Why do fast food places favor drive-thru customers?

Factual Questions
21

I’ve actually thought WAY too much about this. I’ve come up with several explanations:

The drive through is by necessity a sequential operation. Barring the “please pull ahead and wait in the spot” option, drive up customer N can’t be served until customer N-1, N-2, etc. have all been served. This means that if the drive through gets backed up just a little, all it takes is one difficult order to really screw things up.

Walk-in customers can, to a certain extent, be waited on in parallel. The occasional difficult order doesn’t slow the service to to folks behind.

When walk-in customers see a long line, they have already invested time to park and walk in. When drive through customers see a long line, they are already in their car with the engine running and ready to take them down the street to the other McFood establishment.

When the drive through line gets messed up, it is much harder to fix than when the walk-up counter has problems. Thus all the new employees have to learn at the walk-up counter and gain experience before working the drive-through.

22

[QUOTE=yabob]
Apart from the profitability, I think it’s the right priority, speaking as a customer. If I’m using the drive up window, time is critical for me and I want service that is as fast as possible. If I’m walking up to the counter, I’m either on foot in the general area, or have already taken up time parking my car and getting out of it. Apparently time is not as critical to me in this case, and having to wait at the counter isn’t going to bother me as much.
[/QUOTE]
I see the exact opposite.

Have time to waste? Sit in the single lane queue behind 4 other cars, one of which will have a screwed-up order or a fussy customer who’ll inspect each burger for properly placed pickles.

In a hurry? Go inside, walk up to one of 4 staffed registers, order, get food, & leave.

I don’t often do fast food, but when I do I usually take note of the last car in the drive-through as I enter the lot. Unless that’s the one & only car in the drive-through, I’m usally pulling out while that car is still waiting for food. At busy times I drive away before the other car has even ordered.

I see drive-through as providing the illusion of speed, not actual speed.

23

When I worked at McDonalds, customers always complained that we were prioritizing Drive-Thru, and we were always mystified by this complaint.

Looking back, maybe there were facts about our procedures which tended toward causing Drive-Thru to seem prioritized–the timed orders, the dedication of two people to Drive-Thru (cashier plus “food fetcher”), and so on–but there was never an instruction to us workers that we ought to prioritze drive-thru.

-FrL-

24

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Oh, I’m sure they didn’t, initially. But I hope that some of them did, long term, when the managers were fired, new people were hired, and they painted over the three parking spots marked “Drive-Thru Only”. No one’s asked to park and wait anymore - we all sail through easy peasy now that there are no longer chimpanzees running the place.

(Unfortunately, I think the chimps all got jobs at our local Target - the only continually messy, disorganized understaffed Target I’ve ever seen.)
[/QUOTE]

Are you implying that you did that?

-FrL-

25

I did a bit of searching and found these articles, which are only tangentially relevant to the discussion. Nevertheless:

http://www.qsrmagazine.com/reports/drive-thru_time_study/

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/technology/11fast.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6479568

http://www.usatoday.com/money/covers/2002-04-03-drive-thru.htm

26

For the same reason when you’re in line at the store and the phone rings and the sales person picks it up. The person calling in doesn’t KNOW you’re busy helping other customers. The drive through customer can’t SEE you’re busy. The person in line CAN SEE you’re busy.

I have worked in customer service, and as long as I acknowledge the customer with a smile and a nod, I have never had anyone complain, customers by in large are fair and they don’t mind waiting IF they can see you’re busy. They have a big issue if you are just slacking off.

This is poor training. I hate the habbit now that clerks in my grocery stores like Jewel and Dominicks and at Walgreens and CVS are talking on their cell phones WHILE they check me out and it’s a personal call. I don’t give the store my money so you can multi-task. But that is another thread.

27

[QUOTE=Frylock]
Are you implying that you did that?

-FrL-
[/QUOTE]

Not solely, no, I’m sure I didn’t. But I worked middle management long enough to know that one persistant customer making your numbers look bad CAN make the DM look a little more closely at your day-to-day. I *hope *I had that impact, that was my intent, but realistically, it was probably not me, no. My ego isn’t quite that inflated. :wink:

But yeah, that was my *intent *- to get the store’s numbers - even if only one a day - to reflect the reality of the situation. I mean, if they’re shooing everyone into parking spots and keeping drive-thru numbers low all day and there’s a consistent blip at 2:35 of a 5 minute wait time for a #4 Meal with a Coke, wouldn’t that make you, as a district manager, go, “Hey, what’s happening here?” It sure would have made my D.M. ask some questions, back when I worked for the Big Blue Evil.

28

Must be different in the States.

