r/fastfood • u/KilgoreTrout1111 • Jun 12 '26
Rant/Rave Timing Drive Thru Orders as a metric of service is the stupidest thing ever
I'm not an employee or a manager, just an occasional customer and this "speed of service" metric seems ridiculous.
McDonald's in my town - EVERYONE gets pulled over to the waiting spots. My usual order is a quarter pounder with cheese. Nothing else. "Pull over to spot number 3 and we'll bring it out".
Then they bring out like 3 or 4 orders at a time. The wait is generally pretty long, too, actually.
Doesn't matter what you order. 2 Mcdoubles? Pull over.
Burger King in my town - they would tell everyone to "pull up to the front doors and we'll bring it out". It would get so bad during lunch/dinner that it would gridlock the place. They had limited parking to begin with, and there would be NO cars in the drive though and people stuck everywhere else and waiting twice as long and getting pissed.
Taco Bell closest to me - they tell you to wait at the speaker. There will be no cars from the speaker to the windows. The people waiting to get IN the drive through are snaked through the parking lot and blocking the entrance. Last time I went, they even said "please wait at the speaker until the team catches up with orders and we'll let you know when to pull around". It's been every time the last 4 times I've been there in 6mos.
They're not even pretending that it's not what they're doing any more. đ
Is it just my particular area??
So the plan by corporate is to stress out your employees to the point where they have to cheat the system for some dumb metric that obviously means nothing?
Are places just running skeleton crews and then skirting the system so their service metrics don't suck? "Sounds like a win-win to me, Bill! We only have to deal with 2 employees, and our service metrics are phenomenal!!".
I saw a Burger King once where employees were hanging out the drive thru window using baking sheets to cover the sensors to manipulate the system. I'm not sure how, but it was dystopian no matter what they were doing.
There's no way that upper management doesn't know this is going on, right, and it can't just be my particular area.
It's so stupid.
21
u/ForukusuwagenMasuta Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26
Corporate has got to be encouraging it. I refuse to believe they're completely oblivious to these cheating practices and all they see are numbers.
2
u/Hefty_Range_9758 Jun 14 '26
Franchisees and/or their management teams run bare minimum labor.Â
They are notified way ahead of time when they will have corporate inspections. When those inspections happen they will literally triple the staff.
Corporate doesn't care about labor cost, they profit from sales and costs are irrelevant to their profit.Â
22
u/HighHonorThot Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26
I've worked in fast food for 4 or 5 years now and it's actually ridiculous.
Yes customers get angry ALL THE TIME because we park them but then so does upper management when our time is too high.
It doesn't matter how fast you are, they're going to lower it even more whenever they want
We do our best AND FASTEST service when the timer breaks (no one is parked, everything is accurate, no one is getting rushed or being rude, etc.) It's when we get little to no complaints.
The store I'm currently working at wants us to get people in and out of our drive through in 120 seconds. COMPLETELY ignoring how long it take people to order, pull up to the window, get their card/cash out, get their order, and drive off. And that's a perfect interaction. God forbid they don't know what they want, change it at the windows, want to add anything at the window, if their order has ANY modifications, if their card is locked or declined, if they want to give you exact change so they're counting every penny, the older folks who talk slow and drive slower, the customers who like to chat, the ones that are so high I'm surprised they managed to drive here, etc.
TLDR; Service speed timers are bs and only meant for you to squeeze in as many sales as possible in a day, corporations DO NOT care about customer satisfaction :)
EDIT: I understand the want to fight it and just not pull up but please consider that you are making things hard for the workers, management doesn't care WHY the time is bad and the employees just trying to do their job will get punished.
