Convenience coffee brands such as Dutch Bros, 7 Brew, and Scooters use customized, colorful drinks, friendly service, and social media to attract Gen Z consumers, driving massive sales spikes. Photo credit: Dutch Bros
The coffee industry is always changing, adapting to new trends and learning how to attract new customers. A striking example of this is the surge in popularity of drive-thru coffee chains over the past decade.
The concept of a coffee shop with a window that enables drivers to pull up and order without leaving their cars is not new, and chains like Starbucks have had drive-thrus connected to many of their stores for decades. But the modern iteration is at a whole other level, with 7 Brew Coffee, Scooter’s Coffee, and Dutch Bros Coffee all growing at breakneck speeds around the United States. The field is becoming crowded, to the point that smaller brands are being swallowed up. In January 2026, Dutch Bros acquired the 20-unit chain Clutch Coffee for $20 million.
As a result of Scooter’s famously fast customer service, sales grew 114.5% between 2021 and 2023. Photo credit: Scooter’s
While Starbucks tries to reconnect with its coffeehouse roots, and other established chains like Costa Coffee continue to struggle, upstart drive-thru brands offer a different proposition. Their pitch is speed, friendly service, and customization that leans heavily on indulgence. Based on their incredible growth over the past few years, it’s a pitch that seems to be resonating.
A Short History of Drive-Thru Coffee
Restaurant drive-thrus have been around in some form since the early 20th century. They began to catch on in the 1950s and became a fast food staple after being taken nationwide by chains such as McDonald’s in the 1970s.
Drive-thrus focused on coffee came along a little later. In 1990, Jim Roberts opened Motor Moka, widely regarded as the world’s first coffee drive-thru, in Portland, Oregon. Starbucks had opened its first location in the city just a year earlier, and Roberts told the Willamette Week in 2017 that at the time, the chain wasn’t interested in drive-thru. “They said it was because they had built this culture around the coffeehouse experience,” he explained, “and they didn’t see how people could have the coffeehouse experience inside their Buick.”
That soon changed. In 1994, Starbucks began adding drive-thru infrastructure to many of its locations, and by 2005 had over a thousand drive-thru stores across the US. In 2018, four out of every five Starbucks locations had a drive-thru.
Starbucks started adding drive-thru windows to its stores in 1994, and by 2018, four out of every five locations had drive-thru options.
Drive-thru coffee was especially popular in the Pacific Northwest, where in the 1990s hundreds of tiny espresso stands opened in parking lots and next to gas stations. This is where Dutch Bros got its start, first as a coffee cart in Grants Pass, Oregon, in 1992, and then two years later as a drive-thru. Since then, it has expanded across the US, and 7 Brew, Scooter’s, and other brands like Black Rock Coffee Bar (which also began in Oregon) have followed suit.
The Drive-Thru Boom
While the up-and-coming drive-thru brands grew through the 2010s, the big players still dominated. Between them, Starbucks, Dunkin’, and brands owned by JAB Holdings — including Panera, Peet’s, and Caribou — accounted for 78% of US coffee shops in 2019. Many of these chains utilized drive-thrus, but as Robert Byrne, senior director of consumer research at foodservice industry research firm Technomic, explains, it wasn’t necessarily their main focus. “There was a pretty singular model for many years leading up to the pandemic,” Byrne says, “and drive-thru was a limited point of contact for those brands.”
As senior director of consumer research at Technomic, Robert Byrne studies the reasons behind the rapid growth in popularity of convenience coffee chains in North America. Photo credit: Robert Byrne
After 2020, the number of coffee consumers visiting drive-thrus spiked. According to the National Coffee Association’s Fall 2025 National Coffee Data Trends report, 59% of coffee drinkers who bought coffee out-of-home used a drive-thru. This is both a record high and up almost 23% since 2020.
“It’s not easy to pinpoint exactly what’s driving this record-high in drive-thru purchases,” says NCA CEO William “Bill” Murray, “though we did see drive-thru and other options like app-based ordering and delivery gain popularity during the pandemic.”
Fast-food chains in general saw an increase in drive-thru traffic after 2020, as consumers avoided indoor dining and sought the solitude and social distancing their cars offered. However, the trend didn’t stop once vaccines became available and people returned to restaurants. A report by Revenue Management Solutions found that drive-thru accounted for two-thirds of all fast-food purchases in 2023.
The coffee drive-thru brands have grasped the opportunity, something the data clearly shows: Dutch Bros brought in $1.64 billion in revenue in 2025, a 27.9% increase from 2024, while Scooter’s reported sales growth of 114.5% between 2021 and 2023. 7 Brew’s numbers are even more remarkable: In 2024, the brand’s sales grew 163% year over year while it expanded from 14 locations in 2019 to more than 600 at the end of 2025.
