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Dave’s Drive-Thru: Marblehead, Ohio
Although Pizza Hut made headlines when Hut Lanes launched a couple of years ago, they were not the first drive-thru pizzas. Dave’s Drive-Thru is an independent drive-thru convenience store in Ohio with a pizza kitchen that makes and distributes fresh pies to cars of customers every day.
The drive-thru itself looks similar to a car wash, where customers drive their car through a tunnel. From there, they can order soda, beer, or other convenience store goods, alongside a pie (regular pizza with toppings, specialty pies, and dessert pizza with cinnamon and icing). The drive-thru pizzeria has been in operation for the past three and a half years, since late 2019. For Dave’s customers, they have to learn to be patient, since orders usually take about 15-20 minutes to prepare. But, owner Dave Baggs said that they can always place the order, drive away, and come back.
“Wait times are adjusted based on how much is ordered,” Baggs said, and said that the lines of cars can stretch pretty long during peak season in the summer.
Fat Boy’s Pizza Express: New Orleans, Louis.
Fat Boy’s Pizza — most known for its 16-inch pizza slices sold under the cheeky motto, “size matters” — began introducing a new Fat Boy’s Express store model with a focus on off-premises capabilities. The first Express location opened in the New Orleans surrounding area in Dec. 2022 and the second one is opening later this month.
The express models feature drive-thrus, tableside QR codes, self-checkout kiosks, and a streamlined menu. The drive-thru offers only pizza by the slice, wings, fries, and salad – after all, the 30-inch pies would not be able to fit through the window! Fat Boy’s pizza came up with the idea to do a drive-thru serendipitously when they tried to open their latest location in Harvey, Louis.
“The landowner said we couldn’t do a full-service restaurant [at that location,]” director of operations Casey Biehl told NRN in a previous interview. “But if you're interested in doing a drive thru, he said, they would entertain that. And that got the juices flowing as we tried to think who else is doing drive-thru pizza by the slice. So we wanted to figure that out since nobody is doing that.”
Pizza Hut ‘Hut Lane’: Various Locations
Pizza Hut debuted the first Pizza Hut “Hut Lane” in Fall 2021 as a dedicated drive-thru window for pickup orders. The capability was introduced to 1,500 locations around the country, especially at franchised locations under the Flynn Restaurant Group umbrella.
Technically, the Hut Lane does not really qualify as a drive-thru lane, since customers can’t place orders for pizza “live” when they pull up to the pickup window. Instead, they have to order ahead of time online or via the mobile app, select the Hut Lane option when they’re checking out, and if it’s not available, they can instead pick up their order via contactless curbside pickup.
"Not only do we offer industry-leading, innovative menu items that are only available at Pizza Hut, but we also offer several digital-first pick-up options for our customers, and the Hut Lane is a great example of that,” Nicolas Burquier, chief customer and operations officer at Pizza Hut said at the time.
Pizza Hut declined to give an update on the rollout of Hut Lane in 2023, but according to local news reports, new Hut Lane-enabled Pizza Hut locations are opening in Kansas, New Jersey, and other markets.
Slice Factory: Chicago, Ill.
Slice Factory — a Chicago-based, technology-focused pizza chain — began offering jumbo slices-to-go via the 24-hour “Slice-Thru” starting in 2019. Since the company began offering the pizza drive-thru, now available in half of its 13 locations throughout the Chicagoland area, Slice Factory has seen a 20% jump in sales.
“We have perfected the slice thru remodel,” a representative with Slice Factory said. “We’ve been doing pizza by the slice for 25 years now. We’re very good at it. We use our drive-through headset system, POS to monitor all orders in the queue, and two monitors to manage all the cars and current wait times. This helps the car line moving fast, efficient and accurate.”
Cars won’t have to wait very long: according to Slice Factory, the average ticket time is below two minutes and all employees are trained to make and serve pizzas in under two minutes and 30 seconds.
Moving forward, all Slice Factory locations will have the Slice-Thru drive-thru, and only the older locations do not have it.
