Dutch Bros Order-Ahead Gains Momentum: Is Throughput the Next Lever?

Dutch Bros Inc. BROS is sharpening its focus on digital convenience and operational execution, with order-ahead and throughput initiatives becoming increasingly important traffic drivers.

In the second quarter of 2025, order-ahead accounted for 11.5% of transactions, with adoption in newer markets more than double that level. Management noted that uptake has been particularly strong in the morning daypart, a segment where the brand has historically under-indexed, suggesting meaningful white space for incremental growth.

Throughput improvements are reinforcing these digital gains. The company has rolled out enhanced dashboards that give operators visibility into speed-based KPIs and implemented refined labor deployment models to align staffing with demand surges tied to promotions and limited-time offers.

These operational adjustments helped drive system same-shop sales growth of 6.1%, fueled primarily by 3.7% transaction growth during the second quarter. Management emphasized that order-ahead adoption and throughput execution are “working in concert,” enabling shops to handle higher volumes while maintaining service quality.

Expansion remains a critical component of the strategy. Dutch Bros opened 31 new shops in the second quarter, bringing the system count above 1,040, and remains on track to add at least 160 locations in 2025. Average unit volumes of $2.05 million held near record levels in the quarter, underscoring the ability of new units to perform at scale.

With a long-term goal of 2,029 shops by 2029, management views order-ahead and throughput as structural growth levers that will likely support both productivity and transaction growth across an expanding footprint.

How It Stacks Up to Other Industry Players

Starbucks Corporation SBUX is leaning heavily on operational initiatives to restore transaction momentum. In the third quarter of fiscal 2025, Starbucks highlighted encouraging early results from its service transformation pilots, including Green Apron Service and SmartQ, which meaningfully improved order accuracy and reduced handoff times. These pilots are now being scaled across key U.S. markets, with Starbucks aiming to regain consistency in peak throughput and enhance mobile order reliability. The company also underscored that menu simplification and improved item availability are central to restoring customer trust, particularly in the morning daypart.

Meanwhile, Sweetgreen, Inc. SG is focused on throughput, but with a different approach centered on store-level execution and format innovation. In the second quarter of 2025, Sweetgreen cited its “Project One Best Way” as a driver of improved speed and consistency, while Infinite Kitchen locations delivered higher throughput, better labor efficiency and stronger native digital sales than the system average. Sweetgreen framed throughput as a direct lever for comp performance, emphasizing that every 10% improvement in peak throughput translates to roughly a 1% lift in same-store sales.

BROS' Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates

Shares of Dutch Bros have gained 11.9% in the year-to-date period against the industry’s fall of 8%.

BROS YTD Price Performance

From a valuation standpoint, Dutch Bros trades at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 5.15X, above the industry’s average of 3.59X.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for BROS’ fiscal 2025 and 2026 earnings per share (EPS) implies a year-over-year uptick of 38.8% and 27.5%, respectively. The EPS estimates for fiscal 2025 and 2026 have increased in the past 60 days.

Dutch Bros stock currently has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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