A new double-drive-thru Starbucks near Phoenix is billed as the Seattle-based company's first in Arizona as many fast-food chains boost tech-enabled service and encourage high-volume, car-bound customer traffic.

The store at 10655 W. Indian School Road replaces a nearby building that wasn't big enough and didn't have enough drive-thru capacity to handle heavy customer traffic in Avondale, a fast-growing city about 20 miles west of Phoenix, Bryan Babits of Western Retail Advisors, which brokered the lease for the landlord, said in a statement.

Starbucks has doubled down on drive-thru formats since the pandemic when the company and other food chains had to close dining rooms and saw an immediate jump in food and drink pick-ups.

For instance, Taco Bell recently opened its first double-drive-thru in Nevada near Las Vegas, following earlier openings in New York, Oklahoma and Utah. Chick-fil-A is testing two new restaurant formats, one with an elevated drive-thru and another with a design favoring walk-up customers, as the fast-growing chain looks to quicken the pace of its digital orders.

Starbucks last year announced plans to accelerate its U.S. store growth by focusing on drive-thru and delivery-only and digital-order-only formats.

The coffee chain has been active in greater Phoenix, leasing space at multiple sites. Demand for fast-food sites has ramped up as the region's population increases, according to a CoStar Market Analytics report.

About 70% of the more than 9,300 corporate-operated Starbucks stores in the United States now have drive-thrus, Starbucks Chief Financial Officer Rachel Ruggeri told investors in June at the 7th Annual Future of the Consumer Conference in New York.

"When we think about our opportunity in the future, it's how do we leverage our portfolio to unlock capacity, but also in a way that best meets customer needs and demands," Ruggeri said. "And so that's going to be different versions of drive-thru stores."

To cut back on long lines and bottlenecks, Ruggeri said that Starbucks is testing such drive-thru formats as locations with a lane for drive-up ordering and another for customers using the Starbucks app to order and pay.

Starbucks Chief Marketing Officer Brady Brewer said at the company's investor day in September 2022 that "line balk" is one of the main reasons for not visiting a Starbucks.

The new double-drive-thru location in Avondale gives Starbucks the more than 3,000-square-foot store size it requires while increasing its pick-up capacity, Babits said. Starbucks could accommodate only three or four vehicles in the single-drive-thru lane at the previous location — far below what was needed to manage the traffic at the busy site.

"Creating a double-drive-thru is a great example of Starbucks creativity, overcoming an operational challenge and already contributing to a 26% jump in sales at this new address," Babits said.

Starbucks did not respond to questions from CoStar News about the chain's number of double-drive-thru locations in the United States or globally or whether the 3,071-square-foot Avondale store, a former KFC that had been vacant for four years, will be a drive-thru only location.

An employee reached by phone in Avondale said that the upgraded building's dining room is closed and that it's unclear whether the store will offer dine-in service.

Phoenix-based Western Retail Advisors senior vice presidents Bryan Babits and Bryan Ledbetter represented the landlord. Lance Umble with Phoenix Commercial Advisors represented Starbucks.