Fastest Fast Food

[Flint1979]

I hate trying to eat while driving.  I pretty much always stop and go inside.  If I'm in a hurry, I will eat the sandwich and fries (or whatever finger food) and then take the drink with me to sip while on the road.

I'm the only driver in the family and have a manual transmission, which might have something to do with it.

I'll just pull into a parking spot and eat and then get back on the road if I have to eat in my car.

[MNHighwayMan]

You can also get someone at the pickup window that insists they review their bag before they leave

I've had so many orders that have been wrong that I won't fault anyone for doing this, and I should be doing this more often.

No. Pull ahead of the window/into the parking lot to review your order for accuracy. This way, you allow the person behind you to complete their transaction, rather than making them wait while you rummage around making sure your order of a giant triple cheeseburger with 5x pickles and no ketchup was made correctly. It seems selfish to me to sit at the window while checking your order because you're making everyone else behind you wait for no good reason.

Besides, I much prefer going inside if the restaurant has screwed up my order, as it allows me to better verify that they re-do it correctly.

[jeffandnicole]

I've tried McDonald's online ordering app, which should speed up the order by ordering it in advance.  When you get to the store, the app recognizes you're there (via GPS), and the order automatically displays on their screens inside and they start making it.  So far, that part seems to have worked flawlessly, and in fact they've even commented about it.  Normally, I choose the option that I'll just go inside to pick up the order (so I can get extra napkins, sweet and sour sauce, etc).  Once, I chose the 'Park at the signed location and wait' option.  It took much longer, and when the order came out, the soda was a inch from the top and an item completely missing from the bag.  I mentioned it to the person outside who didn't appear to be in any way caring to take care of the issue...so I wound up going inside anyway.

You can also get someone at the pickup window that insists they review their bag before they leave

I've had so many orders that have been wrong that I won't fault anyone for doing this, and I should be doing this more often.

I do it too...but quickly.  If I got 2 burgers, 2 fries and 2 sodas, I usually glance to see that the basic options are all in the bag.  If the order is a bit more custom-made, maybe I'll glance for a few seconds longer, or as mentioned I'll pull up and out of the way to make sure it's right.

And to think that the people who can confuse a simple order for a giant roast beef combo for a beef and cheddar with two cookies think they deserve to earn $15 an hour. (Happened to me at the Arby's in Frankfort, Ky., not long ago; I didn't realize the error until I was well away from the restaurant and didn't have time to go back.)

I had the situation somewhat recently where I went inside to order a takeout meal (ironically at an Arby's).  They bagged most of the order but had to wait on one item.  In the meantime, a patron pulled up to the drive-thru window.  The bag got shifted over to the drive-thru window, handed out, and the patron left.  When they went to put my final item in the bag, the person noticed the existing bag (meant for the drive-thru customer) was still there, and realized what they did.  At least they noticed, but that meant a longer wait for me.  So I can understand how it appears they totally screwed up your order hbelkins! LOL

[abefroman329]

I have to say, I've gotten orders where they fucked up a special order (gave me everything but ketchup instead of only ketchup, for example), I've gotten orders where they forgot something, and I've gotten orders where they gave me something i didn't order at all, but I've never gotten someone else's order.

your order of a giant triple cheeseburger with 5x pickles and no ketchup

[abefroman329]

Also, I think we've learned our lesson about trying to stop for fast food on the South Side.  We thought it was just Hardees that was slow as fuck, but no, it's everywhere.

[MNHighwayMan]

Also, I think we've learned our lesson about trying to stop for fast food on the South Side.  We thought it was just Hardees that was slow as fuck, but no, it's everywhere.

My nearest Hardee's (SW 9th St and Army Post Rd) is busy quite often, and actually was recently renovated. Every time I've been there, service has been great. It must be the difference between competent employees/management and/or franchisee, or one or neither of those. Either that, or the residents of Des Moines' south side really love their Hardee's.

[abefroman329]

Also, I think we've learned our lesson about trying to stop for fast food on the South Side.  We thought it was just Hardees that was slow as fuck, but no, it's everywhere.

