Curbside Pickup

From transaction to handoff

Before curbside pickup became an industry expectation, we explored drive-up ordering as an internal innovation concept.

The concept focused on a critical gap in digital restaurant commerce: checkout was becoming easier, but pickup still depended on the customer navigating the physical cafe experience. Drive-up ordering pushed the product beyond the transaction and into the handoff.

Customers could order ahead, arrive at the cafe, and receive food with less friction. That mattered because the real value of digital ordering was not just placing an order faster. It was making the entire experience easier from intent to fulfillment.

Built for the moment that came later

When the pandemic disrupted restaurant operations, this kind of thinking became essential.

Restaurants had to serve customers without relying on the dining room as the center of the experience. Panera was better positioned because it had already invested in digital ordering, pickup, loyalty, and off-premise behavior. Public reporting showed Panera’s eCommerce growing from roughly 30% of sales before COVID to more than half of the business during the pandemic.

Drive-up ordering was part of that broader product direction. It anticipated the same operational challenge Panera later had to solve at national scale: digital ordering only works when the real-world handoff is simple, fast, and reliable.

Pickup as product infrastructure

The concept was meaningful because it treated pickup as part of the product.

That sounds obvious now, but it was an important shift. The restaurant experience did not end when a customer tapped “place order.” It ended when the food was successfully handed off.

Drive-up ordering pointed toward a more resilient model for restaurant commerce, where digital channels could flex with customer behavior and help the business keep serving people even when the physical operating model changed.