Drive-thru burger joints have been commonplace since Americans first fell madly in love with the automobile. But drive-thru pizza is a different story. Now the model is finally catching on, as evidenced by the latest location of Red’s Savoy Pizza, which opened on Wednesday, July 19, in Shorewood, Minnesota.
In addition to serving Red’s Savoy’s signature square-cut ‘Sota-style pies—featuring a thin crust, a family-recipe sausage and spicy-sweet “Passive-Aggressive” sauce—the new store will boast the brand’s first-ever drive-thru, which they’re calling the Jumbo Slice Lane.
“Since coming out of the pandemic, we’ve noticed that consumers are back to busy lifestyles and value the convenience that ordering pizza offers,” said Reed Daniels, CEO of Red’s Savoy Pizza. “We wanted to take that one step further by offering a quick, fresh lunch option.”
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The Jumbo Slice Lane will be open for lunch service only from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily. Customers can grab a quick lunch from a menu of jumbo slices, including cheese, pepperoni or sausage options, as well as salads, desserts and drinks.
The signature drive-thru special is a 2-for-$12 combo where customers can mix and match a jumbo slice of pizza, side salad or slice of seasonal pie plus a 20-ounce soda or water for $12.
The 2-for-12 deal at Red’s Savoy
The restaurant also offers dine-in, carryout, pick-up and delivery service. The same drive-thru lunch menu will be offered in-store alongside the full menu of regular and large pizzas, salads, baked pastas, apps and desserts.
Pizza Hut started adding drive-thru service—called the Hut Lane—for digital orders at many locations in early 2021. Slice Factory, based in Chicago, implemented drive-thru at its Berwyn, Illinois location in 2019 and has since added the Slice Thru lane at every new store. In March 2023, Slice Factory founder/CEO Dom DiDiana said drive-thru had been a “massive game changer” for the company, assisting in 60% of the chain’s orders and increasing sales by 20% since the pandemic.
Related: Domino’s challenges drive-thrus with new ordering options
But drive-thru pizza has bombed in some markets. Fly Pie, promising an “immersive” drive-thru experience in Henderson, Nevada, complete with animated short films that played while customers waited for their food, opened with considerable fanfare in June 2021. But, despite being the brainchild of Anthony E. Zuiker, the creator of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, the concept closed down after just a year in business. And 7Pie, a drive-thru pizza concept in Houston, also shut its doors within less than a year, although the company has said it’s seeking new locations.
Other drive-thru pizza concepts are still going, however. Dave’s Drive-Thru in Marblehead, Ohio, is a unique hybrid—part convenience store, part pizzeria—that started in late 2019. And Louisiana chain Fat Boy’s Pizza opened its first drive-thru, called Fat Boy’s Pizza Express, in New Orleans in December 2022.
Red’s Savoy is a long-established pizza brand with about 20 locations in Minnesota. Its first store opened in 1965, and the company began marketing its pies as a unique regional style—dubbed ‘Sota-style pizza—in 2017.