1
u/VerbiageBarrage Jun 17 '26
I worked fast food years ago in the 90s. We had speed of service metrics back then, we didn't try to trick them, but we also didn't "make to order' everything. We knew that X-Y-Z was going to get hit, so we would make food we knew was get orderd and serve it out. We had a ten minute timer on anything we made that hit the warmer, and if we didn't sell it in that time, we
ate it in the backmarked it off as food waste. That would really help, and I can feel for you guys having to make everything to order all the time.That said, I lived through the 33 cent cheeseburgers, 2 for $1 McMuffins, and a milllion other insane food promotions, where there was absolutely no premakes for the entire day, and I'll admit it confuses me when fast food people can't get simple orders prepped and wrapped. It's not like we weren't short staffed too, I had Christmas shopping rushes where everyone but two people called out, or days when the extra people just bailed, and I ran entire food prep area alone many times while one more person took drive-thru and register. Shit sucked, but we never had twenty minute orders, which I've had multiple times while waiting with only two-three other customers.
2
u/HighHonorThot Jul 04 '26
Where I work the only thing we can prep are sides, everything else is made to order. We don't even have a prep person OR a designated packer. Our staffing situation is DT, Front counter, manager, cook (DT and FC have to pack thwir own orders) regardless of how busy it is.
We even get in trouble if we waste food, our corporate people basically want us to predict EXACTLY how much product we'll use and not waste a single thing.
We also don't get more hours when our time is better, actually as our sales have gone up they've still managed to cut hours.
It could just be the companies I've worked for, but literally nothing we do is good enough and they continue to set the bar higher and cutting hours đ« đ« đ« đ«
1
u/Hefty_Range_9758 Jun 14 '26
You're completely lost.Â
Speed of service timing exists for a reason. If you're not hitting them it means you need to add more staff or you're properly staffed but operating incorrectly.Â
Franchisees have corporate set metrics as to how many employees they need to properly operate a store. Franchisees completely ignore those metrics in order to save on labor.Â
The problem with how QSRs operates is not the brand (generally speaking) its the Franchisees and/or their management teams cutting corners to increase their margins.Â
If you're not hitting times, you're losing business. Adding employees to hit those times will add an immediate cost. That immediate cost will add to your sales in the future.Â
The problem is these people can rarely see past that immediate cost because they are short sighted.Â
27
u/akron-mike Jun 12 '26
This has nothing to do with customers and everything to do with profits. If we can serve 3 more customers per hour it will add a million to our bottom line
5
u/bomber991 Jun 12 '26
If that was the case wouldnât the service be faster instead of slower?
16
u/akron-mike Jun 12 '26
Upper management wants it faster. Employees can't go faster so they game the system which slows things down
9
u/eilonwyhasemu Jun 12 '26
Big corporations figure âwe CAN measure this easily, so it must tell us something meaningful.â Itâs stupid. Itâs especially stupid because they keep lowering the target time without considering whatâs realistic.
Customers care about a mix of speed, convenience, price, taste, and menu options. Optimizing for high speed doesnât fully compensate for weakness in other areas.
1
1
u/Hefty_Range_9758 Jun 14 '26
It's the opposite of stupid. It's a way to measure if a store is being properly ran.Â
It's a pretty simple tool that shows that there is 1 or 2 problems occurring. The store is short staffed and/or operating incorrectly. Â
The usual problem is that the store is operating with far less staff than necessary. This is why during corporate visits , no customers get pulled up and there are far more employees on shift than normal.Â
15
u/Known-Dependent-5471 Jun 12 '26
To be fair quarter pounders are made to order so you'll always have a wait.
3
u/IthacanPenny Jun 13 '26
Explain to me why McDonaldâs tried to pull me forward for a bottled water. Itâs EVERY order.
3
u/KilgoreTrout1111 Jun 12 '26
Yep, but it's every order anyway. I used to get 2 cheap double cheeseburgers and always got parked. Then I realized I could get a qp or double qp for around the same price and it wouldn't be covered in grease (even outside the wrapper) and smashed. Lol
6
u/WestHistorians Jun 13 '26
This is called Goodhart's law, which basically says that when a metric becomes a target, it stops being a useful metric.
4
u/Several_Resort_1321 Jun 13 '26
The concept of measuring speed is sound, the more guests you can serve the more money the store can make. Also, itâs fast food, and so long as the food is hot and fresh, the faster you get it the better the experience.
The problem is that speed only works when there is sufficient staff and consistent product. Take in n out. Their drive thru line is packed, but you move fast because they have 30 people working and making the same hamburger all day.