My nearest Hardee's (SW 9th St and Army Post Rd) is busy quite often, and actually was recently renovated. Every time I've been there, service has been great. It must be the difference between competent employees/management and/or franchisee, or one or neither of those. Either that, or the residents of Des Moines' south side really love their Hardee's.

Oh, it was my first and, to date, only bad experience with a Hardee's.  You can take forever to serve my food, OR you can serve me bad food, but if you do both at the same time, that's the only time you'll do that.

[webny99]

It appears your entire matrix is based upon the length of the space between the order speaker and the pickup window.   If there's room for 10 vehicles, a vehicle comes once every 5 minutes, and it takes 30 minutes to pick up an order, you consider that faster because there's still room to immediately pull up to the speaker than people paying and getting their meal in 10 seconds because there was only room for 2 vehicles and there was already a car at the speaker.

That's why I added the asterisk with the comment about the design of the drive-thru. Generally, most places have a pretty standard spacing; two or maybe three or four cars can fit.

Maybe I was foolish for calling it a metric. It might be better just to say I've observed that if a restaurant can take orders a lot faster than they can process them, they'll run into problems. I think it goes without saying that if both lines are waiting on the guy at the pick-up window, there's some chronic speed-of-service issues, and potentially not enough space between the two lines.

[renegade]

It becomes extremely frustrating at the McDonald's by my house, it's open 24 hour dining room and drive thru. You wait for 5 minutes almost any time you go in there in the middle of the night.

The Mcdonalds nearest to my home won't even talk to you inside unless you go to the goddamn kiosk first and place your own order.  If I have to push my own buttons at Mcdonalds, I expect to pay the employee rate for my food.

[abefroman329]

It becomes extremely frustrating at the McDonald's by my house, it's open 24 hour dining room and drive thru. You wait for 5 minutes almost any time you go in there in the middle of the night.

The Mcdonalds nearest to my home won't even talk to you inside unless you go to the goddamn kiosk first and place your own order.  If I have to push my own buttons at Mcdonalds, I expect to pay the employee rate for my food.

Ha! For some reason, I remember when a perk of flying first class or having status on an airline was not having to use the kiosk and to go straight to a real life ticket agent. Then they started steering those passengers towards kiosks in the name of "speed,"  and that perk went the way of the dodo

[texaskdog]

Most taco bells I go to are fast.   We used to live between 3 Sonics that were all incredibly slow and moved and live by one that is amazingly fast.  Whataburger is like watching paint dry even if you are the only one in there. Raising Caines-all they do is chicken fingers, still 15 minutes.  Jack in the box I've had both.  There are 4 Arbys by us, the two owned by the same owner are always really fast and fresh food and the other two slow and dry.  McD & BK fast, the BK we used to live by always took less than a minute.

[texaskdog]

Fried chicken places are fast unless they just ran out of chicken and are cooking more.

I would say the slowest "fast food" outlet, in terms of time from placing your order to receiving your order, is In-N-Out Burger.

plus they call you a guest, so annoying

[Flint1979]

There's a Hardee's in Owosso and it's really the only one I know of anywhere in Michigan for some reason.

[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.

[formulanone]

It becomes extremely frustrating at the McDonald's by my house, it's open 24 hour dining room and drive thru. You wait for 5 minutes almost any time you go in there in the middle of the night.

The Mcdonalds nearest to my home won’t even talk to you inside unless you go to the goddamn kiosk first and place your own order.  If I have to push my own buttons at Mcdonalds, I expect to pay the employee rate for my food.

Ha! For some reason, I remember when a perk of flying first class or having status on an airline was not having to use the kiosk and to go straight to a real life ticket agent. Then they started steering those passengers towards kiosks in the name of “speed,” and that perk went the way of the dodo.

It's a bit grating when the airline counter can't take care of a simple bag-drop-and-dash and allow the other passengers to "think it over" for a few minutes before deciding on one of two sub-optimal choices. Some airlines and airports have an automated counter for this task; but like the option of self-checkout at the local market, it's a nice option yet there's that feeling you just killed off another job and the ability for light chit-chat with a local.