If I go to the drive-through [usually I do] it’s because i’m a lazy bastard. But if I am in a hurry, I invariably park and walk inside. The service is quicker, nearly always. This thread surprises me.

Also, when the store is very busy, I can turn around and walk out. In the drive-through, by the time I decide to do this, there are three SUVs blocking me in.

29

[QUOTE=gotpasswords]
They’re scored more heavily on drive-up service because it’s more easily measured with events like how many seconds between a car pulling up to the microphone and someone pressing their talk button and saying “maytakordr?” From there, they’re measured on how long between the car reaching the window and the sale being rung up, and how long it takes to ultimately give them the order and they drive off.

While it is possible to measure similar events inside the store, it would take a secondary observer with a stopwatch to measure how long it takes from someone walking up to the counter to being greeted, etc.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t buy this. All of the walk in orders are entered into the same cash register/order system as the drive though orders. Any business that wanted to track the time from order to the time of service can easily do it walk in or drive through. What makes the drive through system different?

30

The minimum staff for my local McDs seems to have more of a drive-thru emphasis. They’ll still take your order right away when they’re understaffed. OTOH, walk-in’s end up waiting while they fill drinks and such, often for the drive-in customers.

I used to get annoyed by this, but now I just go to the drive-in.

31

[QUOTE=TheLoadedDog]
Must be different in the States.

If I go to the drive-through [usually I do] it’s because i’m a lazy bastard. But if I am in a hurry, I invariably park and walk inside. The service is quicker, nearly always. This thread surprises me.

Also, when the store is very busy, I can turn around and walk out. In the drive-through, by the time I decide to do this, there are three SUVs blocking me in.
[/QUOTE]

Ditto here in Korea. Then again, I haven’t seen a Drive-Thru here :wink:

Just yesterday I walked into a McDonald’s and ordered two set meals. I was literally out the door with my food 2 minutes later.

Then again, this McDonald’s had like 20 workers.

32

I’m surprised no one’s mentioned the obvious: if you want faster service, go to the drive-in for your food, then take it inside to eat. I used to do this years ago, when I spent a lot of time on the road and didn’t want to waste time.

33

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Not solely, no, I’m sure I didn’t. But I worked middle management long enough to know that one persistant customer making your numbers look bad CAN make the DM look a little more closely at your day-to-day. I *hope *I had that impact, that was my intent, but realistically, it was probably not me, no. My ego isn’t quite that inflated. :wink:

But yeah, that was my *intent *- to get the store’s numbers - even if only one a day - to reflect the reality of the situation. I mean, if they’re shooing everyone into parking spots and keeping drive-thru numbers low all day and there’s a consistent blip at 2:35 of a 5 minute wait time for a #4 Meal with a Coke, wouldn’t that make you, as a district manager, go, “Hey, what’s happening here?” It sure would have made my D.M. ask some questions, back when I worked for the Big Blue Evil.
[/QUOTE]

I do find your pride in this very puzzling, WhyNot, maybe because I don’t believe the premise that being told to go over to the parking spot was entirely an attempt to artificially lower the measured service time by hiding how long it took to get you your food.

If one particular order, for whatever reason, will take longer than expected, it makes sense to allow staff to help other customers if that will not increase the delay on the first order unduly, and thus decrease the average wait time experienced by all, at the expense of adhering strictly to ‘first come, first served’ because of the practicalities of the situation. This can be done easily at the counter of a fast food place, either by having you move aside from the register slightly, or by completing the financial transaction in the register and saying “Your fries will be ready in a few minutes, sir/ma’am, if you’ll sit down I’ll run them out to you as soon as they’re ready.”

If you’re in the drive through lane, this strategy can only be used if you voluntarily drive out of the lane before you’ve gotten all of your food, so that other customers can get theirs. Refusing to do this seems very stubborn to me.

(Disclaimer, I don’t use drive-throughs much, because I neither own nor operate a car.)

34

[QUOTE=chrisk]
I do find your pride in this very puzzling, WhyNot, maybe because I don’t believe the premise that being told to go over to the parking spot was entirely an attempt to artificially lower the measured service time by hiding how long it took to get you your food.
[/QUOTE]

Why not?

Do you have an alternate explanation for why a simple order (1 value meal with 1 standard soft drink) would present a problem for a drive thru every single weekday for a year?

35

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Why not?

Do you have an alternate explanation for why a simple order (1 value meal with 1 standard soft drink) would present a problem for a drive thru every single weekday for a year?
[/QUOTE]

Hmm… no, the only explanation I could really think of for that would be that the person who takes orders already dislikes you at the beginning of the year. :smiley: If they’re trying to rush the drive-through so badly that asking you to park is THAT common, then it would really be a horridly mismanaged place. (How much labour would they be spending just sending people back and forth to the parking spots with food?)

