Costa Drive thru kiosk at Knutsford, located at the side of the Northbound car park. Bizarrely, there is no drive thru kiosk at Southbound, but I assume this is due to a lack of space. Costa Drive thru opened at Knutsford in spring 2019 & Moto took inspiration from Roadchef in installing these kiosks. It means customers that want coffee don’t necessarily have to enter the amenity building, they can use this drive thru from their car, which saves lots of time. It’s more useful here at Knutsford as the services are situated directly off the M6 without the need to leave at a junction, making this drive thru more popular with passing trade. Prices are still rapidly inflated, and the small size of the kiosk means this drive thru can run out of stock quickly. This drive thru offers no customer seating. Costa drive thru taking up some of the car parking space has made the existing car park even smaller. It’s likely that Moto thought Knutsford would benefit from a drive thru as the interior of the amenity building being cramped means it fills up quickly and becomes manic. This drive thru both provides profit for Moto, but also ensures the amenity building is less likely to become crammed. It works in a similar way to Moto’s West Cornwall Pasty kiosks in that respect. At one point, there were a total of 4 Costa outlets at Knutsford, two kiosks at either side, a lounge on the footbridge and this drive thru. Nowadays, there’s 3 as Pret replaced the main lounge. This kiosk obtains Costa’s theme colours of grey and maroon and despite being a few years old now, it still looks fresh. This drive thru is only in operation between 6am-8pm and there were plans for a drive thru at Southbound initially, but those plans were withdrawn due to lack of space. Surprisingly Costa Drive Thru was in low demand during my visit with no one using it. You would expect it to be more popular due to quicker service. The drive thru was also difficult to photograph as some parked vehicles were in the way. Costa Drive Thru is signposted from the M6 North, so customers can expect to find this facility here.

Photo taken on 10/02/2024 by Tom Moon.

Assigned to galleries: Knutsford, Costa Drive Thru, M6 (England), Moto