Jacksonville coffee scene changing to meet customer needs

A wave of drive-thru-only coffee kiosks is remaking the local coffee scene, forcing even small shops to rethink what a Jacksonville coffee experience looks like.

If you've noticed a lot more coffee huts with drive-thrus popping up along Jacksonville's commercial corridors lately, you're not imagining it. And if you've pulled into one looking for a table, a plug for your laptop or even a door to walk through, you've probably noticed something else: There isn't one.

From Dutch Bros' teal-and-orange kiosks to 7 Brew's drink-through-the-window stands, Northeast Florida is in the middle of a genuine coffee land rush, but almost none of these new options have a single chair to offer customers.

The math behind the boom

The chains multiplying across Duval, St. Johns, Clay, Nassau

and Baker counties share a business model: a compact building, often around 950 square feet, with one or two drive-thru lanes and no indoor seating.

There is an argument being made for many chain restaurants — from Starbucks to Chick-fil-A — to skip the dining room and eliminate the biggest costs and headaches of running a restaurant or cafe. Fewer square feet to lease or build means fewer staff to manage and faster table turns — turns that don't even need to exist because there are no tables.

Ru Padilla, a freelance social media liaison who frequently makes content about the array of coffee shops in the city, said that it has been noticeable that many new cafes opening are drive-thru only, but it’s mostly chains like “Dutch Bros or Scooters popping up on every corner.”

This can be a deterrent for her and other creators like her.

“My work is content driven so it’s always great to see a coffee shop filled with customers,” she explained, “even doing sit-down meetings for work, if there isn’t a good seating option, I have left places if the seating hasn’t met my needs.”

The growth locally has been fast enough to reshape whole stretches of highway frontage. 

Lake City-based Ellianos Coffee has roughly ten locations open across Northeast Florida with as many as 18 total in the pipeline. 

Dutch Bros, the Arizona-based chain that only entered the Florida market a few years ago, has about five area shops running with as many as 15 identified sites in various stages of development, from Baymeadows and Argyle Forest Boulevard to East Arlington and St. Johns County. 

Arkansas-based 7 Brew, which didn't open its first Florida location until 2023, already has roughly five Jacksonville-area stores with nine planned, including a recent addition on the Westside near Normandy Boulevard. 

South Georgia's Red Owl Coffee Company has two shops locally with a third planned for St. Augustine Beach, and Omaha-based Scooter's Coffee has three.

“New-age coffee like 7 Brew and Dutch Bros, even Ellianos, they have someone outside who is taking those orders,” Padilla added. “Those interactions are so different because you’re just trying to get that order and get that car moving. They’re competing with fast food chains, and that experience just isn’t the same.”

Industry data suggests these chains are chasing a real shift in how people drink coffee away from home.

A National Coffee Association survey found that 59% of Americans who bought coffee outside the house in the past week used a drive-thru — an all-time high for this category. 

For a generation of commuters who order from an app before they even leave the driveway, a lobby with armchairs and a barista bar is less important than ever.

Padilla said this isn't the case for many Jacksonville customers, though. For her, it all comes down to the atmosphere.

“A lot of the times, the biggest selling point for a coffee shop is the ambiance,” she said.

Brew on the weekends is a staple for her and her family, she added.

“Even my son wants to go there every weekend, and he’s not asking to go through a drive-thru,” she emphasized.

A local hybrid: Drive-thru without the sacrifice

Not every local player is treating the drive-thru window and the café room as an either-or choice. 

Flamingo, a coffee, beer and wine bar known for its tropical decor and roaster-direct beans, expanded outside its original location in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Jacksonville just last year with a second location on Anastasia Boulevard in St. Augustine. 

Unlike the national kiosk chains multiplying around the metro, the St. Augustine Flamingo has a full sit-down setup — indoor seating, wine and beer service, its laid-back "beach vibe" branding — and earlier this summer added a drive-thru window alongside it, giving commuters a fast option for their local java fix without asking walk-in customers to give up their tables. 

Flamingo co-owner Donnie Webb said “the team always thought it’d be fun to experiment with what Flamingo would look like through a window.”

“We wanted to be intentional about bringing the convenience of a drive-thru to the St. Augustine community, without making any sacrifices,” he said. “The goal is to maintain the same quality and experience as the interiors of our two bars.”

Part of this mission is led by a simple mantra: No speakers. No headphones. “Vibes and the most righteous coffee only.”

It's a small-scale rebuttal to the idea that speed and seating are mutually exclusive, and a sign that at least one homegrown Jacksonville brand sees the drive-thru less as a replacement for the café than as one more way in the door.

What Jacksonville gets and gives up with drive-thru

For drivers, the seatless model is a clear convenience win: faster in-and-out visits, more locations closer to home and menus built around customization that reward regulars who already know their order. 

For commercial real estate, it's been a boon, too; the small, boxy buildings fit neatly into out-parcels near gas stations, car washes and strip retail that might otherwise sit vacant.

What's disappearing, at least from this particular slice of the coffee business, is the café as gathering spot. 

Padilla said a drive-thru simply doesn’t have the same ambiance for content or sense of invitation for her family. 

“I’ll [use a drive-thru] for convenience, but not for content,” she said, estimating this account for less than 20% of her visits to coffee shops. “There’s something to the classic coffee shop experience.”

The version of "getting coffee" that means claiming a table for a laptop session, a first date or a book club hasn't vanished entirely from Jacksonville, but it does seem to be on its way out.

Padilla pointed out that a few, more local places — such as Flamingo and Brass Tacks — are offering both without compromising on the traditional cafe feeling or the convenience factor of a drive-thru.

Who will win the battle for customer loyalty — convenient chains or local sweet spots — may simply depend on how saturated Jacksonville's drive-thru lanes get. 

With more than two dozen kiosk locations already open or planned across the region, one metro area can support only so many drive-thru options before the caffeine rush turns into a traffic jam.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville coffee scene changing to meet customer needs