7-Eleven to Add Drive-Thrus to Their Stores — and Yes, You Can Get a Slurpee

Since those dreadful days of March 2020, the value of the drive-thru has skyrocketed for fast-food chains. At a time when dining rooms were closed and people generally wanted to get their food with as little human contact as possible, the idea of having someone hand you a meal from a few feet away without having to get out of your car seemed like a pretty good one. Now, one food spot you not might expect is branching out into the drive-thru game — at least at one location.

7-Eleven(?!) will be shaking things up by introducing a drive-thru for at least one Texas-based location, which it will use as a way to dish out drive-by orders for its in-house Laredo Taco offering. That's right: 7-Eleven has had its own taco spinoff since 2018.

While the beauty of a 7-Eleven is that you can find almost any food you might have a hankering for, introducing a drive-thru at one of their 7-Eleven Evolution stores (fancier locations where all the good new stuff gets debuted) in Dallas will require slimming down the menu a bit. Anyone who pulls up can order items on the Laredo Taco menu, which includes tacos (natch), side dishes, and aqua fresca. But to answer the most pressing and obvious question, yes: you can also use the 7-Eleven drive-thru to order Slurpees.

7-Eleven is far from the only chain to rethink its use of drive-thrus as they look towards a post-pandemic future. The so-called "Burger King of the Future" emphasizes getting food without stepping out of your car, for one. Shake Shack is also scrambling to add drive-thrus, so if it's good enough for Danny Meyer, it's definitely good enough for 7-Eleven.

While we aren't yet at the stage where we can pick up a 12-pack of hard seltzer, a Slurpee, and a few taquitos from the drive-thru lane, that impossible dream is at least slightly closer to reality. For now, that's good enough.