VISTA — Dutch Bros Coffee is continuing its expansion in North County with two planned locations in Vista, one of which is scheduled to open in early 2024.
The popular Oregon-based drive-thru coffee company made its San Diego County debut with an Oceanside location in 2022 and opened another in Escondido along East Valley Parkway earlier this year.
Vista’s first Dutch Bros, approved by the Planning Commission last spring, will be located in a small development on a previously vacant piece of land at 2665 S. Melrose Drive, located on the corner of South Melrose Drive and Faraday Avenue next to the Hyatt Place Vista-Carlsbad.
Dutch Bros spokesperson Madison Fahey said the company is excited about continuing to grow in Vista.
“Our real estate and development team has a few different factors they use to determine where the shops will be, but it all comes down to being in the best spot to serve our customers quickly! Vista is an incredibly welcoming community and has many surrounding areas where we see multiple Dutch Bros being a fit,” Fahey said.
On Dec. 5, the Planning Commission approved a permit for another Dutch Bros at 1025 E. Bobier Drive, a former Bank of America location. The current building will be demolished to make way for the new development.
Fahey said that because the Bobier location is still in the early planning stages, few details can be shared at this point. A second Escondido Dutch Bros location at 507 W. Washington Avenue is also in the early planning stages, she said.
Dutch Bros has garnered a loyal fanbase with its wide variety of iced and hot coffee drinks, teas, lemonades, energy drinks, and freezes, which often leads to long drive-thru lines.
To help manage traffic and speed things up, the company uses runners who take customers’ orders at their cars in line and also utilizes a bypass lane, Steve Shaw of Armet Davis Newlove Architects told the Vista Planning Commission.
“Part of the growing pains of Dutch Bros Coffee have been issues with the queuing and the cars, especially in the first six months to a year of opening,” Shaw said. “So they don’t do the speaker posts; they have runners and do a bypass lane, so if somebody up front has a large order, people behind can be given their drinks and pull out into the bypass lane. It’s just made managing traffic a lot better.”
