Global Coffee Company Redesigns Its Drive-Thru Customer Experience
drive-thru customer experience

The client is known as a purveyor of coffee that connects with millions of customers every day in thousands of retail stores. Their stores serve as neighborhood gathering places and places where customers can expect exceptional service. The company is also known for having implemented innovative customer experiences, and its customers are used to convenience and easy-to-navigate experiences—both digitally and physically.

Challenge

We were tasked to redesign the drive-thru customer experience for the client, starting with primary research and observations of customers in this highly competitive environment. Realizing that speed of service was the #1 customer sticky factor, we created an overall business strategy optimized for throughput, integrated with personalization.

Solution

During the project, we developed the overall business strategy, differentiated customer scenarios, and core functional requirements for the new drive-thru customer experience.  We then worked together with the client’s IT to create technical specs that drove hardware and software selection processes to support functional requirements.  We were able to mock up stores and pilot several platforms to ensure stability and customer-facing benefits.

Outcomes

Throughout the process, we created core competencies around global scale and deployment, including centralized network operations for menu-board configuration and management, digital instrumentation of drive-thru lanes, and access to a proprietary loyalty payment platform. This digital platform enabled a sizable evolution in merchandising such as mass price changes, unified SKU management, daypart offers, menuing, and most importantly, the face-to-face engagement of customers and baristas.

By taking the interior café experience outside, we helped create a 20% lift in average ticket, as well as an improved customer experience, resulting in $400 million in new revenue for the client. 

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