Fastest Fast Food

[roadman]

At McDonald's, a "plain" Filet O Fish does not have tartar sauce. Plain does not mean no cheese.

Ayup.  I learned a long time ago (in 1969, on a family trip) that, when ordering a Filet O Fish, to always state "No tartar sauce, no cheese."  Of course, I'm still trying to figure out who thought putting cheese on a fish sandwich should be the standard way of serving it was a good idea.

Haven't tried ordering a Filet O Fish from a kiosk yet, so I don't know if the "Make it Plain" button removes both the tartar sauce AND the cheese from the order.  Might try that and see what happens the next time I'm in the mood for fast food.

[formulanone]

At McDonald's, a "plain" Filet O Fish does not have tartar sauce. Plain does not mean no cheese.

Ayup.  I learned a long time ago (in 1969, on a family trip) that, when ordering a Filet O Fish, to always state "No tartar sauce, no cheese."  Of course, I'm still trying to figure out who thought putting cheese on a fish sandwich should be the standard way of serving it was a good idea.

It's so they don't mix it up with the Apple Pie.

[vdeane]

As one who places a special order most of the time (I detest nearly all condiments), I consider the kiosks a godsend.  At least for me, I find using them to be faster than dealing with a cashier.  It also eliminates the inevitable "cashier trying to anticipate my order or make suggestions I don't want" factor, not to mention having to repeat my order more than once.  These things are a pet peeve of mine, and only serve (pardon the pun) to SLOW down placing my order.

Since the local Mickey's put the kiosks in about six months ago, I have NEVER had an order screwed up.  Prior to that, the "failure" rate on orders was about one time out of five.

I have to admit, that's one of the things I've been wondering about with the kiosks: whether special orders would still be possible, or if everyone would be relegated to the standard regulation menu.

I've also heard that you have to specify things like ketchup there too, though maybe that's just for to go?  I've never actually used one myself.  I'm not at McDonalds often these days (Wawa, Panera Bread, Wegmans, Stewarts, Sheetz, and Subway (in that order) generally have priority when I'm on the road), and the one I had dinner at when staying in the Nashville area coming back from Florida didn't have them yet.

[roadman]

As one who places a special order most of the time (I detest nearly all condiments), I consider the kiosks a godsend.  At least for me, I find using them to be faster than dealing with a cashier.  It also eliminates the inevitable "cashier trying to anticipate my order or make suggestions I don't want" factor, not to mention having to repeat my order more than once.  These things are a pet peeve of mine, and only serve (pardon the pun) to SLOW down placing my order.

Since the local Mickey's put the kiosks in about six months ago, I have NEVER had an order screwed up.  Prior to that, the "failure" rate on orders was about one time out of five.

I have to admit, that's one of the things I've been wondering about with the kiosks: whether special orders would still be possible, or if everyone would be relegated to the standard regulation menu.

I've also heard that you have to specify things like ketchup there too, though maybe that's just for to go?  I've never actually used one myself.  I'm not at McDonalds often these days (Wawa, Panera Bread, Wegmans, Stewarts, Sheetz, and Subway (in that order) generally have priority when I'm on the road), and the one I had dinner at when staying in the Nashville area coming back from Florida didn't have them yet.

The way the McD's kiosks work is, when you select the sandwich (either individual sandwich or as part of a meal), there's a "Customize" button.  You push that button, and it allows you to select the condiments and other ingredients that would normally be provided on a "standard" sandwich that you want or don't want on the sandwich - the default is that the item will be included unless you indicate "NO XX" in the check box.  As I noted, there's also a "Make it Plain" button that removes ALL the extras.  Before you commit to adding the item(s) to the order, the screen tells you exactly what will and what won't be included on the sandwich you are ordering so you can verify it.

The ketchup option for fries merely tells them to give you a couple of packets of ketchup with your order.

[abefroman329]

The way the McD's kiosks work is, when you select the sandwich (either individual sandwich or as part of a meal), there's a "Customize" button.  You push that button, and it allows you to select the condiments and other ingredients that would normally be provided on a "standard" sandwich that you want or don't want on the sandwich - the default is that the item will be included unless you indicate "NO XX" in the check box.

Took me forever to figure out how to add cheese to a sausage and egg biscuit.  I don't know why it doesn't automatically come with cheese to begin with.

[oscar]

Took me forever to figure out how to add cheese to a sausage and egg biscuit.  I don't know why it doesn't automatically come with cheese to begin with.

That's a puzzle to me as well. When I order at the counter, the cashier can easily add cheese (at extra cost), so I think that's a common preference.

