A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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Drive through times are often prioritized
So many places do order ahead now, though. I don't go to starbucks often, but when I do, I order ahead from my house, ride over on my electric board, walk in, grab my already made drink, and leave. In and out of the building in 15 seconds. Meanwhile, the drive-through extends through the entire parking lot barely moving. Absolute chumps.
They just need to add one more lane, bro.
This is probably during COVID when the inside was off limits.
Plenty of people still use the drive through, but the complete lack of anyone in the carpark is sus.
I work fast food. When shorthanded, which is all the time, if the line is wrapped around the building but the customers are at least not coming inside, service can be at least normal slow instead of slower than fuck. More customers can be served per hour via drive through than front counter with any level of staffing. When people start coming inside, suddenly drive through employees are getting stuck standing in front of registers and overall service speeds go from just slow to slower than fuck.
Nearly every fast food place in the UK has gone to self serve machines because of that, and taken away the ability to even take orders at the registers.
Although in practice it now means a bunch of staff helping old people use the self serve, rather than just taking the orders.
I very rarely even go there. The food isn't even fast. It seems mostly cooked to order because it's cheaper to waste my time than it is to give away a handful of old burgers at the end of the day.
I'm in New Jersey, and mobile orders are big now. On the rare occasion we hit Wendy's (I can smell it from my front door, it's hard), we do the mobile order. I order, get in the car, park, walk in, grab it, walk out. I couldn't imagine ordering upon arrival at this point.
Former "partner"(ugh) circa 2015 here
Back when I walked for the bux, 5 years before covid, this was my daily drive thru experience. My store averaged about 6 grand (thats about 700 customers) on DT alone during our morning rush, 6 hours straight of underfilled cars starting their day with caffeine dessert.
This specific store could be a covid thing, but empty lobbies with cars wrapped around the building has kinda been starbie's MO for the last decade or so that they've been transitioning away from "third place" mindset to "oh fuck we're competing with McDicks mindset"
I see this kind of thing regularly at my local Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers restaurant when it hits dinner time. The cars wrap around the building and block other traffic.
Same for the DQ where I live.
I was ready to go in here and say I won't get out of my car until I see the others in my group show up to whatever place we're eating. I've got some social anxiety issues though.
This though...this is fucking stupid. I see this shit at coffee stands like Dutch Bros all the time. They have a walk up window. It's like 5x faster to get the fuck out of your car, order at the window, and walk away with your sugar bomb.
The same with fast food. My wife worked at BK on an AFB for a long time. Airmen would line up in the drive through. Inside was near empty. Same deal. It'd be much faster to get out of my truck, go in, order my shit, and leave. Then they'd have the audacity to complain that the place was "wasting their lunch break." Bitch, there's a commissary with fresh sushi in it, always stocked, a made to order deli sub place in the back, and lots of other healthy things. You could also bring your own food from home. You could also get out of the fucking car and get it.
I'm not fully anti car as everyone on here, though I do get it and wish there was better mass transit and walkable areas. I do think vehicles have their uses, and that MT isn't an option for everyone. That said, this type of shit is stupid af. Stop clogging up the roads. Stop wasting gas. Stop polluting with your idling bullshit (I'm seeing at least 3 gas guzzlers in the pic in the comments.)
This is also incredibly dangerous. Blocking a lane causes backups further down. It causes people to have to merge into other lanes. Often times people don't pay attention and dodge at the last minute, or they get frustrated/angry and make stupid decisions.
They call it the Chair Force for a reason. Getting up and walking would go against their ethos.
Dutch bros isn't coffee lol it's sugar water with flavoring
I always tell my wife she can save money and just eat out of the bag of sugar we have at home.
Most people here are not totally against cars. We're mainly against car-centric design. Of course cars have uses, specially for the disabled.
Everyone behind the silver car at the parking lot entrance is illegally blocking the road. Regardless of the car culture problem or OP's disingenuous use of a CoViD era image out of context, those people needed to go away. If you can't get your coffee without parking in the street, you don't get coffee at that location at that time. Safety is more important than someone getting their sugar/caffeine fix.
The legality really depends on the jurisdiction. Where I live, it is 100% the business responsibility to ensure this doesn't happen, and if it does, there are big fines for the business, the customer is not at fault.
Plenty of things the business could do to reduce this, such as making people park up after ordering (a very popular option where I live), increasing prices to reduce their demand, having a digital queue system, removing the drive-through altogether, etc.
Well. Some places don't offer counter service and their doors are locked. You have to use the drive thru. Otherwise I agree with you except I don't get to even talk to a human, I am directed to a kiosk. And they flash a tip option. A tip for what?
