More Tales of Drive Thru Debacles

I received a lot of feedback on yesterday's post from friends and colleagues who had experienced similar activity in the past, which has prompted me to further explore how pervasive the practice of "pulling" customers at the drive thru is, and the ultimate effect on consumer experience at quick serve restaurants (QSRs) in general. One of the best articles I found is at The Consumerist, appropriately entitled "Not So Fast Food." Apparently, many Burger King franchisees face this problem, and it can have a huge impact on customer loyalty.

Now, one of the most damaging things I've heard about why this practice is terrible for customer satisfaction is as follows: once the customer is out of the timing loop, the crew loses any incentive to rapidly deliver the order to the customer. They're simply no longer being tracked, so there is no impact to them connected to timeliness. Now, as the owner of that restaurant, imagine if this happened just once to one of your most valuable repeat customers who dines weekly at your location. Imagine if it happened twice. With average ticket sizes approaching $6+ these days, that would be a total of ~$1250 lost annually from just that customer if they started going to your competitor instead.

Read the Consumerist article here.