Coffee chains flood Southwest Florida with new drive-thrus

The coffee business in Southwest Florida has gone hyper, like a caffeine lover after one too many double espressos.

Coffee shops and drive-thrus are emerging along busy roadways, and they aren’t all named Starbucks and Dunkin’. Dutch Bros, Scooter’s, 7 Brew, Ellianos, Cali Coffee, Roadies, Urban Buzz, Aroma Joe’s, Foxtail and Coffee Rush are some of the newcomers battling the big two.

Many of the new stores arriving in Southwest Florida are franchises. Most are cookie-cutter drive-thru only locales, no more than 750 square feet with two ordering windows. 

“It’s been cool to see the rise; it’s been a long time coming,” says Caleb MacPherson, who owns Take Two Coffee in Fort Myers and supplies and maintains much of the equipment for local shops.

He isn’t surprised. 

“I’ve always said that operating a business in Southwest Florida is kind of like a cheat code, because just look to see what Tampa, Miami and Orlando were doing five to eight years ago. That’s what’s about to take off here,” he says. 

Tessa Yost, owner of the rapidly expanding drive-thru Coffee Rush in Fort Myers, said if Southwest Florida is nearly a decade behind larger Florida cities, it’s more than 20 years behind the coffee business in the Pacific Northwest. She should know: Yost’s family opened its first Coffee Rush drive-thru outside Portland, Oregon, in 1992.

The coffee business in the gray, damp Northwest and cold, snowy Northeast made sense, but who would want coffee in the land of orange juice and sunshine?

Starbucks was the first to answer that question. The Seattle-based coffee titan opened its first Florida store in 1997. It now has more than 940 stores in the state, including around 60 in Southwest Florida. 

Southwest Florida is the melting pot of the United States, said Bob Brennan, who with partner Aaron Wiswell owns the Aroma Joe’s franchising rights in Southwest Florida. “We do have a lot of northerners and westerners who come through Florida for what we have to offer, sunshine, and they’re used to drinking coffee.”

Coffee is America’s favorite beverage. Nearly two-thirds — 66% — of adults drink coffee every day, according to a 2026 National Coffee Association survey, and more of them are buying their coffee from their cars. Approximately 59% of U.S. coffee purchased in 2024 was bought at drive-thrus, up from 55% a year earlier, according to the website Coffee Intelligence.

“The drive-thru format is especially attractive because today’s customer wants convenience without sacrificing quality,” says Olivia Rodriguez, a franchise specialist for the Franchise Brokers Association. “In Florida, the growth is even more pronounced because population growth, car-based commuting, tourism and suburban expansion create ideal conditions for these brands.” 

It helps that Florida and the South are comparatively virgin territory. Chains such as Dunkin’ and Aroma Joe’s are well-established in New England, said Erika Tarnowski, director of franchise development for Aroma Joe’s, leaving little room for new competition.

Today’s Southwest Florida landscape is much different than when Samantha Bratten moved to Fort Myers from Oregon four years ago. Bratten had worked at Coffee Rush in Oregon and told Yost, who was planning to move to Miami from South America, that Southwest Florida had no good drive-thrus.

“I saw that Cape Coral was one of the fastest-growing cities, so that was appealing when looking at it from a business standpoint. You know, fastest-growing city, no good coffee shops,” says Bratten, now director of operations for Yost’s Florida chain.

Expanding smartly

Yost changed her plans and moved to Fort Myers, where she and Bratten opened their first drive-thru in 2025 on State Road 82 near Interstate 75. The increased competition isn’t changing Yost’s expansion plans. 

“I think we are in a sweet spot right now where all these coffee places are coming here and I think it helps one another out,” she says. 

They plan to open seven more Coffee Rush units in the next year. The long-term goal is to add 10 stores a year in Florida, but unlike so many of the drive-thru chains Yost plans to skip the franchising route — even though the economics make franchising compelling, franchise specialist Rodriguez said.

“Drive-thru coffee is expanding so quickly because it checks every box franchise investors look for: daily repeat demand, a simple operating model, smaller real estate needs and a strong consumer preference for speed and convenience,” Rodriguez says. 

The trick is not to expand too quickly, said Bryan Gentile — who along with his wife, Amie, started Roadies Pit Stop in Naples, and plans to open more stores in Southwest Florida. He said it’s too early to think about franchising.  

“Everybody’s in such a race, and there’s all this rapid expansion … and product quality deteriorates under those aggressive models, and that’s not how we’re going to do it,” he says.

Their business plan is to open one store at a time and get it running how they want it before moving on to the next.

Establishing identity

How do these coffee chains make themselves stand out? They’re like identical twins; you only can tell them apart by their personality quirks. Roadies separates itself from the competition with a third drive-thru lane for customers who ordered ahead. The Big Drip touts its homemade syrups.

