The Building Shrinks. The Queue Does Not.

Intouch Insight published its 26th annual drive-thru study on October 1, conducted with QSR Magazine. Per the release: 2,145 mystery-shop visits, 165 at each of 13 quick-service brands, in June and July. The average visit took 5 minutes 24 seconds, 11.1 seconds faster than 2025 and the fastest total time the study has recorded since 2018. Service time — from placing the order to leaving with it — fell 10.3 seconds to 4:04. Window time fell 7.5 seconds to 1:40. A voice AI took some or all of the order on 36 of the 2,145 visits, fewer than 2 percent.

Our position: the speed gain is coming from the pickup window, and the structural answer brands are building is more lanes. On a pad that makes queue geometry the binding constraint, not building size. The box is getting smaller and the pavement it needs is getting bigger.

Subtract the two numbers

Total time is 5:24. Service time, measured from the moment the order is placed, is 4:04. The difference is roughly 80 seconds per car spent in line before reaching a speaker. That subtraction is ours. It is the portion of the visit the site has to hold, and no software removes it — those cars are already on the dirt.

Window time accounted for 7.5 of the 11.1 seconds taken out of the average visit. That is a kitchen and handoff gain. It does not change how much asphalt sits between the entrance and the order point.

The AI figure is the one we would put in front of anybody underwriting a short lane. Per the release, accuracy at locations running voice AI rose to 90.8 percent from 82.5 percent a year earlier, so it is improving. It is still in fewer than 2 percent of visits.

A three-lane prototype is a land requirement

Per KFC's September 24 release, its Open House restaurant opened September 26 in McKinney, Texas: 3,400 square feet, 52 seats, dual drive-thru lanes and a dedicated mobile pick-up lane. KFC says the purpose is to learn what works and scale the strongest ideas across its 3,500-plus U.S. restaurants.

Three lanes. Read that against a Southeast ordinance. Gwinnett County's Unified Development Ordinance, Section 240-80.2, requires each drive-thru lane to hold a minimum of five stacked cars, outside the required through-lane that circulates the building, with each stacking space a minimum of 20 feet long and 10 feet wide — 12 feet on curves — measured from the point of ordering. Section 240-80.3 sets a 10-foot minimum lane width and requires lane entrances long enough to keep waiting vehicles out of the nearest intersection and the public right-of-way.

Three lanes at five cars at 20 feet is 300 linear feet of queue, in three 10-foot lanes, plus the through lane. McKinney is not Gwinnett and that prototype was not designed to this code. The arithmetic is the point. The building is 3,400 square feet. The queue is the larger ask, and it is the part that gets value-engineered last.

What the exit market paid for

REBusinessOnline reported on October 1 that Marcus & Millichap brokered the sale of a newly built McDonald's in Ringgold, Georgia on a 20-year lease with 7.5 percent increases in the initial term, from a repeat McDonald's developer to an all-cash 1031 buyer. Price was not disclosed. The brokerage said in that report it had an offer within 48 hours and closed near list price.

A correctly built drive-thru box on long credit moved in two days. The geometry under that box is what produced it.

What we watch for

We measure queue depth from the order point, not from the curb cut. The ordinances in our markets measure it that way, and the study puts roughly 80 seconds of the average visit before the speaker.

We test a site against the lane count the brand is building now, not the one it built in 2015. A dual lane plus a mobile pick-up lane is a different parcel than a single lane.

We price depth over frontage on a drive-thru pad. A wide, shallow corner that cannot hold stacking outside the right-of-way is a retail site, not a drive-thru site.

We read the stacking section of the ordinance before the broker's dimensions. Those numbers are public and they decide whether the prototype fits.