The Drive-Through Process
As a rule, the time spent by customers on making reservations and orders takes a lot of time, especially in peak hours when all customers are willing to receive what they want in the shortest possible time.
When this concerns fast food restaurants and other quick services, there is such a concept that occurred in the USA in 1930s and spread all over the world named drive-through. In this respect, the drive-through services are aimed at reducing the throughput time and serving a maximum number of clients in the minimum time compared to other similar services.
s such, it is necessary to compare the throughput time in a conventional quick service restaurant and a drive-through restaurant of fast food because they both are aimed at serving the customers in a timely manner on the highest possible level appropriate for the service.
When a drive-through process is arranged in an appropriate manner, its operation decreases the throughput time compared to the conventional quick service restaurants. As reported by Baraban and Durocher (2010), “Separate ordering, payment, and pickup stations have been shown to speed the drive-through queue in many operations” (p. 46).
At the same time, the conventional fast food restaurant operates on a queue basis when every customer is served by one staff member which takes some time to receive the order, perform the order, give the order to customer, and receive the payment.
In this respect, electronic drive-through payment is one of the methods that make the drive-through process faster compared with the conventional fast food stores where the speed of serving orders depends on the skills of the staff members and the number of staff members in one shift with regard to the busy or not busy hours.
Customers’ Role in Speed and Efficiency
The drive-through concept can be considered one of the most effective in terms of the time needed for serving one customer. In other words, the order can be placed remotely to speed up its fulfilment and decrease the throughput time required to fulfil every order and increasing the throughput capacity of the fast food restaurant with drive-through services.
However, some conventional quick service restaurants can speed up their operation by adapting the system of electronic payment. As reported by Emmelmann, Bochow and Kellum (2010), “Electronic drive-through payment systems may be able to substantially increase vehicle throughput…” (p. 7) while the same electronic payment system can make the operation of conventional fast food restaurants more time-efficient compared with their rivals.
For instance, Schneiderman (2002) claims that system of electronic payment can be established through free Wi-Fi or simply through mobile internet when a customer who is in the fast food restaurant can submit payment through electronic payment system using a mobile phone. This process is claimed to increase the speed of serving in conventional fast food restaurants.
To increase the efficiency of drive-through restaurants, customers can place their orders by contacting the call centre and submitting payment through electronic payment system. As a result, the order would be ready as soon as the customer decides on the order and provides payment. In this respect, the speed of fulfilling the order would depend on the speed of the call centre and electronic payment system only. If a customer wants the order to be prepared on time, he/she should use the benefits of innovative drive-through process.
Reference List
Baraban, S.R. and Durocher, F.J., 2010. Successful restaurant design. 3rd ed. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.
Emmelmann, M., Bochow, B., and Kellum, C., 2010. Vehicular networking: automotive applications and beyond. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.
Schneiderman, Ron, 2002. The mobile technology question and answer book: a survival guide for business managers. New York: AMACOM.