What is d’Lite Healthy On The Go?
d’Lite Healthy On The Go is a drive-thru that sells breakfast sandwiches, burros, bowls, salads, wraps, burgers and protein shakes built around nutrition rather than speed alone, at 2613 N Scottsdale Road, just south of Thomas Road in South Scottsdale. Brooke and Chad Knudson, a husband and wife from Tempe, opened it as D’Lish Drive Thru in the late 2000s, renamed it about 2015, and have grown it into a five-store Valley chain with this room as the original.
The founding story, as the company tells it, began around a dining table in 2007: eating out left the Knudsons lethargic and unwell, they blamed low-quality ingredients and hidden calories, and they noticed that nobody in quick service was selling a healthy meal at a fast-food price. Franchise Times dates the first store to 2007; the Scottsdale Progress, writing in 2024, said the company was founded in 2009 and had spent about 15 years serving customers. The record does not settle the year, so we leave it open.
The idea held. Phoenix New Times put the Scottsdale Road store in its guide to the Valley’s favorite drive-thrus in 2012 and later called it “the rare drive-thru experience where the quality of the food actually lives up to the level of convenience.” The menu runs from a California Club of fried eggs, bacon, smoked turkey and avocado to an AZ Burro of smoked turkey, egg white and avocado, a Breakfast Club on a sun-dried tomato bialy, and the d’Breakfast Buzz, a shake of chocolate whey protein, espresso, nonfat milk, banana and peanut butter that Chad Knudson calls “just about world famous.”
In November 2024 Blue Zones Project Scottsdale approved d’Lite as the first multi-location restaurant chain in Arizona to meet its standards, alongside ZuZu at the Valley Ho and Taza Bistro. Our verdict: the most useful breakfast on the south end of Scottsdale Road, and the one drive-thru in the city we would send a visitor to on purpose.
How to use d’Lite
Timing. The Scottsdale Road store opens at 6 a.m. Monday through Friday and 7 a.m. on weekends, and closes at 3 p.m. every day; it is a breakfast-and-lunch operation, and breakfast is served all day. The drive-thru lane is short and the lot is tight, and reviewers describe the line as “kind of crazy” by mid-morning, so the early hour is the one to use. Holiday hours are posted on the company’s site: closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day, Easter and the Fourth of July, short days on the eves.
Order the Club. The California Club is the house’s own choice as its most popular item: fried eggs, bacon, smoked turkey, avocado and more on toasted artisan bread, priced from about $13 at the Ancala store to $15.65 on delivery apps. The AZ Burro, smoked turkey, egg white and avocado in a tortilla, runs $13 to $15; a Traditional Burro is $9.49 to $12.36. The Breakfast Club (egg, bacon, turkey, tomato and cream cheese on a toasted sun-dried tomato bialy) is the New Times pick. Lunch is the Humanitarian Supreme wrap, the Kitchen Sink and Nuts N’ Berries salads, the d’Veggie and d’Vegan bowls, a turkey club with avocado, a house baja chicken soup and burgers. Gluten-free tortillas and bread, vegetarian and vegan builds and a kids’ menu are standard.
Drink the Buzz. The d’Breakfast Buzz is the signature: chocolate whey, espresso, nonfat milk, banana and peanut butter, blended with ice, priced by add-ons on the apps and sold as a meal replacement. The beverage bar also does Nitro Toddy cold brew, specialty coffee, protein shakes, pressed juices, iced cactus tea and kombucha.
Make it Blue Zones. The approved items are flagged on the menu, and any sandwich can be swapped to goat cheese, sourdough, 100-percent whole grain or plant protein. The Blue Zones Combo, the Humanitarian Supreme wrap with a small side and iced tea, is offered at every store. An online health matrix sorts the menu by vegan, vegetarian, low-carb and high-protein.
Inside versus the lane. The dining room has a board-game corner and work tables and reviewers call it cozy; the drive-thru is the point for most customers. Online ordering runs through Toast for pickup, and DoorDash and Uber Eats deliver. The other Scottsdale store is Ancala, 11307 E Via Linda, in the Scottsdale Ranch area, with the same hours. The Shea Boulevard store is permanently closed.
The healthy drive-thru that became a franchise
The Knudsons’ bet was that a drive-thru could sell real food, and the 2010s proved them right in a city that was busy building juice bars and bowl shops without lanes. The original D’Lish sat on the dealership-and-strip-center stretch of Scottsdale Road between Thomas and SkySong, a location chosen for the lane and the morning traffic rather than for a neighborhood, and it drew its customers from the gyms and offices around it. A Tempe store at Apache and Rural followed.
The rename came around 2015, when the company also began offering franchises. The only explanation on the record comes from Ajay Amin, who told New Times in August 2016 that the change was over a copyright issue; Amin and his partner Paco Patel, who had owned two Genghis Grill restaurants, were the first franchisees, and their store at 7337 E Shea Boulevard opened with a half-price day on January 21, 2017 in a room of 150-year-old reclaimed wood and a local graffiti artist’s work. New Times’ Scottsdale-and-Shea dining guide later recommended it for a quick breakfast. That store is now listed by the company as permanently closed, which the record does not explain.
Growth was deliberate. Franchise Times in March 2023 counted six units with a few more in development, a franchise cost of $419,000 to $688,000, and 2021 sales at the three franchised stores of $1.3 million to $1.6 million each; the Knudsons said they would open at most four to six a year. Franchisee Josh Engstrom, a former Marine who had run 40 T-Mobile stores, opened his first d’Lite in June 2020 and told the magazine that fast and health-conscious were what people wanted during COVID. A 2022 franchise-development push, QSR Magazine coverage, 3TV and Fox 10 segments and an Arizona Republic list of 12 healthy fast-food spots followed. The Blue Zones approval in November 2024, announced by project director Sarah Kearney, is the credential the company leads with now; Brooke Knudson said the brand had “turned the contradiction of ‘Healthy Fast-Food’ into a reality.”
What we could not find: the exact opening year of the Scottsdale Road store, a menu with official in-store prices (the figures above come from the delivery platforms and Yelp, which vary by store), and the reason the Shea franchise closed. A Yelp page counts more than 1,100 reviews for the original, which is the deepest customer record of any healthy-food spot in the city.
Honest assessment: this is fast food, done honestly, and it should be judged as that. The sandwiches are good, the shake is better than it sounds, the lane is slow when it is busy and the prices have climbed to where a breakfast and a Buzz run past $25. It is not a restaurant for lingering. It is the right answer to a specific question, a real breakfast through a car window at 6:30 on the south end of Scottsdale Road, and nobody else in the city answers it.