Chipotle, which has been building its “Chipotlanes” for several years now, plans to add even more drive-thru lanes, as well as the same-store sales in those restaurants. exceeds the rest of its footprint.

Sweetgreen’s tasting restaurant will open next winter in Highlands Ranch, Colorado. Drive-thru customers will pre-order their salads and warm bowls with Sweetgreen’s mobile app.

Although inspired by the pandemic, the vaccine may have stopped the spread of Covid-19 before the concept was launched.

However, said Chief Concept Officer Nic Jammet, “Many of our customers are already having this behavior by using the Sweetgreen app to pre-order and avoid picking it up.”

Even before the global health crisis, more than 50% of Sweetgreen transactions were digital orders, fueling venture capital interests in the private chain. The company’s last round of funding in 2019 valued it at $ 1.6 billion. Sweetgreen told The New York Times that its sales were more than $ 300 million in 2019. During the crisis, digital channels have grown by more than 70%.

Customers wishing to order from the comfort of their car upon arrival at the restaurant can do so in dedicated parking spaces with intercom boxes under a solar panel overhang, similar to the ordering style at Sonic Drive-In.

Due to the differences with a traditional drive-thru restaurant, the chain calls the design a ‘drive-in’. Customers who want to eat their salads in the restaurant can eat in their car or on an outside patio. The restaurant’s design also features exterior windows allowing drive-thru customers to see the kitchen and food preparation area from their car.

According to Jammet, Sweetgreen has been thinking about drive-thru lanes for years, driven by the idea of ​​making healthy eating as easy as burgers and fries. The pilot also comes as the chain fosters its expansion into the suburbs after focusing on urban markets in the early years.

“Especially during Covid, our work on this has accelerated, and we said, ‘This is our time,’” said Jammet. “Our customers’ behavior is changing even faster … and as we move into more of these suburban areas and open new cities and new neighborhoods, it just seemed like something we finally needed to focus on.”