The San Juan Capistrano City Council on April 16 heard and unanimously approved a preliminary development review of a proposed Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurant with a mobile order drive-through, pick-up window at 31787 Del Obispo Street.
The review was to acquaint the applicant with zoning requirements, applicable policies and procedures, standards, and design guidelines, and to identify any significant development opportunities or constraints on the project site before the city proceeds with formal review of the proposed project.
Paul Garcia, AICP principal planner for the city’s Development Services Department, made the presentation on behalf of the review.
“The applicant is requesting to construct a 2,592-square-foot restaurant building with a drive-thru lane, which they refer to as a ‘Chipotlane’,” Garcia said. “It is not your typical drive-thru lane that you're familiar with. The applicant has indicated that it would function a little bit differently. It would be for mobile or online order pick-up where customers would pick up their food or drink order, and that would be completely paid for online. There'd be no menu board or speakers located within the drive-thru lane and no payment transactions would occur, either.
“Essentially, the online orders would be placed, the customer would indicate a time that they would pick it up, they'll pay for that transaction online, and they will go to the pick-up window to pick up their order.”
City code does say that a discretionary use permit is required for the establishment. One of the first steps in that discretionary-use permit process was to discuss it with the City Council.
The proposed Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurant would be located in the northeast corner of the 1.8-acre property. The site plan identifies a drive-through lane that wraps behind the building and can accommodate up to seven vehicles. The site plan also details an outdoor patio area to accommodate outdoor dining, a new sidewalk connecting the public sidewalk to the proposed building, 11 new parking stalls adjacent to the building, new landscape improvements, and a new trash enclosure.
Councilmember John Taylor asked if there are any support lanes in existence currently that have a history of how they work.
Brian Bauer, director of development for Chipotle, said that they have a good understanding of how we operate and the flow and how it operates, “with our customers and ease of getting them into their shopping centers.”
Taylor also voiced some concerns about traffic flow effects at the site, including possible conflicts with flow from the nearby In-N-Out Burger.
“The access points are at different portions of the shopping center, so coming into In-N-Out would be on the left side of the center,” Bauer said. “There shouldn't be any conflict, because their access is basically off our parcel. We did a four-week Saturday morning-to-afternoon survey, and we saw that a car is in the lane for 76 seconds on average, and we have more than five cars in that lane, so we don't really have a long stack.”
The preorder pickups should also decrease waiting time.
A certain number of pickups are allowed within certain time frames, which would allow for an easier flow of traffic through the drive-thru, according to Bauer.
“There’s an opportunity (that 90-second waits could happen), but what it does allow is not a lot of stacking,” Bauer said.