And I have to admit I probably didn’t give you enough credit with my first reply. All of the good reasons for having a ‘problem spot’ are probably blindingly obvious, and I can certainly see someone getting upset with perceived abuses of the system if they get shunted there too often. Myself, when I get the ‘It’ll just be a few minutes sir’ routine at the counter, I usually convince myself that it’s my fault for what I’ve ordered. :slight_smile:

36

[QUOTE=Dag Otto]
What makes the drive through system different?
[/QUOTE]

Technology.

The drive-up is a first-in, first-out queue. It’s trivial to put car sensing loops into the pavement at the menu, at the payment window and at the pickup window and track events like how much time elapsed between a car appearing at the menu and someone greeting them, how long the car was at the menu, how long elapsed from the car arriving at the payment window to the time the transaction was rung up, how long they were at the payment window, how long elapsed from arrival at the pickup window to the time the button was pressed to open the window to hand out the bag and ultimately, how long before the car leaves.

To do all this inside with humans is impractical. As I mentioned above, you’d need an observer with a stopwatch to time how long it took from a person stepping up to the counter to be greeted, and how long it took to ring up the order. Then, how do you time pickup of the order? If the customer is over at the soda fountain filling their cup when their number is called and they don’t dash over immediately, your numbers are screwed. At best, this is a simplest in, simplest out queue, so your observer also needs to keep track of who just wanted a large Coke vs who ordered fifteen #1 combos for the softball team. (At least they came inside so the whole drive-up line doesn’t have to wait for all of that to be made!)

37

We used to have a McDonalds where the drive thru was kind of like a U shape - you ordered on one side, went around the corner, and picked up your food on the other side of the building. There was also a slope just off the driving path. Anyway, about 10 years ago, we were in the drive thru, and when Mom was about to pull away to drive around the corner to pick up our food, the car stalled. Luckily, the parking space directly in front of us was clear, so she just put the car into neutral and we slid down the slope into the spot, and I had to walk through the drive thru. They did actually give me the food after I said the car broke down, but man, was that ever embarrassing.

38

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
(And for the inevitable, “har-har, I bet someone spit in your food!” comment: please, remember that I was ordering and eating food from McDonald’s. If one is happy eating Quarter Pounders, one ought not be too delicate to eat a loogie with it and suffer no harm.)
[/QUOTE]

It may not hurt me in the long run, but I still don’t want to know about it. :stuck_out_tongue:

39

I think what WhyNot is getting at is that many fast food places in the US have a timer that starts when the order is entered, and ends when it’s delivered.

If there’s a large line, and one order takes a while, so they punt you out to a parking spot, then only ONE order has a long lag time, and the rest will be more normal.

By waiting in the spot, it’ll cause ALL the people behind you who’ve already ordered to have the same delay more or less.

In addition, there’ll be a blip in order entry timing- you’ll have one every 30 secs for a while, then a 5 minute lag, then one every 30 seconds or so that you wouldn’t see if you were punting people to the parking lot.

All this isn’t to say that I agree with WhyNot. I think it’s a legitimate customer service tactic when the reason for the hold up is an unusually large or intricate order- why delay everyone when one person ordered a whole shitload of non-standard burgers and unsalted fries, if you can make them wait and serve everyone else in the meantime while that order is being filled.

However, if the reason for the delay is systematic incompetence on someone’s part (i.e. consistent 5 minute delay for a #4 meal), then this practice would tend to camouflage it somewhat, and WhyNot’s tactic would cause it to show up on the radar.

I’m personally of the school of thought that says that if there are more than 4 cars waiting to order, it’ll be faster to go in and get it to go.

40

[QUOTE=bump]
All this isn’t to say that I agree with WhyNot. I think it’s a legitimate customer service tactic when the reason for the hold up is an unusually large or intricate order- why delay everyone when one person ordered a whole shitload of non-standard burgers and unsalted fries, if you can make them wait and serve everyone else in the meantime while that order is being filled.

[/QUOTE]

I agree. If it *occasionally *happens, then that’s okay by me, and I’d rather be out of the way than hold everyone up. I don’t even go to the drive thru if I want a half coke/half diet coke (nowadays, with my salad hold-the-dressing - I’m eating better!). That I’ll go in for, because it confuses people and can cause a slight delay. Only once have I had a soccer-team sized order for fast food, and for that I called the order ahead and charged it to a credit card and then went into the restaurant to pick it up. I actually DO think about these things (probably too much), and my delaying cars behind me was an actual thought-out tactic, not an oversight.

Exactly. They pissed me off enough that I did some research about drive-thrus, figured out what I think they were up to, and I planned a legal and safe way to sabotage their efforts.