Let’s just stipulate up front: it’s only been nine days. That’s how long Tance Hughes has been operating a Speedy Eats drive-thru location in Natchez, Mississippi. Not nearly enough time to decide if it will be a viable business. But enough time to take some early learnings. So far he likes what he sees.
“This is the first location up and running so it’s sort of the guinea pig,” said Hughes, who also runs a P.J.’s Coffee in the area, in an interview. “It’s been fun.”
Hughes has certainly enjoyed the traffic from midnight to 3 a.m., where he has been seeing a surprising amount of night owls drive through the 24-7 automated and unmanned location. He senses there might be volume there.
“In the community we are in, which is a smaller town, there’s not really anything open, you know, in those hours,” he said. “And so somebody who’s staying in a hotel gets in late, or somebody who might be a truck driver, or somebody just passing through town, they might find that nothing’s open, but they’re hungry. You have maybe a gas station or two. And so this is something that’s better quality than what you’re going to find in a gas station. So I think over time, as people realize that it’ll become a spot that people go when everything is closed.”
That’s one niche. But that won’t be enough to cover his costs. He’ll need dayparts to play their part. He’s starting by getting the word out.
Tance Hughes operates a Speedy Eats in Natchez, Mississippi.
“We’re running ads on Facebook to get visibility in the community and drive traffic,” he said. “So I think a lot of people are aware of the business. I’m sticking a large banner out by the road any day now.”
The automation has been working flawlessly, which pleases Hughes. He’s been sharing how it works on LinkedIn, where one video showed a driver going through the process in the drive-through by scanning a QR code from an app and the automation delivering a buffalo chicken salad and an orange Fanta all in 40 seconds.
One thing vexing Hughes at this early stage is the presentation of the meals. They look like TV dinners. But the food, which Hughes orders from a commercial kitchen, is much higher end than that, with fresh ingredients and no preservatives.
“All of these meals are gourmet meals made and put in these trays made fresh. This is high-quality food. The packaging is just the mode of delivery. I need to kind of figure out how to better educate or inform the customer that the quality is really good there,” he said.
Also in the works is a heating element so food gets delivered hot. Hughes is hearing that consumers would want that and Speed Bancroft, the founder of Speedy Eats, is fine-tuning the technology to make that happen. “Right now the food comes out refrigerated but we have a platform that can heat the meal for you before delivering the food in the works,” he said.
The menu offerings include a chicken teriyaki dish and four other entrees, three sandwiches, three salads, and a variety of beverages. All the food items are between $9 and $13. So far the chicken teriyaki item is the most popular. It helps that in Natchez competition isn’t fierce for a quality comparable dish.
“We have one little Chinese place on the other side of town, a hole in the wall not really in a busy area,” he said. “People want this type of cuisine and it’s been very popular. So is the chicken alfredo. I think there’s something to be said for giving people options for items they can’t currently get in smaller communities.”
Right now Hughes is a staffer of one, loading the items into the automation and making adjustments based on data. “We can 86 the ones that don’t sell and bring in new options pretty easily,” he said. “Those are the things that we’re looking at right now. But operationally, the unit works well. The technology is great. There have been very few kinks. Now we just have to continue to educate the consumer.”
