Guest Post: Fast Food Restaurants

Prof. Howard Weiss shares his insights with our readers monthly. We all spend time in fast food restaurants, so today’s topic should be of broad interest.

There are nearly 200,000 fast food restaurants, also known as quick serve restaurants (QSR), in the U.S. Obviously a key to these restaurants is short waits and fast service. Module D of your Heizer/Render/Munson textbook lists important measures for waiting line situations including:

 Average time that each customer spends in the queue
 Average queue length
 Average time that each customer spends in the system (waiting time plus service time)
 Average number of customers in the system

These measures have been increasing at many QSRs. However, the increase is not due to reduced productivity but rather to changes that have occurred in QSRs over the past several years. One change is that menus at fast food restaurants have expanded to include meals that take more time to prepare. The first fast food restaurant was White Castle, which opened in 1921 and had a very limited menu with only four items – a slider hamburger (which cost 5 cents), Coca Cola, coffee and apple pie. Today, QSRs have much more varied menus. Another reason that service times take longer is that patrons are becoming more sophisticated in placing custom orders, which take more time to prepare.

Recently, there has been an increase in the number of patrons who use the drive-thru lane. Much of this increase is due to COVID. All fast food restaurants reported an increase in 2021 of drive thru traffic with the percentage of patrons using drive-thrus being reported as 37% in one report and 52% in another. Because more customers are using drive-thrus the number of customers in line increases and therefore so does the waiting time.

There are steps fast food restaurants have taken to reduce the customer time in the system. Many have installed kiosks inside the restaurant so that ordering and payment is self-service. Just as ATMs increase the service capacity in a bank these kiosks increase the capacity at fast food restaurants. Another step is encouraging mobile ordering and payment so that the order will be ready when the customer arrives to pick it up. Some updated restaurant designs have increased the number of drive thru lanes.

Classroom discussion questions:
1. How have apps and kiosks changed how you receive service at QSRs?
2. What could be the downsides of QSRs using apps or kiosks?