For Tacos, the Sky’s Hardly the Limit

I was sitting at my desk one June morning when a Twitter notification popped in with the all-seeing blue check mark. Their expert take? “QSR’s breathless coverage of … a Taco Bell … is pretty over the top. ‘Arguably the most ambitious prototype’ in restaurant history, it says.”

Firstly, let me say this: If there is somebody out there who is going to provide “breathless coverage” of a Taco Bell, it’s going to be us. I wear that as a badge of honor. But I think it’s worth talking about the broader concept here. One of the most worn lines I’ve heard over my time covering restaurants is that it’s historically behind the tech train. Really, food and food delivery in particular, entered the pandemic playing catch-up in terms of digital integration. Change has come so fast since, though, we might not realize what the present view feels like. The idea you can read about a two-story drive-thru where tacos drop down from the sky (this analogy will make sense after you read the article) and roll through an entire process in under 2 minutes without ever speaking to somebody is nothing shy of remarkable. Was it on the radar a couple of years ago? I think so.

READ:

OUR QSR DRIVE-THRU REPORT

INSIDE TACO BELL'S GAME-CHANGING DEFY

There was simply no rush to bring that contactless ideal to market on a streamlined scale such as what Taco Bell is doing. So this Twitter interaction, to me, felt a lot like what much of social media has become, not to jump on a soap box. You either celebrate or become a contrarian—there’s not a ton of reaction in the middle.

However, the way I’ll choose to embrace this point is by grasping what it represents on a large scale; that opening such a restaurant (which, by the way, is the most ambitious prototype in Taco Bell’s history, I’ll stand by that) has become a part of the quick-service story. There is still a lot of innovation left on the plate, as we’ll get into in this year’s Drive-Thru Report; order confirmation boards; reconfigured kitchen flow; double lanes; and AI—there isn’t a large-scale quick-serve in America that hasn’t at least had discussions on one, if not all, of these topics of late. Something I would suggest for anybody who remains a skeptic is to drive through a Chick-fil-A setup, but look at the experience through a different lens. What the brand has done perhaps better than any chain is take its in-store hospitality and extrapolate that to a line of cars. Yet the misconception is that they’ve done so as some anti-technology mindset rooted in the “old ways.”

That is nowhere near accurate. Chick-fil-A is fine-tuning what the industry as a whole is barreling toward—the notion innovation can now enhance a brand’s core traits rather than replace them. And you’re seeing that unfold everywhere you look. We’ve gone past the stage of digital adoption for the sake of survival and into a world where guests are dictating the terms. No place is that more vivid than the drive-thru. And yes, expect no shortage of “over-the-top” coverage as we keep learning more.