Hardworking appliances depend on tips to provide electrons to their families. If you don't tip the kiosk that kiosk might go home and have to explain to it's toaster that they can only afford to use the low power settings.
Looks like covid lockdown time.
Because that's when the picture was taken.
Which means OP is spreading misinformation by saying they should just park and go inside.
They literally weren't allowed to because of covid.
There is a Starbucks just like this to this day in a suburb where I worked until just recently. Every morning at 8 AM they have a drive-thru line backed up out into the surrounding streets.
Though it's true that this particular picture was taken during covid time, it does not mean its any less true in conveying what North American car culture has actually done to our cities and infrastructure planning/implementation.
Here is a video of how school drop off for example work in North America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLpCMdVcqTI
Looking at this particular plot of land in the image OP has posted. Land use is very poorly utilized. You have one business surrounded by a parking lot. This same space could have easily in a European city fit 5 or more businesses with plenty of residential units above and still be left with place for green space or a park.
30 people getting coffee vs 30 people getting coffee.
And a comparable parcel of land roughly the same size. Its night and day in terms of utilization of land alone.
I remember this picture. It was from the opening of some mediocre but popular burger chain. They had the doors closed and it was drive through only that day if I'm recalling it correctly.
Um...you can literally see the Starbucks logo on the side of the building.
As others have pointed out, this is a Starbucks, but take a look at this photo I took a couple months ago. It was a line for an In-N-Out burger that was not even new, but it was the longest drive-through line I've ever seen. It was like ~500 feet long and split off into four separate lanes that all filtered into two main lanes that they actually took your order at. I was across the street getting Chipotle and I spent about 15 minutes inside watching this line and all of these cars only move forward by about one car length. I guesstimate that these people are gonna be waiting in line for two plus hours and that fucking blows my mind.
And the fuckers were spilling into the main road blocking traffic.
No that isn't the picture I'm talking about. What I really love about this is I don't care enough to go find the drone shot I was talking about and the rage I'm seeing about this is childish.
Chill bro, I was just talking to you and giving you a personal example of my own.
"America is worth fighting for!"
America:
Was this taken during covid lockdowns when the indoor section was closed and there was no other option?
This shit happens daily at the in-n-out near me. My wife swears th wait is worth it. Drives me nuts.
Yes, definitely. I remember this exact picture.
Without cars, plenty of those businesses wouldn't be able to have customers and would have gone bankrupt because of it.
This is a misinformation post made to circlejerk about shitting on cars.
There are plenty of reasons to shit on them, this one isn't it.
Until you realize that they purposefully understaff and now your front counter guy has to prioritize drive thru times over your order because that's the only metric corporate measures.
Is nobody mentioning the fact that there are 4 lane roads surrounding the entire coffee shop? Like thats absolutely the least or one of the least efficient ways you could do urban planning. In areas similar to this where I live, the block sizes are at least like 5x wider and longer than whatever this is.
Reminds me of how my (able bodied) mom would drive around looking for a closer parking spot for far longer than it would have taken to just walk from the first available one.
Literally! Anytime I go to Costco i intentionally go to the furthest spots because they're likely to be open and I'm fully capable of and enjoy walking.
You also can’t ride the cart through the parking lot if you park too close. Then you just look silly kicking it up to speed for just a short ride.
(I’m almost 40 and still do this every time I have to go shopping, like a reward for completing the draining task)
Just yesterday I wanted to go out to see my "local" town. I ended up going out for about 3 hours, 2 or which were "sitting" in the car commuting from a "livley" area to another "lively" area.
Business like the one shown in this photo posted by OP have become to far apart from one another, separate by seas of parking and 8 lanes of pavement.
Its astonishing that this is considered "normal" in North America. Just going to the local Walmart to get some milk can take about a hour or two of your day.
Walking is almost out of the question, just imaging leaving the Walmart that is probably located on the other side to arrive at the front door of this coffee chain.
Fast food has destaffed their registers so even with this line it is probably faster to drive through than to wait to order before you wait for your deprioritized food
First, the city should be ticketing every single vehicle that is parking in the road and blocking traffic. If I was a cop, I would just park myself right there and hand out easy tickets all day every day. Being in line for a drive through does not excuse blocking traffic.
But the bigger issue that people here are missing is that going into the store may not actually save you any time. Often when I've tried that at places like McDonalds, the drive through is far faster than waiting in the kitchen. Their whole operation is optimized for the drive through, and in-kitchen orders end up stuck in this weird ghetto backlog that they'll get to when they feel like getting to it.
Not to excuse it but some restaurants prioritize drive through over the people who order inside.
Because if you go in there is just no one taking your order and they completely deprioritize it too. Takes just as long or longer half the time I've tried