The drive-thru has dominated fast food and taken over fast casual. Now it's coming for casual dining.

• Sweetgreen and Applebee's are both adding drive-thrus this year.
• Drive-thrus dominated fast food during the pandemic and spread to fast-casual chains.

Drive-thrus have undeniably taken over fast food and made headway into fast-casual, and now they're coming for casual dining.

Salad chain Sweetgreen just announced plans for a drive-thru "sweetlane" in Illinois in the next year. The concept seems similar to Chipotle's drive-thru as a competing fast-casual chain, with a similar name. Chipotle debuted its Chipotlane drive-thrus in 2019, and they've proven to be a huge success so far.

Restaurants that include a Chipotlane have about 15% higher sales than restaurants opened in the same period of 2021 without the drive-thru lane, Chipotle said in a statement. Of the 41 new Chipotles that opened in Q3 2021, 36 of them have Chipotlanes, and Chipotle plans to continue investing in them and see further growth.

The more surprising addition is Applebee's, which plans to expand into drive-thrus this year with one coming soon in South Carolina and more throughout the rest of the year, the chain said during a March 2 earnings call. There might be as many as 15 drive-thru Applebee's stores by the end of 2022, including both new builds and conversions of existing restaurants, Applebee's President John Cywinski said.

He noted the convenience and efficiency aspects mentioned by Chipotle.

"What we know is the model facilitates a much more efficient model where it's easier for the guest, better for the team members, and more profitable for the franchisees," Cywinski told Forbes. "Not everyone has an hour and a half to dine in, and this model will make us that much more attractive."

While drive-thrus were already important to the fast-food business, the COVID-19 pandemic sped up their evolution. Suddenly drive-thrus weren't just a way to do business, they were the primary way customers felt safe visiting restaurants amid closed dining rooms and health concerns. Typically, drive-thrus account for 70% of sales at fast-food chains. But in 2020 chains like Wendy's and McDonald's said it was closer to 90%.

Chains that already had drive-thrus, like McDonald's, Chick-fil-A, and Taco Bell, expanded them to include multiple lanes and handle digital orders. Fast-casual chains like Panera, Chipotle, and Shake Shack invested in growing their drive-thru presence in ways that customers were showing a clear preference for.

Casual dining joining the drive-thru craze is a natural next step in a gradual erasing of the border between the different categories of restaurants, reflecting a change in how customers view their eatery options.

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