I would have expected that the problems would come from the person making the order, not taking it. There have been several times when the order-taker has read my order back to me, "One Bacon SuperBurger without mayo," only for me to discover that nasty stuff on my sandwich.

I've had that problem with McD steak bagel breakfast sandwiches, which I order without slivered onions (which seems a common preference). Even when the drive-through order screen and my receipt confirm that I ordered no onions, about 10% of the time I end up with onions anyway. If I'm lucky, I find out that problem before I eat the sandwich (so I can scrape off the onions), rather than by onions dripping onto my shirt or into my lap.

[abefroman329]

That's a puzzle to me as well. When I order at the counter, the cashier can easily add cheese (at extra cost), so I think that's a common preference.

They even sell a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit!  But not a sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit!

[webny99]

You could always get a job at a fast food restaurant or a DD and see it from the other side.

I could. Let's leave it at that. 

As far as 'The Goal' goes, does it go into detail of land use and zoning, property sizes, taxes, land cost, parking spot availability, fire lane access, entry and exit points, and a whole lot of other municipal/county/state permitting issues?  You could design the perfect drive-thru scenario, but if you need a 5 acre property to accomplish it, the largest plot of land within the area which the store wants to build is only 3 acres, and the cost of that land is so expensive that the owner couldn't afford to build there, all that 'The Goal' theory goes out the window.

As I assume you know, The Goal is based on applying the Theory of Constraints to a struggling manufacturing plant. As such, it really makes more sense (and hopefully cents too!) to apply it to the inside of a restaurant; the actual "manufacturing" of the orders. Perhaps trying to apply it to the drive-thru line itself is a bit far-fetched, considering there's no means of controlling flow.

My original point remains; it's seriously detrimental to wait times when the line for the pick-up window backs up to the order point. You must be able to keep taking orders; who cares how fast you can process the orders if you can't even take more until the pick-up window clears!

[oscar]

My original point remains; it's seriously detrimental to wait times when the line for the pick-up window backs up to the order point. You must be able to keep taking orders; who cares how fast you can process the orders if you can't even take more until the pick-up window clears!

Some fast-food places will temporarily move the order point, by sending staff to take orders from cars not yet at the usual "order point". Of course, there are limits to that, including when the order line backs into the street (sensible people will skip the line at that point, perhaps to find a parking space and walk inside to order at the counter), or the staff in the kitchen inside are overwhelmed.

In even the relatively suburban parts of my county, land is scarce and expensive. Sometimes, placating the neighbors will be an issue, and I recall one situation in an adjacent county where the fast-food place was not allowed to open a drive-through line at all due to neighborhood pressure. "The Goal" exercise in constrained optimization has to deal with a lot of constraints, as others have noted above.

[Scott5114]

Bad metric. You'll often go 10 minutes or so with no orders at all and then get four or five people pull in at once. This could be due to stoplights metering traffic, something happening like a shift ending at a nearby business, etc.

Yes, but it's always a bad sign when the two lines run into each other. No matter how fast people arrive, you should be able to process the first order (unless it's an exceptionally big order) and have that car clear the pick-up window before you've taken three more orders.

As someone who did this as a profession I can tell you that that is simply not how it works.

You'll have to explain how it does work, then. I can think of no scenario in which it's a good thing to have two separate lines both waiting on the second one; it's basically the definition of inefficiency, and I say that having just learned a few things about efficiency from The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt. If something kills wait times, it's also killing the speed of service; you can't separate the two!

The rate at which people arrive is 100% irrelevant if there's already a line ten cars long, which is what happens at the Dunkin I mentioned originally.

It's not a good thing. But it also says nothing about the efficiency of the restaurant, because having a line back to the speaker does not necessarily indicate how long the cars ahead of you have been waiting. If the restaurant is on the corner, it tells you more about the timing of the stoplight.

Drive-thrus have a tracking system which tracks each car from the speaker to the time it leaves the window. Usually there is a goal time for each "time spent at speaker box", "time in queue", and "time at window" which is added to get the overall goal time.  As long as each of these goal times are being met it does not matter how many cars are in the line because they are all being serviced quickly.

Sometimes I would hold people at the speaker box so I could complete transactions ahead of them. This would sometimes cause a line to stack up behind the speaker box so that when I caught up and took the orders the line would be  back at the speaker box. But overall wait time would be lower because I was able to have several cars clear the window and then the speaker box in quick succession.

I would have expected that the problems would come from the person making the order, not taking it. There have been several times when the order-taker has read my order back to me, "One Bacon SuperBurger without mayo," only for me to discover that nasty stuff on my sandwich.

