Caption this! All that’s left of a KFC after a suspected gas explosion in Eden, North Carolina.
Sale on extra crispy 
DO NOT light your farts after eating a Zinger burger.
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PAG Asia Capital also owns The Cheesecake Shop.
KFC will open its first drive-thru only store in Newcastle in NSW in early November. The concept store at Lambton Road in Broadmeadow will have two lanes for traditional order and payment methods, and three lanes for people who have ordered through the KFC smartphone app or website beforehand.
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Are they dropping “KFC” and reverting to the full original name?
Can I get a car wash and wax while I’m waiting for my order?
Looks more like a Carlovers outlet than a fast food franchise.
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Newcastle is a unique market for KFC, having the largest Australian store in Newcastle West and with this store which looks like it will be at Broadmeadow, right next door to a Hungry Jacks.
Don’t KFC and other fast food outlets usually try new ideas (in which this Drive-Thru only store is one) and menu changes in places like Newcastle before possibly rolling them out everywhere?
Probably makes sense when you think about it because the Newcastle area is a “big enough, small enough” market for fast food restaurants and other major retailers: Big enough for the need to have a decent network of stores spread across the region, but small enough to be able to trial new things in because if something fails in Newcastle, it wouldn’t be the major PR disaster (at least to the same extent) it’d likely be if trialled in the critical markets of Sydney, Melbourne or South East Queensland.
I’ve only known KFC to do this in Newcastle.
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They used to use Tasmania for this purpose as well, not sure if they still do.
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Wasn’t the old Westgate inbound a drive through only before it closed?
I don’t think so, the one at West Gate Freeway service centre had chairs and tables inside.
So this one is going to be on Lambton Rd Broadmeadow, next to the existing HJ’s. The location kind of makes sense - it fills a geographical K-hole (K for Kentucky)… but it seems questionable to me whether it’s actually a good idea to open more KFCs in the already saturated chicken takeaway market of Newcastle, which is already well serviced by several KFCs, Henny Pennys and Red Roosters.
Drive thru only would be because the area is a residential wasteland - it is totally surrounded by small industrial parks and sports fields.
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Not sure if they still use Tassie or not but they have in the past. Would love it if they tried this one in Tassie. I hate having to queue and wait for ages when I’ve already ordered and paid.
Outbound definitely did but inbound was much smaller.
The ‘little’ KFC at the West Gate Bridge service centre - originally just a drive through, they also have a small dining area and walk up window.
Flickr: Marcus Wong.
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Many eons ago, McDonalds had a “mainly drive thru with a walk up window and possibly a small dining area” set up on the Cumberland Highway, Liverpool. IIRC, that one closed down around 2002-ish (pretty sure it happened a while before Krispy Kreme was built let alone opened in Late 2003 anyway) and was replaced with a fully fledged outlet just outside of what was then Liverpool Megacenta but is now The Grove. Of course there’s a very long and interesting story about the factory retail outlet precent on the other side of Viscount Place, but that’s for another time.
The Maccas further up the Cumberland Highway at Smithfield didn’t even have a dining area at one point IIRC, but they’ve at least got a small one now as far as I can tell via Google Street View.
I dined in at the Smithfield McDonalds just a few months ago. It literally only has a couple of tables inside it. In fact, it’s so small that it doesn’t even have any bathroom amenities. It’s the smallest McDonalds I have ever been to.
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From memory, the Hungry Jacks at Gepps Cross (Adelaide) is mostly drive thru as well with only a very small dining area
There are also plans to have KFC drive thru only in Mt Gambier, located next to the WW Caltex at Marketplace.
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Given the layout as shown in the concept photo, even though you may have made the order online or via the KFC app, when you arrive you still have to queue to one of two drive-thru windows in order to collect the food. It’s only a bit faster than the traditional order method.
This is more about efficiency for the business than the customer though.
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