Short staffed restaurants

[kr.abs.swy]

Strong disagree, based on working at two separate chains in high school. The drive through acts as a natural funnel that forces customers to come through at a steady pace (you can't take more than one or two orders -- depending on the physical drive thru configuration -- at a time. You reduce the risk of overwhelming the kitchen because the drive-thru is moderating your customer pattern for you. Sure, there could be a line that is 10-cars deep, but you can't do anything about that. You just take one order after another. (I'm not arguing that this is a better scenario for the customer -- just that it helps the restaurant manage the logistics.)

If the dining room is open, you have to have another employee taking orders. If the line gets long, the manager will be tempted to go over and take a few orders to help moderate the line. Now you've got a more unpredictable order pattern that is potentially overwhelming the kitchen. You have to deal with the customer that comes back and is upset because their food was made improperly or they didn't get their sauce packets (much easier to just make them go back through the drive-thru or, more likely, decide to live without ketchup rather than wait in another line -- again, I'm not saying this is better for the customer, just more easy to manage for the restaurant). And you have to clean the tables after they leave, sweep the dining room, etc. When a customer is standing by the order expeditor asking for ketchup, you have to try to help them immediately. When they are in the drive-thru lane, you can go about your other business until you open up the window. All of these little things just add up to make life easier for the restaurant. If the dining room is closed, the manager doesn't have to worry about kicking out someone who is loitering, your lobby person doesn't have to go out and mop up spilled soda, you don't have to worry about the trash filling up, you don't have to worry about the restrooms, etc. Meanwhile, it's easier to multi-task in the drive-thru. The same employee at McDonald's sometimes takes orders and collects payment at the first window. They can do this because they just don't open the window until they are done taking the order (or manage to do both at the same time). Plus, people just seem to be in more of a hurry in their car. They just don't seem as likely to spend 75 seconds trying to decide what they want to order as they are when they are in the restaurant.

It's obviously better for the customer to have the choice. But if the restaurant is facing staffing shortages, closing the dining room and routing customers through the drive-thru is an absolute no brainer.

I don't know if this is being done widely, but fast food has experimented with having call centers take drive-thru orders. If the current environment keeps up, that will make more and more sense. It seems like this could make a lot of sense in areas with persistent staffing challenges (have a call center in Michigan take drive-thru orders for the McDonald's in West Yellowstone, e.g.).

If they are that low on people, close the drive thru and make everyone go inside!

It takes less staff that way, and you can get rid of the crowd more efficiently (after all, when the 3rd car at drive thru wants a drink and one sandwich, you can't get that to them while the first car is waiting for a 25 item order - inside it's much easier to take orders "out of order").

[BillyGr]

If the dining room is open, you have to have another employee taking orders. If the line gets long, the manager will be tempted to go over and take a few orders to help moderate the line. Now you've got a more unpredictable order pattern that is potentially overwhelming the kitchen. You have to deal with the customer that comes back and is upset because their food was made improperly or they didn't get their sauce packets (much easier to just make them go back through the drive-thru or, more likely, decide to live without ketchup rather than wait in another line -- again, I'm not saying this is better for the customer, just more easy to manage for the restaurant). And you have to clean the tables after they leave, sweep the dining room, etc. When a customer is standing by the order expeditor asking for ketchup, you have to try to help them immediately. When they are in the drive-thru lane, you can go about your other business until you open up the window. All of these little things just add up to make life easier for the restaurant. If the dining room is closed, the manager doesn't have to worry about kicking out someone who is loitering, your lobby person doesn't have to go out and mop up spilled soda, you don't have to worry about the trash filling up, you don't have to worry about the restrooms, etc. Meanwhile, it's easier to multi-task in the drive-thru. The same employee at McDonald's sometimes takes orders and collects payment at the first window. They can do this because they just don't open the window until they are done taking the order (or manage to do both at the same time). Plus, people just seem to be in more of a hurry in their car. They just don't seem as likely to spend 75 seconds trying to decide what they want to order as they are when they are in the restaurant.

