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Do drive-thrus save any time?

D

desura

Diamond Member
At fast food restaurants, I always just park my car, walk inside, and order.

The times I've gone by the drive-thru, it always seemed annoying. If you think about it, if you go inside the restaurant, they will have multiple registers open to take orders, while the drive thru has to go single file.

But I bet that if someone actually did a study on it, they would find that a drive thru is about the same time if not slower than just parking your car, walking into the place, and ordering to go.
 
If the lot is empty the DT will always be faster. But, if there is a line it is normally faster to go inside, even if there is a line inside as well. I don't really know why, but I think it has something to do with the DT being entirely serial, while they can take orders in parallel inside.
 
Often it's faster to go inside, but there's some places where this is not the case. Wendy's is the worse. They have an amusement park style queue line in there. About half an hour to an hour to get your food if it's around lunch time, while drive thru might be 15 minutes.

Come to think of it, KFC is pretty bad too, but have not been there in a while, actually.
 
Many places prioritize drive-thru service over the counter. Taco Bell is like that. They have service standards for the window and none for the front.
 
shortylickens said:
Many places prioritize drive-thru service over the counter. Taco Bell is like that. They have service standards for the window and none for the front.
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I was gonna say this. It seems that they prioritize drive-thru at a lot of places. In n Out is one of my major vices, and it appears they do there.
 
Vic Vega said:
There is a local burger place here (and around the South East) called Cook Out. I can typically go there at lunch, park the car, walk up to the order window, order, pay, wait for and receive my food and drive away before other cars even get up to the the order speaker.
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is it the same Cook Out where you can get pork BBQ with a side of corn dog and a 2nd side of corn dog?

if so i love that place
 
Red Squirrel said:
Often it's faster to go inside, but there's some places where this is not the case. Wendy's is the worse. They have an amusement park style queue line in there. About half an hour to an hour to get your food if it's around lunch time, while drive thru might be 15 minutes.

Come to think of it, KFC is pretty bad too, but have not been there in a while, actually.
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Yeah, it seems like there can be more people in line inside due to the carousel, while drive-thrus can't be more than like 5 cars due to fundamental length restrictions.

Then again, waiting in line at the drive thru is just so much more frustrating IMO than waiting in line inside the restaurant.
 
shortylickens said:
Many places prioritize drive-thru service over the counter. Taco Bell is like that. They have service standards for the window and none for the front.
Click to expand...

This is true and I think people are just so goddam lazy they can't park and wak for a whopping 40ft into the store. Even though the drive-thru seems to get priority there is still 10-11 deep at the McD's, I walk in every time (if possible), ignore me? not for long...
 
When i was 16, the fast food places I worked at gave priority to the drive thru. They have timers on all of their orders.

So if you order a cheeseburger, and so did the guy in the drive thru, no matter who ordered first, he gets it
 
I know they all prioritize the drive-thru. Yet going in is almost always faster. At the counter you can take multiple orders and serve them in any order. If the guy in front of you ordered 12 items and you ordered two, you'll get yours when it's ready even if the other order is still being put together. But with the drive-thru you can't get your order until all the cars in front of you have been served.

There are those rare occasions where they tell someone to pull out of line and they'll bring the order out, but that seems to happen less and less. Probably because of safety reasons.

Not to mention when you go in you have the huge advantage of being able to watch them get your order ready so you have a fighting chance of it being right.
 
Yes, drive-thrus are usually faster.
I go through drive thrus quite a bit.
They are always faster.
They get timed and are more efficient than inside.
They put the best workers on the drive thru.
 
I almost never go through the drive throughs. Based on my personal experiences, it's almost always faster to park and walk up to the counter.
 
kranky said:
I know they all prioritize the drive-thru. Yet going in is almost always faster. At the counter you can take multiple orders and serve them in any order. If the guy in front of you ordered 12 items and you ordered two, you'll get yours when it's ready even if the other order is still being put together. But with the drive-thru you can't get your order until all the cars in front of you have been served.

There are those rare occasions where they tell someone to pull out of line and they'll bring the order out, but that seems to happen less and less. Probably because of safety reasons.

Not to mention when you go in you have the huge advantage of being able to watch them get your order ready so you have a fighting chance of it being right.
Click to expand...

The last paragraph is the reason I go in. We went in to Taco Bell the other day. (I noticed that they now have a camera on the food preparers & customers can watch their food being made.) It was over 15 minutes from the time we placed our order until our food was ready. Every time someone came through the drive-thru, that order was placed ahead of the people inside the store. Whoever was in charge didn't know their ass from a hole in the ground. They were out of EVERYTHING in fountain drinks, with the exception of diet pepsi. They blamed the new guy bringing the truck load of supplies for the store. Of course, when we ordered a meal with drinks, they couldn't be bothered to mention that.
 
DrPizza said:
The last paragraph is the reason I go in. We went in to Taco Bell the other day. (I noticed that they now have a camera on the food preparers & customers can watch their food being made.) It was over 15 minutes from the time we placed our order until our food was ready. Every time someone came through the drive-thru, that order was placed ahead of the people inside the store. Whoever was in charge didn't know their ass from a hole in the ground. They were out of EVERYTHING in fountain drinks, with the exception of diet pepsi. They blamed the new guy bringing the truck load of supplies for the store. Of course, when we ordered a meal with drinks, they couldn't be bothered to mention that.
Click to expand...

I actually was at a Taco bell drive-thru (it was late the walk-in was closed) and they had no beef...WTF! how can you run out of beef?, "sorry sir, no beef taco's available tonight", I then drove 10 miles to get Krystyl burgers..
 
Any restaurant with a drive thru will definitely save you time.... between now and your first heart attack. ;-)
 
A few years ago the Subway on US50 in Pueblo CO had a drive through window with ONE employee taking the orders and then making the sandwiches. It took about an hour and the next time I drove through Pueblo they no longer had a drive through.
 
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