Retailers try new coffee-to-go concept

And two drive-through coffee retailers believe the region's ripe for expansion. Java Jo'z Coffee & More LLC, a Fort Walton Beach, Fla.-based chain, and Mocha Mountain, a Bellevue-based upstart with chain aspirations, are looking to open a number of area locations over the next few years.

Java Jo'z is preparing to open its first Pittsburgh-area location on McKnight Road in Ross Township within the next few months. According to the company's COO, Robert Morgan, it would like to work with a handful of local licensees to open a total of 18 locations in the region within the next two to three years.

"We feel it's the height of the specialty coffee evolution," Morgan said.

After all, he explained, 80 percent of the sales at fast food chain McDonald's comes from its drive-throughs. So, his company believes its a natural extension focus on selling coffee the same way. The chain also offers smoothies during evening hours.

Java Jo'z will pay $5,000 finders' fees to anyone who offers the kind of high-traffic, suburban locations it will need for its local stores.

David Glickman, a vice president in the retail services group for Grubb & Ellis Pittsburgh, said that's an unusual strategy.

"But when you want to grow rapidly, you have to stand out," Glickman said. "The sites that they need are difficult to come by."

ON THE GO

Java Jo'z now has about 18 locations throughout the country, but Morgan said more than 250 are in the pipeline. The company is shooting for 1,000 locations within the next few years. The growth expectations are based on a business model of small buildings staffed with two or three employees, serving customers who can drive up on either side of the building. The Java Jo'z Web site boasts that it can deliver "coffee drinks in under a minute."

Morgan said his company often follows Starbucks into markets. "We like to locate upstream from them, because they can't deliver the coffee fast enough," he said.

There are more than 45 Starbucks locations in the Pittsburgh market, including eight with drive-throughs. Of the more than 20,000 estimated coffee shops nationwide, only about 1,500 -- mostly in the Northwest -- offer drive-through service, Morgan said. In fact, Java Jo'z faces potential competition from a local company with ties to the Northwest that also has ambitious growth plans for the area.

Mocha Mountain, a startup espresso drive-through serving 40 varieties of coffee drinks, opened on Route 65 in Bellevue about six months ago. Its owners, Amber and Jon Hollerman, are both New Castle natives who previously lived in Spokane, Wash., where they grew to love the neighborhood espresso drive-through. Jon Hollerman said the business has yet to meet his initial projections of serving 400 cars a day. But it has reached the 150-cars-a-day level and became profitable after only three months. He hopes to open between eight and 10 additional locations within the next three years.

"In the last five years, the amount of coffee business that has gone through drive-throughs has doubled," he said. "What other industry can say that?"