My experience was that most errors came from what we called the "expediter", or the person who takes the finished sandwiches from the kitchen and distributes them to the proper orders. If someone ordered a regular Bacon SuperBurger at the same time you ordered a Bacon SuperBurger with no mayo, it would be a trivially easy error to grab the wrong one and put it in your bag. Or, worse, grab a front-counter to-go order and hand it to the drive-thru person.

To reduce errors, our restaurant usually had the manager running the expediter station.

[slorydn1]

^Chiming in on what Scott said about errors^

Most of my food experience was pizza delivery related  (Domino's and Pizza Hut). We didn't have drive thru's . Way back in the day at Domino's before computers we had these order sheets we called door sheets. They were 8"x 11" and had 5 or 6 strips on them (can't remember for sure) where we would write the information for each piece of the order on each strip so 2 pizza's would be two strips. Drinks would be recorded in a block on the first strip only (back in those days it was just Coke or Diet Coke anyway). We didn't have wings, sandwiches, bread sticks, any of those other things to distract us from getting your pizza there in less than 30 mins or you got $3.00 off.

Each strip had the top copy that stayed on the sheet, a pink copy that got hung on the make line and then transferred to the cut table when the pizza was made, and a sticky back copy that got stuck to the box.

The key to making all of this work was knowing by heart all the codes for the different toppings that goes on the pizza, because there really wasn't a whole lot of space in the order block for descriptions. Almost 30 years later and I still remember many of the codes. The Extravaganza (aka garbage pizza) code should make you laugh, it was a $.

Well, we had this one girl who for the life of her could NOT remember the codes for either bacon (K) or pineapple (N). She would write BC for bacon or PN for pineapple. This means those customers would get beef and extra cheese in the first instance or pepperoni and pineapple in the second. If we weren't that busy the cooks would stop production and ask her point blank what was supposed to be on the pizza. If we were getting smoked, then that probably wouldn't happen, soooo......

My point of all this was most of the time an order was screwed up, at least in the pizza business, it was because of an error by the order taker. Occasionally it could be the person at the cut table putting the wrong pizza in the wrong box (sometimes a newer driver trying to be helpful ended up being not so helpful), but usually the duty manager or the crew chief worked the cut table and that would cut down on that (no pun intended). As drivers we were more concerned with the minutia of the side extras (especially in my later days with Pizza Hut having all of the extra dishes they do). Extra napkins, forks, a second dipping sauce, maybe a 3rd if you were a known great tipper, things of that nature fell on us. If you didn't get that extra garlic butter you asked for it either wasn't on the ticket or it was my fault. If it wasn't on the ticket someone up front was getting cussed out when I got back to the store.

[cjk374]

Those McDonald's kiosks suck ass!!! It took so long to figure that thing out. Manager told me that all restaurants will have them by 2019. I looked at the workers and told them their jobs were in jeopardy. The manager reassured me that those kiosks actually created an extra job or two. She said now the employees & managers can now open doors for customers & roam the floor interacting with the customers.

We shall see what really happens in the next couple of years. 

[US71]

Those McDonald's kiosks suck ass!!! It took so long to figure that thing out. Manager told me that all restaurants will have them by 2019. I looked at the workers and told them their jobs were in jeopardy. The manager reassured me that those kiosks actually created an extra job or two. She said now the employees & managers can now open doors for customers & roam the floor interacting with the customers.

We shall see what really happens in the next couple of years. 

Extra jobs for people keeping the machines working?

[hbelkins]

Those McDonald's kiosks suck ass!!! It took so long to figure that thing out. Manager told me that all restaurants will have them by 2019. I looked at the workers and told them their jobs were in jeopardy. The manager reassured me that those kiosks actually created an extra job or two. She said now the employees & managers can now open doors for customers & roam the floor interacting with the customers.

We shall see what really happens in the next couple of years. 

I have heard of some McDonald's offering table service, similar to the way Culver's does.

Those McDonald's kiosks suck ass!!! It took so long to figure that thing out. Manager told me that all restaurants will have them by 2019. I looked at the workers and told them their jobs were in jeopardy. The manager reassured me that those kiosks actually created an extra job or two. She said now the employees & managers can now open doors for customers & roam the floor interacting with the customers.

We shall see what really happens in the next couple of years. 

Extra jobs for people keeping the machines working?

Might be a good time for more people to go into IT.

[vdeane]

McDonalds claims the kiosks are so they can transition the staff to bring out your food like at Panera Bread.  Because we all know the reason they're losing business is because people want table service and not because they want less processed food.  I predict this idea will be a flop, if it's even real at all.  People don't go to McDonalds looking for the experience of a sit-down restaurant.