Note that I said make everyone go inside to order, not that you have to have the tables usable. Dunkin has done that quite effectively most places.

You wouldn't need another employee to take orders - the same person would do it as they would at the drive thru. The same employee can take the order and the payment at the counter, just as they do at drive thru.



Of course, there are other issues as well - apparently all those who are usually worried about the environment somehow overlook all the extra emissions coming from cars waiting in line (which wouldn't usually happen if people got out and went inside).

[kr.abs.swy]

Unless you are running low volumes, it doesn't work to have the same employee take orders at the drive-thru and at front counter. Low-volume operations and really cheap operations will sometimes try to get away with it in certain dayparts. It also depends on how far physically your front counter is from the drive-thru. But generally speaking, it can kill your speed of service and is highly inefficient to have someone running back and forth from counter to drive thru. A drive-thru running at moderate volume will need dedicated employees. You will never see a McDonald's or Wendy's where that is happening except maybe during the slowest dayparts. Low-volume operations may be able to get away with it at times. But it kills your SOS to have someone waiting at the drive thru menu board to order for 90 seconds while you're waiting for someone who has apparently never seen the menu before to decide which hamburger they want at the counter. And those SOS times go to corporate.

Completely agree that it is disgusting to have so many cars idling endlessly in drive-thrus. But in a world where fast food restaurants aren't responsible for their externalities, that isn't going to be what they tend to worry about. If you can only schedule five people on shift because that is all you have, and you need three in the kitchen and two to properly staff the drive-thru ... it is an absolute no brainer that you will close the lobby if you can. Two people can work drive-thru more efficiently than two people can work front counter. It's not even close. At volume, there can be a rhythm to the drive-thru operation that you never get at the counter. Depending on the nature of your setup, three people can manage a tremendous amount of volume in a drive-thru. The nature of the drive-thru drops your customers into a fairly predictable pattern that tends to even out the peaks and valleys. You don't have that to the same extent inside the restaurant. When you're working drive-thru and a customer is taking forever to order, you can fill drinks, bag orders, maybe even take a payment from the person at the window, etc., while they make up their mind. If they are in front of you at front counter, you have to keep smiling at them no matter how long it takes. If you're taking a drive-thru order and you need to multitask, you can just make the customer wait in a way that you can't do if they are standing right in front of you. It is just a more efficient way to serve customers. (Again, not necessarily better for the customer -- but more efficient for the restaurant.)

If the dining room is open, you have to have another employee taking orders. If the line gets long, the manager will be tempted to go over and take a few orders to help moderate the line. Now you've got a more unpredictable order pattern that is potentially overwhelming the kitchen. You have to deal with the customer that comes back and is upset because their food was made improperly or they didn't get their sauce packets (much easier to just make them go back through the drive-thru or, more likely, decide to live without ketchup rather than wait in another line -- again, I'm not saying this is better for the customer, just more easy to manage for the restaurant). And you have to clean the tables after they leave, sweep the dining room, etc. When a customer is standing by the order expeditor asking for ketchup, you have to try to help them immediately. When they are in the drive-thru lane, you can go about your other business until you open up the window. All of these little things just add up to make life easier for the restaurant. If the dining room is closed, the manager doesn't have to worry about kicking out someone who is loitering, your lobby person doesn't have to go out and mop up spilled soda, you don't have to worry about the trash filling up, you don't have to worry about the restrooms, etc. Meanwhile, it's easier to multi-task in the drive-thru. The same employee at McDonald's sometimes takes orders and collects payment at the first window. They can do this because they just don't open the window until they are done taking the order (or manage to do both at the same time). Plus, people just seem to be in more of a hurry in their car. They just don't seem as likely to spend 75 seconds trying to decide what they want to order as they are when they are in the restaurant.

Note that I said make everyone go inside to order, not that you have to have the tables usable. Dunkin has done that quite effectively most places.

You wouldn't need another employee to take orders - the same person would do it as they would at the drive thru. The same employee can take the order and the payment at the counter, just as they do at drive thru.



