The Planning and Zoning Board recommended approval of plans for a new 7 Brew Drive-Thru Coffee in the Winter Springs Town Center last week.
The 7 Brew Drive-Thru Coffee would be located at 1248 E. State Road 434. It’s at the northeast corner of the intersection of S.R. 434 and Michael Blake Boulevard, in the same development as The Learning Center, a planned daycare, and a possible 82-townhome development.
The coffee shop doesn’t have any seating. And the coffee doesn’t have a drive-thru window, but instead has a door where staff come out.
“Someone comes out, they take their order, they go in, and (they) come back out,” Winter Springs Senior Planner Jenale Garnett said at the Planning and Zoning Board meeting.
The Planning and Zoning Board recommended approval 3-0, with two members absent. You can watch the video of the Nov. 6 meeting here. An engineer said the drive-thru operates like a Chick-fil-A, where employees come out to take your order with an iPad when the line begins to que.
Garnett was asked why the site has pedestrian access built into the site if pedestrians can’t be served at the drive-thru.
“Maybe if the employees want to walk, to go to any other areas,” Garnett said with a laugh. “Maybe go to Starbucks instead, or just walk the neighborhood.”
There are 33 7 Brew locations in Florida, including in Orlando by the University of Central Florida, Melbourne in Brevard County and Clermont in Lake County.
Nationwide, 7 Brew has more than 460 locations, and the company is expanding, at least in part thanks to an undisclosed investment from private equity firm Blackstone. The chain generates more than $500 million in sales annually, according to Restaurant Business Online.
According to an analysis by WalletHub, Orlando ranks No. 2 in the U.S. behind Portland, Oregon of best coffee cities in the U.S., with consumers spending an average of $154 annually on coffee. Orlando also has the highest per-capita rate of donut shops, which contributed to the ranking.
Winter Springs already has several different styles of coffee shops. It has a Foxtail Coffee in the Winter Springs Town Center, which is a traditional coffee shop. The Town Center also has a Starbucks, which is both a café and a drive-thru.
Down by The Foundry Church, there’s an Elianos Coffee that’s a pure drive-thru, the same style as 7 Brew is planning. It’s also similar to chains like Dutch Bros Coffee. There’s also The Human Bean, which is about 10 minutes west on S.R. 434.
The proliferation of coffee shops didn’t go unnoticed by the Planning and Zoning Board.
“Winter Springs loves their coffee, right?” board member Louis Hilal said.
That model – a small footprint drive-thru – is becoming more popular, as consumers are now more likely to take their coffee to go.
“The way people are dining is changing a little bit,” said Bill Nguyen, an advisor with Saunders Commercial who helped broker a deal to bring Haraz Coffee House to Lee Road. “People like to do more pickups. You see the Chick-fil-As doing two drive-thru lanes.”
The proposed 7 Brew would operate from 5:30 a.m to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and stay open until 11 p.m. on the weekends. The building would be 520 square feet, and a traffic analysis found it would generate an expected 226 total trips daily, of which 132 would be considered new beyond what currently exists in the development. The biggest impact to traffic coming in the mornings.
Partha Mishra is on a team of researchers who studied consumer spending at Dunkin Donuts, McDonald’s and Starbucks. The research showed that stores with a drive-thru had recovered from the post COVID-19 pandemic slump, but stores without a drive-thru had not.
“Post-pandemic in particular there was a significant shift in consumer visits and spending, particularly those that offered drive thru service,” Mishra said. “It seems like people have in fact changed their preference.”
Mishra said he doesn’t have a research-based reason for the change, but in his opinion, it could be a number of factors. Online food-delivery apps could be fueling the growth, a need for more convenience and speed from consumers.
“It seems like the industry at large [is] kind of catching up to the trend with these drive-thru only stores,” Mishra said. “Taco Bell and other quick-service restaurants are rethinking how they do their stores.”
The approval by the Planning and Zoning Board is not the final approval. The Winter Springs City Commission is expected to vote on the 7 Brew at its Dec. 8 meeting.
Abe Aboraya is a Report for America corps member.
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