Regarding pizza orders, at least at my usual place, I think it's an issue with how the order is taken more often than not.  I actually use the price listed on the phone to confirm if they got my order right; if it's $19.42 (or if they don't say because they know it's my usual order), I know they did.  Still can only count on one hand the number of times they've messed up my order (even including times when I've caught them on the phone) over the four years I've been going to them most weeks on my hands.

[oscar]

Those McDonald's kiosks suck ass!!! It took so long to figure that thing out. Manager told me that all restaurants will have them by 2019. I looked at the workers and told them their jobs were in jeopardy. The manager reassured me that those kiosks actually created an extra job or two. She said now the employees & managers can now open doors for customers & roam the floor interacting with the customers.

Some of those customers might prefer less "interaction" with the staff, so they can eat in peace. Yet another reason for me to stick with the drive-through line, unless I have to go inside for a pee break.

The kiosks I've seen are otherwise inoffensive, and if you pay with a credit card you can minimize unwanted interaction with staff (if you pay cash, you still have to go to a cashier after placing your order).

[Road Hog]

McDonald's is full of crap. They made not a peep about kiosks until a couple of West Coast cities got uppity about paying workers a living wage.

[jakeroot]

Those McDonald's kiosks suck ass!!! It took so long to figure that thing out. Manager told me that all restaurants will have them by 2019. I looked at the workers and told them their jobs were in jeopardy. The manager reassured me that those kiosks actually created an extra job or two. She said now the employees & managers can now open doors for customers & roam the floor interacting with the customers.

We shall see what really happens in the next couple of years. 

I have heard of some McDonald's offering table service, similar to the way Culver's does.

I don't know what Culvers is, but the McDonald's near me (with kiosks) gives you table numbers, and they bring the food to you.

As far as I can tell, the kiosks haven't actually cut into jobs.

[Flint1979]

Those McDonald's kiosks suck ass!!! It took so long to figure that thing out. Manager told me that all restaurants will have them by 2019. I looked at the workers and told them their jobs were in jeopardy. The manager reassured me that those kiosks actually created an extra job or two. She said now the employees & managers can now open doors for customers & roam the floor interacting with the customers.

We shall see what really happens in the next couple of years. 

I have heard of some McDonald's offering table service, similar to the way Culver's does.

I don't know what Culvers is, but the McDonald's near me (with kiosks) gives you table numbers, and they bring the food to you.

As far as I can tell, the kiosks haven't actually cut into jobs.

Culver's is a casual fast food chain known for butterburgers and frozen custards. I believe they are mostly located in the Midwestern U.S. with about 600-700 locations. When you place your order you get a tent thing with a number on it, then you go sit down and they bring your food to your table.

[webny99]

I don't know what Culvers is

You are seriously, big time, missing out (although as mentioned, they're primarily a Midwestern chain).

[hbelkins]

I don't know what Culvers is

You are seriously, big time, missing out (although as mentioned, they're primarily a Midwestern chain).

Better burgers than Five Guys, and a lot cheaper as well.

[abefroman329]

Those McDonald's kiosks suck ass!!! It took so long to figure that thing out. Manager told me that all restaurants will have them by 2019. I looked at the workers and told them their jobs were in jeopardy. The manager reassured me that those kiosks actually created an extra job or two. She said now the employees & managers can now open doors for customers & roam the floor interacting with the customers.

We shall see what really happens in the next couple of years. 

Extra jobs...ha!  How many jobs were created by self-checkout machines at grocery stores (other than a service technician or two)?  Nowadays it's 6-8 of those machines and one employee in charge of telling the machine that there isn't actually an unexpected item in the bagging area.

[jakeroot]

I don't know what Culvers is

You are seriously, big time, missing out (although as mentioned, they're primarily a Midwestern chain).

Better burgers than Five Guys, and a lot cheaper as well.

I was talking to my friend from Chicago yesterday, and he was telling me the same thing. Apparently this Culvers is a pretty big deal in the Midwest. I certainly like a good burger, but I'm not holding out hope for them to show up in the Pacific Northwest anytime soon. Washington still doesn't even have a Cracker Barrel. We only just got Chick-fil-A in the last few years. We lag behind much of the country in chain options.

[abefroman329]

Culver's is one of my favorite post-weight loss surgery fast food chains - I can eat an order of 4 buffalo chicken tenders and a small root beer with no issues.  Just need to stay away from the cheese curds.

[hbelkins]

Culver's cheese curds are breaded. I like them better when they're battered, like the ones Sheetz has.