Of course, there are other issues as well - apparently all those who are usually worried about the environment somehow overlook all the extra emissions coming from cars waiting in line (which wouldn't usually happen if people got out and went inside).

[storewanderer]

Strong disagree, based on working at two separate chains in high school. The drive through acts as a natural funnel that forces customers to come through at a steady pace (you can't take more than one or two orders -- depending on the physical drive thru configuration -- at a time.

This is a good point. But I still do not like drive through only because I want to go inside and see what is going on.

At Boston Market where it is drive through only and today had hours 11 AM to 4 PM (the hours over the weekend of 2 PM to 7 PM were better in my opinion) this is the exact system used- there is one employee there (always the same one) and he takes your order and he plates the food as he takes your order then when he is done with that he tells you to pull forward and at that point he starts to enter it into the register and you get there and he takes payment. Meanwhile through all this the next car is at the speaker for 2-3 minutes before their order is even taken.

I was in an Arbys during the dinner period and they are using Grub Hub or some such service for online orders for some reason. Despite that they use the corporate Arbys cash register so they should be able to get online ordering through whatever the corporate Arbys use. So what happens here is the Grub Hub orders come through a system that is not integrated with the Arbys register. So whenever a Grub Hub order comes in, one of the employees has to go and input it from the Grub Hub tablet into the Arbys register to make it get prepared. So I was in there waiting to order, and then another person was behind me. The employee took my order then started to input a Grub Hub order. While she was inputting that order, two more Grub Hub orders came through. It took about 4 minutes for my order to be done and at the time I left, the guy behind me had still not gotten to order as the cashier was busy with the multiple Grub Hub order entries.

[BillyGr]

Unless you are running low volumes, it doesn't work to have the same employee take orders at the drive-thru and at front counter. Low-volume operations and really cheap operations will sometimes try to get away with it in certain dayparts. It also depends on how far physically your front counter is from the drive-thru. But generally speaking, it can kill your speed of service and is highly inefficient to have someone running back and forth from counter to drive thru. A drive-thru running at moderate volume will need dedicated employees. You will never see a McDonald's or Wendy's where that is happening except maybe during the slowest dayparts. Low-volume operations may be able to get away with it at times. But it kills your SOS to have someone waiting at the drive thru menu board to order for 90 seconds while you're waiting for someone who has apparently never seen the menu before to decide which hamburger they want at the counter. And those SOS times go to corporate.

Note that I said make everyone go inside to order, not that you have to have the tables usable. Dunkin has done that quite effectively most places.

Based on my quote, they wouldn't be doing both - the drive thru would NOT be operating.

The only possible thought in addition would be to allow someone to pull up to the final (normally where the orders are handed out) window and honk their horn IF they were physically unable to go inside, the same as you can do at a normally self serve fuel station for someone to come out and pump for you.

Then yes, that person would have to go over to the window for a single order, but it isn't something you would be doing regularly.

IF they wanted to run both, you could switch and have one employee taking both orders (they have mobile hearing/speaking headsets, so they can take the order anywhere there is a register) and then have everyone go to the final window where one person takes payment and hands out items. That would require 3 people vs. 2 (one taking orders for both, 1 to take money/hand out for inside and 1 for outside) but another option if they can find just 1 extra person.
Alternatively, if corporate complains about the times, tell them to send some of their employees out to work in the restaurants - many chains used to do just that, so they got to see where the issues were and could try to fix them.

[jamcool]

Which is why the new and future QSR designs are mostly drive-thru and food pickup service.

[kr.abs.swy]

It varies by brand and specialty, but industry-wide, the drive-thru is typically much more lucrative than dining room. For a typical McDonald's, Wendy's, etc., it's not even close. Obviously there is a lot of variation and something like a Subway will be an entirely different story. But for a typical fast food place, the drive-thru is the biggest driver of sales.

