Oatly's Amsterdam bike-thru turns the American drive-thru into a piece of novelty for cyclists, no car (or behavior change) required.
Amsterdam has long been a city built around the bicycle, so when Oatly went looking for a way to put its oat drinks in front of more people, the answer was already rolling past on two wheels. From May 15 to June 7, the brand is running the Oatly Bike-Thru at Papaverhoek 24 in Amsterdam-Noord: a stainless-steel kiosk with its own cycle lane, where riders pull up to a window, order, pay and pedal off.
The menu features a curated drinks list, including Salted Gochujang Barista Cacao, Earl Grey Mont Blanc and Strawberry-Sakura Genmaicha Matcha, alongside a Hojicha Soft Serve and a more conventional coffee menu of cortados, cappuccinos and lattes. Rather than nudging Amsterdammers to change how they move, Oatly went looking for them where they already were.
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A traditional drive-thru would have sat awkwardly against Oatly's whole reason for being: a brand built around a lighter footprint isn't going to start waving cars through a window. Flipping the format to bikes solves that neatly, but the more interesting question is what it offers the customer. For many Amsterdammers, who don't own a car or rarely use one, the drive-thru itself is the novelty: a piece of Americana experienced from the saddle of the bike they were already on. Sustainability never gets spelled out or lectured. Oatly just noticed what the city was already doing, and built something fun on top of it.