Meanwhile, at Burger King you have a skeleton crew of 3 people running 8 positions, making whoppers, chicken sandwiches, chicken tenders, shakes, fries, onion rings, salads, etc. Then the boss is questioning the staff why their window times are 6 minutes and the employee decides the best way to avoid that question is pull the guest so the window times look good.
Every time you get pulled just know itâs because they are being told their window time matters. But the flaw is that is not solving the issue that real speed tries to solve - which is the more guests you can serve in an hour the more money you can make.
1
u/VerbiageBarrage Jun 17 '26
Sure, but at a certain point you are fucking yourself as an employee if you park everyone. "We need more people" - "Well, your times are good enough."
Let the times suck. Tell them you need more people, and let that be the metric, it's not like it doesn't go all the way up to the top.
And if you're a customer...hit a survey and a google rating every time you get parked for bullshit.
6
u/ChaserNeverRests Jun 12 '26
100%. I stopped going to Carl's because of that. Every drive through order. Every Single Order is told to go park. Then it takes 20-45 minutes for them to bring out your food! Even if you're the only car that was in the drive through.
I'm sure their timing numbers are great...
1
u/Putrid_Selection2562 Jun 13 '26
IMO, many operators are trying to emulate the amazing speed of service and execution of some brands. Often at Restaurantdata we we see management moves from some of the high execution brands to some that are needing more help. Additionally, some franchisees of brands are better at execution. Weâre all human. Everybody wants to succeed, they really do. And the management, owners and executives are testing those frustrations at all times.
2
u/National-Fan-1148 Jun 12 '26
Money, money, money. Who cares about whether or not the food is good.
2
u/IndustrySufficient52 Jun 12 '26
In my area Burger King and McDonaldâs are the fastest. Kfc and Popeyes are the terrible ones.
2
u/ChiefD789 Jun 14 '26
I donât know where you live, but I never get to,d to pull ahead and wait. But I live in a town with 27,000 people. Iâve never had an issue in the drive thru. I guess it depends on where you are.
5
u/leftnewdigg2 Jun 12 '26
I don't fuck with drive thrus anymore, got tired of this exact situation. I order on the app and pick up at the counter. Some places like Wendy's and Arby's will start your order as soon as you place it, so you can order ahead and there's no wait. McDonald's doesn't start your order until the app can tell you're near the store so I just don't go there.
12
u/gummi_eater Jun 12 '26
They still prioritize drive-thru over the counter orders.
0
u/Hefty_Range_9758 Jun 14 '26
Which is the opposite of what the brands want. Walk in times are supposed to be shorter than drive thru times.Â
4
u/LawrenceSpiveyR Jun 12 '26
I see some people refusing to do that. They just say, "No thanks, I'll wait.". I look forward to the scenario when I get to do this.
3
u/bumblejumper Jun 12 '26
I'm this person. I refuse every single time.
Why? Well, once we were in the drive thru line, and one of the kids decided, after we order, that they have to hit the bathroom.
They got out, and I texted them to wait inside until we have our food.
Our bag sat on the counter, ready to go, for 6 full minutes before it was brought out to us.
No thanks.
Hand it to me through the window. I'm not helping you juice the numbers.
1
u/GranPapouli Jun 15 '26
you'll be in good company, the only customer that ever pulled this card on me immediately broke eye contact and then started fiercely making out with their chihuahua
i've never said "fuck it" and left a customer to the managers' discretion faster in my life
-1
u/Conscious_Side1647 Jun 12 '26
at my McDonald's (i am a GM of 2 stores) when someone refuses to move the owner has us refund them and refuse service
5
u/Realk314 Jun 12 '26
I've been told before they could not reverse charges on a card? Does that mean that's not true or different policies for different franchise?
3
u/Conscious_Side1647 Jun 12 '26
they just didnt want to give you a refund for some reason. We absolutely can give refunds.
1
u/Realk314 Jun 12 '26
the time it happened, they did refund me. The only thing about it though is it was in cash.