Historically, the drive thru accounts for a greater percentage of sales than walk-in, and the last 18 months are reinforcing that. The drive-thru is perceived as faster and more convenient. So given the fact that drive-thru already accounted for the majority of sales in many cases, given the fact that the last 18 months have trained people to use drive-thru even more than they already did, and given the fact that physical distancing is still important due to delta, you will not find many restaurants that would rather operate the dining room than the drive-thru if they have limited staff. You chase away more business by closing the drive-thru than by closing the dining room.

New prototypes that Taco Bell has developed show just how important that drive thru is.

From a May 2020 New York Times article: At many chains, including McDonald’s, the drive-through accounted for as much as 70 percent of revenue before the crisis, generating billions of dollars for the industry every month. During the pandemic, sales have mostly held steady. In March, drive-throughs generated $8.3 billion across the fast-food industry, an increase from $8 billion in sales over the same period in 2019, according to data from the NPD Group, a market research firm.

Unless you are running low volumes, it doesn't work to have the same employee take orders at the drive-thru and at front counter. Low-volume operations and really cheap operations will sometimes try to get away with it in certain dayparts. It also depends on how far physically your front counter is from the drive-thru. But generally speaking, it can kill your speed of service and is highly inefficient to have someone running back and forth from counter to drive thru. A drive-thru running at moderate volume will need dedicated employees. You will never see a McDonald's or Wendy's where that is happening except maybe during the slowest dayparts. Low-volume operations may be able to get away with it at times. But it kills your SOS to have someone waiting at the drive thru menu board to order for 90 seconds while you're waiting for someone who has apparently never seen the menu before to decide which hamburger they want at the counter. And those SOS times go to corporate.

Note that I said make everyone go inside to order, not that you have to have the tables usable. Dunkin has done that quite effectively most places.

Based on my quote, they wouldn't be doing both - the drive thru would NOT be operating.

The only possible thought in addition would be to allow someone to pull up to the final (normally where the orders are handed out) window and honk their horn IF they were physically unable to go inside, the same as you can do at a normally self serve fuel station for someone to come out and pump for you.

Then yes, that person would have to go over to the window for a single order, but it isn't something you would be doing regularly.

IF they wanted to run both, you could switch and have one employee taking both orders (they have mobile hearing/speaking headsets, so they can take the order anywhere there is a register) and then have everyone go to the final window where one person takes payment and hands out items. That would require 3 people vs. 2 (one taking orders for both, 1 to take money/hand out for inside and 1 for outside) but another option if they can find just 1 extra person.
Alternatively, if corporate complains about the times, tell them to send some of their employees out to work in the restaurants - many chains used to do just that, so they got to see where the issues were and could try to fix them.

[Romr123]

One data point: I was a mystery shopper for KFC from 1987-1989. At that point, we performed 30% of our evaluations as drive-throughs. Given that at that point about 85% of KFC corporate restaurants had drivethroughs (that, along with a few strip-center stores were all they were building at the time), you can see how progress has been made over the years. I wouldn't doubt that it's up to 80% for Taco Bell now.

[cjd]

I always wondered about those PIzza Huts that have drive-thrus. Were they just for picking up pre-ordered items? A drive thru there doesn't make sense due to the wait times.

Seems most of those around here were on the few built in the mid to late 1980s, typically really small town ones that never got one in the 70s. There's also a 2000s era Pizza Hut here that has one as well. I do remember as a kid we'd go through it to get those Personal Pan Pizzas you'd get from the Book It program. Maybe those didn't take long to bake.

Two of the Subways in my town have a walk up window for pick up orders. They're both older ones probably from the 1980s, and were always a Subway. I guess it's meant to speed things up by skipping the line. Newer ones I haven't noticed having one. The Subway in my hometown was actually in an old Whataburger A frame building, and I seem to remember it may have had a drive thru as well. It's not something any of the ones here have though, and that building is long since gone.

[storewanderer]

I have seen Little Caesar and Domino locations with drive through and they are typically for pick up orders. I suppose someone could go to it to order, but having them wait at the window for 20 minutes certainly would not make much sense.

I had also heard of Domino locations using the drive through windows to pass orders out to delivery drivers to save the drivers time and keep it so they did not have to keep going in and out of the unit to collect deliveries.