But most of the pitches overlap, boasting about quality, customer service and community.

“We all sell good stuff, we just have to be a little bit better when we’re working the windows,” says Aroma Joe’s Brennan, who says they “sell happiness in a cup.” 

“Our product is simply better than everything else in the market,” says Gentile. “We’re offering a higher-level coffee, a higher-level espresso product.” 

Coffee Rush touts only the best quality ingredients, such as Ghirardelli’s powdered chocolate, and using nothing from a can. “We can make a really good cappuccino, whereas if you go to Dutch Bros you’re not probably going to get that,” Yost says.

What you will get at Dutch Bros are popular, colorful energy drinks. By 2023, all the chains were competing for the energy-drink and sweet-drink crowd.  

Dutch Bros has the Rebel Energy drink. Aroma Joe’s has AJ’s rush. Roadies touts a fruit drink with “modifiers” or booster powders. Ellianos has a plant-based energy drink called Ellianos Edge. 

The drinks are a bridge to capture younger customers, mostly between ages 18 and 24, who didn’t grow up drinking coffee. Brennan, 61, compared the attraction to his generation drinking Mountain Dew.

The drinks are a boost of energy to the bottom line. About half of Dutch Bros and Aroma Joe’s sales come from energy and specialty drinks.

Bring it inside

Somewhat lost in the race to cover Southwest Florida with drive-thru windows is the old-fashioned coffee shop made popular by Starbucks.

COVID-19 might have given the drive-thru extra energy, but the post-COVID-19 era when so many people work at home has jolted the coffee shop business, said John Shannon, a research economist at Florida Gulf Coast University. 

Diana Willis agrees. She and her husband own the franchise rights to Foxtail Coffee in Southwest Florida. They also own the Jason’s Deli restaurants in the region. 

They’ve opened three cafes, all with inside seating and drive-thru windows, and have a cafe-only shop planned to open later this year. 

The cafes are oases post-COVID-19.

“It’s become a landing zone for people to go and spend an hour or two enjoying some quiet space outside of doing work at home or in a cubicle somewhere,” Willis says.

Full-service shops, drive-thrus or something in between, Aroma Joe’s Brennan is confident Southwest Floridians won’t stop buying coffee, lattes or energy drinks any time soon.

“There are 50,000 cars a day that go by my place (on Del Prado Boulevard). There’s Starbucks, Dutch Bros, Urban Buzz and Aroma Joe’s all on the same street,” he says. “Guess what? I drive by all of them, all day, all the time and there’s four cars in each of them. There’s still plenty to go around.” 

To own your own

Drive-thru coffee chains compete for franchisees the same way they compete for customers.

Aroma Joe’s competes with Ellianos, Biggby, Human Bean, Scooter’s and others from a franchising recruitment perspective, said Tarnowski. Two of the biggest brands, Starbucks and Dutch Bros, don’t franchise. 7 Brew, one of the fastest growing chains, has stopped offering franchises.

What it takes to become a franchise owner varies only slightly from company to company. The franchise fee, the right to open a store, varies from $10,000 to $40,000. Aroma Joe’s fee is $25,000 for nonveterans and $12,500 for military vets. Scooter’s, a Nebraska-based chain expanding rapidly into Florida, has a $40,000 franchise fee.

The rights fee is just the start. There are costs for construction, land purchases, training, information technology and more. Scooter’s totals range from $950,000 to $1.5 million.

Franchises also pay a royalty each month on total revenue. Most royalties are 6%. Advertising fees range from 2% to 4%.

The top coffee franchises of 2026

Dunkin’: Started franchising in 1955; has 14,128 locations, 34 are company owned. 

Tim Hortons: Started in Canada; 631 in the U.S., 5,833 nationwide, four stores are company owned. 

Scooter’s Coffee: Drive-thru-only chain started in Nebraska in 1998 and franchising in 2001. It has 878 stores, 24 are company owned. 

Biggby Coffee: Founded in East Lansing, Michigan, it has 445 stores; none are company owned.  

PJ’s Coffee of New Orleans: Similar to Starbucks, started in New Orleans. Franchising began in 1989; all 188 stores are franchised. 

The Human Bean: A drive-thru chain started in Ashland, Oregon in 1998 and franchising since 2002. Twelve of the 172 stores are company owned. 

Aroma Joe’s: A mostly drive-thru chain started in New Hampshire in 2000 and franchising since 2013; all 217 stores are franchise operated. 

Ziggi’s Coffee: Started in Longmont, Colorado, in 2004; it’s grown to 111 stores, all but eight are franchised.

Beans & Brews: Founded in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1993, it began franchising in 2004; 31 of the 89 stores are company owned. 

Ellianos Coffee: Started in Lake City, Florida, in 2002 and franchising in 2003; the company has 69 stores, none are company owned.