One of the main innovation that happened the past 10 years is obviously the drive thru hype. It represents now over 6% of the whole market, and the number of these stores has sprung up over the years. Hence, most of the market growth comes from those new types of retail.
French Newspaper LSA share with us the state of drive thru at the moment. The market starts to mature, and the number of opening per months has dicreased. French leader E. Leclerc will open only 50 drives this year after having opened 140 in 2014, to reach 600 drives. Actually, some locations start to close, some of them which have been opened at an early stage of the franzy.
Today, the drive thru has a penetration rate of 25%. One of the interesting figure is that the drive thru is losing customers. 3,1 million customers abandonned the channel, 2 millions were recruited, and hence they lost 1,1 million customers. The growth then come from the loyalty of the users, and the effort to grow the average basket.
Now the next phase is to open drive thru locations downtown, in order to reach a new clientele. The story is still unfolding.
I believe that the French market of drive thru is very important, because I believe that this new system of retailing will soon boom in other markets, especially in Northern America.
