The Drive-Thru Lane Is Worth About $500,000 a Year

Our read on this month's growth news: the openings being announced are paid for by shrinking the building, and one brand's own disclosure numbers now put a price on what that costs. Given the choice, we would take the endcap with a drive-thru over either the standalone pad or the inline box. It is the one format in that data where the capital comes down and the volume mostly does not.

Start with the numbers, because they come from one brand and one disclosure document. That makes them comparable in a way cross-brand averages never are. Restaurant Dive, reporting on Freddy's July development announcement, cites the chain's franchise disclosure document: franchised standalone drive-thru restaurants average close to $1.9 million in unit volume, endcap units with drive-thrus about $1.8 million, and inline units about $1.4 million. The company's release puts an inline build at $854,834 against $1,586,334 for a standalone.

Read across those two lines. The lane is worth roughly a half million dollars of annual revenue and roughly $730,000 of build cost. The endcap keeps nearly all of the revenue and gives up a large share of the cost. The inline box trades about a quarter of the top line for the cheapest way into a market.

Why brands are taking the trade

Cost, not preference. Franchise Times reported on August 28 that Freddy's has moved off a history of standalone ground-up drive-thrus toward inline, endcap and second-generation builds, and quoted the brand's chief development officer saying flexibility is where the system started. The same report cites CoStar's first-quarter 2026 figures: 64.2 million square feet of retail space under construction against a ten-year average near 90 million. CoStar's national director of retail analytics, Brandon Svec, put the constraint plainly — a lot of models cannot bear the rents new construction requires. One multi-brand franchisee told the publication that the only sites under consideration now are restaurants that have already closed.

That retrofit supply is real. QSR Web, citing RestaurantData, counted 8,171 U.S. and Canadian restaurant closures in the first half of 2026 against 9,541 opening and development records.

The Southeast version

Both growth items that landed this week fit the pattern. Restaurant Dive reported on September 9 that Potbelly — bought by Atlanta-based RaceTrac for $655 million in 2025 — opened its first Georgia restaurant on September 1 in Peachtree Station Shopping Center in Chamblee. A shopping center, not a pad. The same report puts more than 54 shops under development in Florida.

WOWorks announced on September 1 that it has opened 23 restaurants this year with 15 more in development, and that close to half of those openings are co-branded. Several are second brands dropped inside restaurants the operator already runs, including a Saladworks and Frutta Bowls pairing in Winterville, North Carolina and a location at the University of Georgia's Tate Student Center.

What we watch for

Endcaps with a lane. Scarce, and the Freddy's spread says they barely give up volume against a standalone. When a center re-leases a hard corner, that is the first call we make.

Whether the inline number holds. The $1.4 million figure reflects franchisees who chose inline, often in denser trade areas. If inline shifts from exception to default, that average is the one to re-check.

Rent against capital. The $730,000 build-cost gap is what a landlord's second-generation box and tenant improvement package is competing against when rent gets priced.

A pad with a drive-thru is still the best box in the Southeast. The reporting this month says fewer tenants can pay what it costs to build one, and the size of that gap is the number to price against.