Van Harvieux doesn’t worry about ambiance, tipping or parking.
Every customer at his restaurant is behind a steering wheel. No one comes inside, no one sits down and no one messes up tables for him to clean.
“For me, COVID has been very difficult and very positive,” said Harvieux, as he handed an order out the window of Mudslingers Drive-Thru Coffee in Roseville.
The pandemic has been brutal for all kinds of Minnesota restaurants. But those with drive-through windows have something of an advantage. Drive-through businesses have marched steadily ahead, even as many sit-down restaurants have closed.
NEW CONSTRUCTION
Suburbs are seeing a burst of new construction of drive-throughs, including fast-food chains and coffee shops. It is driven in part by the ban on new drive-throughs Minneapolis enacted in 2019 — before COVID-19 made them a hot sector of the restaurant industry.
“Minneapolis may have passed that a little too early,” said Liz Rammer, CEO of the restaurant trade group Hospitality Minnesota.
The full-service category of U.S. restaurants fell by 30 percent from 2019 to 2020, according to QSR Magazine. But fast-food drive-throughs grew 30 percent when comparing March 2020 to March 2019, according to the New York Times.
Rammer said the effects of COVID have split the restaurant industry.
“Right now, it’s mixed bag,” she said.
Restaurants also are getting hit with supply-chain interruptions, rising food prices, labor shortages and ongoing worries about wearing masks.
‘PLENTY OF HURT OUT THERE’
Half of all Minnesota restaurants could not pay rent in November. Said Rammer: “You don’t have to look far to see plenty of hurt out there.”
But the pain is not being felt as badly by drive-throughs.
They have been so successful that some businesses are experimenting with concepts that eliminate in-store dining.
Four lanes of cars will drive into the new Taco Bell Defy restaurant opening in Brooklyn Center next summer. A second-story kitchen will lower the orders via small elevators to the customers below.
An experimental drive-through-only Caribou Coffee is opening in Cottage Grove this month. Called Caribou Cabin, the smaller building won’t have any indoor seating.
Woodbury now has 17 drive-through restaurants. Some are on the sites of dead sit-down restaurants, like a Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers where the Craft Beer & Kitchen was before, and a planned Starbucks on the former site of a Famous Dave’s.
‘THERE IS A CLEAR NEED’
Unlike Minneapolis, Woodbury welcomes the drive-throughs. City senior planner Eric Searles does not see them as competing with sit-down restaurants.
“There is a clear need for both. They are different needs,” said Searles.
Searles said drive-throughs benefit an entire district by generating traffic, so more drivers are aware of the neighboring businesses.
At Mudslingers on Nov. 18, owner Harvieux didn’t look like he was in pain. In fact, he was having fun, shoveling coffee drinks out the two drive-up windows as fast as his two baristas could make them.
“On the weekends, the lines are out the parking lot and onto the road,” he said, pausing to give a cappuccino to a customer on a bicycle.
He started the business in 2015, with no clue that a pandemic would help make his business a success.
He still has problems, but money is not one of them. He cut hours by 30 percent because of a worker shortage, and worries about supply-chain issues. COVID could make his workers sick at any time, even though they all wear masks in the crowded shop.
But business has never been better, and Harvieux is enjoying every minute.
“I love the relationships you can build through this window,” he said, handing a latte to a customer. “When people come in for coffee, they are always happy.”
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