Farmer Boys, Taco Cabana, Costa Vida Fresh Mexican Grill execs talk high-tech drive-thrus

Fast Casual Executive Summit

A Fast Casual Executive Summit session highlighted the drive-thru’s post-pandemic evolution, moving beyond just speed to prioritize accuracy, hospitality and brand consistency through the implementation of integrated digital solutions like dynamic menu boards and intelligent upselling technology.

October 24, 2025 by Mandy Wolf Detwiler — Editor, Networld Media Group

The drive-thru experience is undergoing a rapid transformation, driven by emerging technologies and evolving customer expectations. Innovative approaches, such as implementing digital ordering, mobile payments, dynamic menu boards and voice-activated ordering, alongside AI-powered recommendations for personalized suggestions, are being deployed to enhance the customer experience.

These strategies aim to increase check size and foster customer loyalty through exclusive digital promotions, subscription models and loyalty programs tailored for off-premise diners. Success hinges on minimizing wait times, ensuring order accuracy, and providing a seamless pick-up process, all while continuously refining operations by analyzing order data, tracking key performance indicators and actively utilizing customer feedback to perfect the overall drive-thru strategy.

A panel discussion at the Fast Casual Executive Summit earlier this month in Austin, Texas, took a look at drive-through dynamics from the perspective of three restaurateurs. The Fast Casual Executive Summit is hosted by Networld Media Group, which owns Fastcasual.com, PizzaMarketplace.com and QSRweb.com.

Panel speakers included Allen Beck, director of off-premise and catering for Costa Vida Fresh Mexican Grill, Frank Solis, head of marketing for Taco Cabana and John Lucas, VP of brand and franchise development for Farmer Boys. Shokouh Shafiei, president and CEO of DSA Signage, served as the moderator for the session.

Drive-thrus pre- and post-pandemic

Beck said pre-pandemic speed of service was the biggest indicator of success during the drive-thru experience. Post-pandemic, it’s all about accuracy, hospitality and consistency as well as speed of service.

“You don’t want to have a slow drive-thru — you’re not going to have a lot of business that way — but then having the consistency, the hospitality is a big one — I think in 2025 we’re find out that everybody has pretty good food,” Beck said. “If you don’t have good food, you’re probably not in business. So, what’s the good differentiator? It’s going to be hospitality. How are you making people feel? Are you having a lasting impact on them? We want to make sure when people come through our drive-thru that they get that same experience they get when they come in and dine at Costa Vida.”

Like most restaurants, pre-pandemic, dine-in was a big part of Taco Cabana’s business. After the pandemic, off-premise dining has grown and drive-thru has become critical for the brand, which also sells beer and margaritas through the drive-thru. “That significantly helped us,” Solis said.

Lucas said after the pandemic, many restaurant brands thought dine-in would return to normal, but customers still prefer off-premise dining.

“It’s slowly shifting,” he said. “But drive through is still sticking. I think the shift, during COVID, people were very forgiving. It was all about ‘Just give me my food, I am so thrilled that you’re open and I can experience your brand even during the worst of times. But after COVID, I think people reset their expectations and it became how do you find that sweet spot between accuracy and speed and delivering hospitality.”

Restaurant leaders have spent plenty of time talking about closing the gap between the dining room experience and creating something unique for the brand in the drive-thru. Lucas said Farmer Boys is looking at transitioning to digital menu boards to create marketing opportunities and create some level of brand experience through the video that the brand is going to offer. Evolution is imminent, he added, and restaurants are trying to get to the place where every touch point is similar and consistent.

Digital solutions

Solis said Taco Cabana is fully digital inside the restaurants, and the brand is testing digital solutions in the drive-thru at a couple of restaurants. It’s a slow process, he said, because the brand wants to get the right solution and the right product at the right cost.

“We’re trying to figure out the ROI. What does it look like?” he said. “How long is it going to take? So, we’re considering it. It’s a slow process.”

Beck said Costa Vida has already invested in digital menu boards for flexibility, menu engineering, daypart flexibility and LTOs. It would take several weeks to get printed static menu boards put up when LTOs were released.

“When you’re running a six-week LTO and you’re two weeks late to the game, you’re not going to get the data that you’re looking for,” he said. “By going to the digital menu boards, it gives us that flexibility.”

Most of Costa Vida’s drive-thrus cost $15,000 to $20,000 to build out. Beck said it will cost the same when they move to digital menu boards, but they’ll have a digital advantage in the drive-thrus.

Lucas said that as a 45-year-old legacy brand, brand image is crucial. As you age as a brand, you can lose relevance. As Farmer Boys seeks to pull in different demographics into its restaurants and introduce the brand to a younger audience, having that level of technology that they engage in is important.

The brand runs six LTOs and changes prices twice a year and pulling down static menu boards is a time-consuming process that is a challenge to employees.

Key software integration in the drive-thru

Beck said everything must be connected to the point-of-sale system. Having the right point-of-sale partner is key.

“We partner with Toast, and they have a very open API system, and so when we were going through our RFP process and talking to partners, the very first question that we posed to them was ‘do you have an integration with Toast?'” he said.

The immediate follow-up question was to ask how deep and how old that integration was because salespeople tend to over-sell their connections with other tech companies.

Lucas said Farmer Boys is in the middle of evolving its tech stack and is embarking on a test with Touchpoint. The brand has a legacy POS system and Touchpoint integrates with it. Digital menu board and kiosk integration will be considerations if they choose to go with a new POS system.

“We want a robust POS system that is going to integrate with all of this,” Lucas said.

Solis added that being able to upsell is a major factor for Taco Cabana. Building upselling into a digital menu board system is a key element to alleviating employees who are not upselling consistently.

“You don’t want to overwhelm the guest with 30 questions,” he said. “Ask them one thing and let the digital menu board ask the other things. By doing that in an intelligent way, if there’s two tacos on the order a drink but no chips and queso, offer them chips and queso. If they already have a combo, offer them dessert. You can do that intelligently. That, to us, is a really important piece.”

About Mandy Wolf Detwiler

---