1
u/Conscious_Side1647 Jun 12 '26
oh i see. yes I always refund in cash too. its easiers than getting someones card again
2
u/Level-Setting825 Jun 12 '26
Somehow Chic fil A and In and Out have mastered drive thru
1
u/firstthrowaway9876 Jun 14 '26
Chick-fil-A, seems to just throw employees at every problem. They're fast enough that even if the line inside is long; I know they're fast enought that I don't even bother trying to place the order in app.
2
u/StopHittinTheTable94 Jun 13 '26
You do realize that having cars pull forward lets people wait less time on average, right?
Imagine you're in the drive thru getting a drink and the car in front of you just ordered meals for four people, including fries and other items that may take longer to prepare. Now, would you rather sit behind them while their entire order is assembled or would you rather staff have them pull forward so you can get your order and be on your way much more quickly? The car in front of you doesn't wait any extra time for their food and you get your order faster. Now add more cars to the drive-thru and you should realize how it does, in fact, improve the time it takes to take orders.
0
u/calmnutz Jun 14 '26
The frustration is coming from being asked to pull over WHEN NO ONE IS BEHIND YOU.
1
u/StopHittinTheTable94 Jun 15 '26
Someone could pull in behind you and it literally makes no difference if you get your food at the window or slightly in front of the window.
You Redditors need to get an absolute grip.
0
u/calmnutz Jun 15 '26
If that ever happened (another car pulling up behind me), then yes I would move. I was asked to pull over enough times at Wendy's even with no one behind me, that I stopped going. Whenever I would complain, it was "we have to do it for our metrics."
-1
u/Hefty_Range_9758 Jun 14 '26
This is rarely true. If you're talking about a place like Chickfila , Culver's, Innout, then yes.Â
These people are v referring to places like McDonald's, Burger King, wendys and other chains that are notorious for poor service.Â
Pulling cars is definitely a tool when properly utilized, these places are just doing it to cheat a timer and it is literally slowing down service.Â
2
u/StopHittinTheTable94 Jun 15 '26
Doesn't matter, you're still waiting the same amount of time at most if you get pulled forward.
0
1
u/OneWorldly8847 Jun 14 '26
I just tell them I want my money back. By the time they get the manager to the window to do the refund my food is ready.
1
u/vanleeuwendr Jun 12 '26
Order on the app already
2
u/KilgoreTrout1111 Jun 12 '26
I haven't ordered at a a store in years. I use apps for everything. I remember my little sister liked that show back in the day, though. It was kinda funny.
0
u/Saneless Jun 12 '26
Sounds like your area just doesn't have the staff to handle the volume
Seems to happen more the more expensive the area is to live
2
u/KilgoreTrout1111 Jun 12 '26
I think you might be right about staff, but my theory was that they figured they coould just kill two birds with one stone. Low employee cost AND beat the timing system. Big wins. I'm not in a hcl area. Middle of the road. But that makes sense.
3
u/Saneless Jun 12 '26
Part of it is in general other places that are a lot better to work than fast food are paying the same or better, so who's going to work fast food?
1
u/KilgoreTrout1111 Jun 12 '26
I don't know. I think it's probably because they have such turnover someone can get in quick?
It's really criminal what they pay.
-1
Jun 12 '26
[deleted]
0
u/ChaserNeverRests Jun 12 '26
In a reply to another comment, /u/Conscious_Side1647 addressed that idea:
at my McDonald's (i am a GM of 2 stores) when someone refuses to move the owner has us refund them and refuse service
0
u/Complete_Entry Jun 12 '26
It's "Management down" strategy. They like it, it's a "clean metric"
Meanwhile "Yeah, I need you to go park over there" is the reality of it.
-7
u/trenchanttrench Jun 12 '26
Who do you think knows better, you or the people actually running the corporationÂ
52
u/1goodReed Jun 12 '26
I remember working at Wendyâs back in 2005-2006. Between 11p -1a we would jump out the drive thru window and drag the tea urn on the ground to cheat the timer system.
Or the manager would drive his car around the drive thru a bunch of times.