7 Brew Drive-Thru Coffee is planning to open a location on a portion of the parking lot at the Hills Plaza on South Atherton Street. The 540-square-foot shop and 230-square-foot remote cooler will replace 48 existing parking spaces between Kish and First National banks in the parking area near Ollie's Bargain Outlet.
Founded in Rogers, Arkansas, 7 Brew serves no food, only drinks including coffee, tea, hot chocolate, Italian sodas, smoothies, shakes and energy drinks. Travis Odom, a Pennsylvania franchise partner who presented the sketch plan, said it also does not accept online orders or third-party delivery services such as Uber Eats or DoorDash.
Plans for the College Township location include a dual lane drive-thru. There is no speaker box, but rather staff members come to customers with iPads to take their orders. Customers then pull forward and staff bring their drinks to them, and a canopy extends from the building to shield employees from the elements.
The time from when an order is placed to delivery is about four minutes, Odom said.
"We’re all about speed," Odom said. "We want to get you through as fast as possible."
The drive-thru lanes can accommodate up to 18 vehicles at a time. In response to a planning commission question about overflow during busy times, such as Penn State football weekends, Odom said the peak is 14 vehicles during the busiest hours of 7 a.m. to 9 am., even at 7 Brew's busiest location in the college town of Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Site layout for the planned 7 Brew location at the Hills Plaza in College Township.
Should there be overflow, it would back up into the private drive that leads to the the drive-thru entry.
"If it did… we would have a traffic plan for it to make sure we have people out there directing traffic and where to go to stay out of harm’s way," Odom said, adding that 10 employees will be working at any given time.
The franchise's shops typically use cones to delineate where drive-thru entry begins, but on recommendation from the planning commission, the College Township location may include a rolled curb to prevent vehicles from accidentally entering the queue.
7 Brew does not offer walk-up service except for first responders because their vehicles might not fit in the drive-thru, Odom said. First responders also receive a 50% discount.
While a target opening date has not yet been set, both the building and the cooler will be pre-manufactured and trucked to the site, "which expedites our construction timeline,” according to a letter included in the planning commission meeting agenda.
7 Brew will be required to submit a land development plan for approval before the project moves forward. The sketch plan presented on Tuesday is meant to garner feedback before submitting formal plans.
When it opens, hours will be 5:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 5:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
7 Brew currently has 265 locations in 29 states, and by the end of the year it is expected to reach 350 in 31 states, according to Odom. The company is aiming for 1,000 locations by the end of 2025.
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