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.

That's the gist of the service curtain between The Stage and Backstage: there's a lot that goes on which prevents any two similar orders from being treated exactly the same.

[jeffandnicole]

It becomes extremely frustrating at the McDonald's by my house, it's open 24 hour dining room and drive thru. You wait for 5 minutes almost any time you go in there in the middle of the night.

The Mcdonalds nearest to my home won't even talk to you inside unless you go to the goddamn kiosk first and place your own order.  If I have to push my own buttons at Mcdonalds, I expect to pay the employee rate for my food.

I'd hate to see your reaction when they got rid of elevator operators.  "What do you mean I have to select my own floor?  Why don't we all just work on the 1st floor then??"

[abefroman329]

It's a bit grating when the airline counter can't take care of a simple bag-drop-and-dash and allow the other passengers to "think it over" for a few minutes before deciding on one of two sub-optimal choices. Some airlines and airports have an automated counter for this task; but like the option of self-checkout at the local market, it's a nice option yet there's that feeling you just killed off another job and the ability for light chit-chat with a local.

American is getting close with the self-tag option, but then you still have to have an agent check that your ID matches the bag tag, confirm that you didn't put lithium batteries or e-cigarettes in your bag, etc., etc.  It'd be lovely if you could just throw your bag on the belt and be done with it.

[webny99]

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.

[jeffandnicole]

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 convince me, 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.

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.

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

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.

The biggest problem with optimal scenarios is that it goes against most regulations and prudent costs.  Every store out there has their ideal prototype of what they would love to build in an optimal situation, but they can rarely achieve it. 

[abefroman329]

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 convince me, 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.

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.

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

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.

The biggest problem with optimal scenarios is that it goes against most regulations and prudent costs.  Every store out there has their ideal prototype of what they would love to build in an optimal situation, but they can rarely achieve it.

And then there are what consumers actually prefer.  You also can't obtain the above without premade food, and McDonalds has been taking it on the chin for selling premade sandwiches for decades.

[roadman]

You can also get someone at the pickup window that insists they review their bag before they leave

I've had so many orders that have been wrong that I won't fault anyone for doing this, and I should be doing this more often.

No. Pull ahead of the window/into the parking lot to review your order for accuracy. This way, you allow the person behind you to complete their transaction, rather than making them wait while you rummage around making sure your order of a giant triple cheeseburger with 5x pickles and no ketchup was made correctly. It seems selfish to me to sit at the window while checking your order because you're making everyone else behind you wait for no good reason.

Besides, I much prefer going inside if the restaurant has screwed up my order, as it allows me to better verify that they re-do it correctly.

If you have a special order (even if it's "Make it Plain"), it's ALWAYS better to go into the restaurant to order the food than going through the drive-thru.

The McDonalds nearest to my home won't even talk to you inside unless you go to the goddamn kiosk first and place your own order.  If I have to push my own buttons at McDonalds, I expect to pay the employee rate for my food.

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.

However, there have been times when the cashier on duty tells people to use the kiosk, even if the store isn't busy and/or they are not occupied with other duties.  While newer technology is nice for those of us who understand it and are willing to use it, I totally agree with you that it should never be forced on your customers.

[hbelkins]

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 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 even had a Sheetz get my order wrong a few times, and they're the gurus of the touch-screen ordering system. The good thing about that is you can go on the Sheetz site to complain, or fill out the survey on your receipt, and get free food.

[hotdogPi]

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

[Rothman]

Give me that Filet-O-Fish...

[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 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 found that past problems are usually not with the person making the order, but with the cashier inputting the wrong options when they take the order.  This was exacerbated by the fact that for many years, the order input on Mickey's cash registers did not have a simple "make it plain" button.  Rather, the cashier had to specifically indicate "NO XX" for each of the condiments and add-ons that normally came on the sandwich.

Even after the single "make it plain" button was added to the cash registers, there are still cashiers who will occasionally revert to the "old" method.  Occasionally, they will miss stating "NO" for a specific item.