Streamlining The Drive-Thru Experience
Convenience is king when it comes to food orders: Diners surprisingly have little patience for carryout or in-store pickup, with 67 percent of consumers saying in one survey that a wait of six minutes or more is too long for in-store pickup. Thirty-eight percent of respondents said drive-thrus were the safest way of engaging, followed by curbside pick-up at 21 percent and in-store pickup at 9 percent.
McDonald’s spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the last year on speeding customers through its drive-thrus and creating incentives for them to spend more. The chain installed digital menu boards that encourage diners to place bigger, more expensive orders. It also tested lanes with cameras that recognize loyal customers by their license plate numbers, enabling the digital menus to make suggestions based on previous orders.
The Golden Arches is not alone in reimagining its drive-thru experiences. Taco Bell filled mostly small orders in the past. But customers are now purchasing larger meals, enough for leftovers in the refrigerator, according to Mike Grams, Taco Bell’s chief operating officer. The company moved its drive-thru staff from pickup windows to the vacant dine-in area to accommodate this change in ordering habits, creating space for cooks to assemble larger, more complicated orders. Taco Bell’s new restaurant concept, Taco Bell Go Mobile, offers what it calls a completely synchronized digital experience that consists of multiple drive-thru lanes, curbside pickup and bellhops who take orders on tablets.