Speed, Service, and Sweet Treats
The most successful drive-thru brands have leant into the current coffee industry trend for energy drinks, syrupy customizations, and colorful concoctions that pop on social media. This has brought them sales and a huge amount of earned media from customers sharing their creations on TikTok and Instagram.
But their success goes beyond good marketing. At Scooter’s, chief brand and marketing officer Malorie Maddox says that the company focuses on speed and customer service. “In addition to the friendliness of our baristas and strong customer service, customers are able to scoot in and scoot out with their order quickly and easily,” she says. “Drive-thru lends itself to speed of service as our baristas keep cars moving through the line quickly.”
Malorie Maddox, chief brand and marketing officer at Scooter’s, attributes the company’s success to its speedy and friendly customer service. Photo credit: Scooter’s
Speed combined with hyper-friendly customer service is a theme among the drive-thru upstarts. Dutch Bros in particular puts a big emphasis on hiring only the most outgoing and sociable baristas (or “bro-istas,” as the company calls them). Meanwhile, 7 Brew touts its “fast, friendly service” and its mission to “cultivate kindness.”
Customers have responded. The 2025 edition of Technomic’s annual America’s Favorite Chain report featured three coffee companies in the top 10 for the first time, and all three were drive-thru brands. “Dutch Bros, 7 Brew, and Scooter’s are built on this efficient service model,” says Byrne. “But the differentiator is the service itself. The smiles that these people give, the boost they give to somebody. It’s very real. It’s very meaningful.”
Drive-thru coffee is particularly popular with Gen Z consumers, with 54% saying they visit a drive-thru at least once a week. Gen Z is the largest generation in history, accounting for a quarter of the world’s population, and its spending power is growing. Some of that spending is on so-called “little treats,” small indulgences like a cookie or an elaborate coffee drink, used to celebrate an achievement or cope with a setback.
“Each little individual accomplishment, they’re going out to buy a treat,” Byrne says. “Maybe it’s a smoothie, or maybe it’s a Rebel energy drink from Dutch Bros. This is the little reward, and these brands are doing a better-than-good job of providing that for consumers.”
Dutch Bros was one of the first coffee brands to create and market its own energy drink, attracting Gen Z consumers not interested in coffee. Photo credit: Dutch Bros
The Future of the Coffee Drive-Thru
Although not as pronounced as it is in the US, the drive-thru trend has also caught on internationally. The United Kingdom saw increased consumer interest in the concept after 2020. According to Allegra World Coffee Portal’s Project Café UK, the drive-thru coffee market grew 17.6% in 2023 compared to the year before. Although still dominated by Starbucks and Costa, higher-end brands like the bakery chain Gail’s have started opening drive-thru stores, and competition has reached a point where demand for new real estate is outstripping supply.
It is a similar story in Australia, where drive-thru traffic rose 30% between 2019 and 2022. Both international chains like Starbucks and homegrown brands such as Zarraffa’s Coffee have sought to capitalize on this increased demand. Zarraffa’s, which has 80 stores across the country, plans to focus solely on the drive-thru concept as it looks to more than double its footprint over the next five years.
For the first time ever in 2025, three coffee companies — Dutch Bros, 7 Brew, and Scooter’s — made the top 10 in Technomic’s annual America’s Favorite Chain report. Photo credit: Scooters
Like their international counterparts, the main drive-thru-focused US coffee brands have aggressive expansion goals. Dutch Bros plans to almost double its store count to more than 2,000 by 2029 and hasn’t ruled out further acquisitions. In October 2025, 7 Brew signed a deal with the world’s largest franchisee operator, Flynn Group, to open an additional 160 locations.
Scooter’s, which also operates on a franchise model, is looking to build on its solid growth over the past year, when Maddox says it grew its store count by 10%. “The future of Scooter’s Coffee is bright as we continue to grow our footprint sustainably and are driven by the success of our franchisees,” she says.
Coffee demand continues to grow, and the scale of new drive-thru openings across the US indicates that the future is bright for this mode of coffee service. The combination of US car-dependency, coffee’s centrality to many people’s lives, and Gen Z’s predilection for little treats means that drive-thru coffee brands will doubtless continue to thrive. As NCA’s Murray puts it, “Overall, there’s a coffee for every budget, taste, and lifestyle, and drive-thru provides another option for America’s favorite beverage to fit into consumers’ lives when they’re on the go.”