Today, over 70% of quick-service restaurants’ traffic comes from the drive-through lanes in the food industry. Customers queue up in these lanes, mainly for speed, accuracy, and quality of the food & service. Business owners know the value of these components and continually strive to find innovative technologies that improve service, quality and order completion speed.
It’s not difficult to conclude that drive-thru optimization starts with people. Timers are essential to the mix of serving customers quickly. Workers preparing orders have a detailed customer journey. A study by Insula Research, the firm that conducts the annual QSR Drive-Thru Performance Study, confirmed that the speed-of-service timers positively impact results. Restaurants with timers were, on average, 29 seconds faster than those without timers. (Industry News, 2008)
Improvements in the speed of service are particularly meaningful for any drive-thru. Twenty-nine seconds may sound like it won’t make much of a difference, but customers pressed for time during busy hours like breakfast or lunch recognize the difference. For them, every second matters.
What’s new is the use of gameplay with timers. The next-gen of timer software addresses the idea of gaming, and it makes something completely task-oriented, fun. Here is more information on the use of timers with drive-thru service.
What Are Drive-Thru Timer/Systems?
Drive-thru timer systems are modern solutions provided by manufacturers like HME and Partech. Through digital screens, these timers offer a graphical presentation of a live situation in your drive-thru, number of cars, order details, time in play. It empowers the operators to run their tasks more effectively by giving signals when orders are on time or behind company programmed time goals.
Managers also receive statistical reports to understand the operations trends for setting realistic business goals. Because the drive-thru timer systems allow customizable programming, they can be tailored to gradual reduction of service time, improving performance.
How Exactly Do Timers Help with The Speed of Service?
The timers calculate and display service times from multiple points of the drive-thrus. Typical timers track customers from the order point at the menu-board, through the queue, to the service window. Still, it’s also possible to include additional detection points such as preview boards and greet time.
Armed with timers’ information, operators will know not only how many cars visited the drive-thru at various times of the day, but also the average time customers spent in the drive-thru and which point has the longest wait time.
Such detailed data helps in identify constraints and target specific areas of drive-thru service. The managers can also identify problems in real-time, so your staff can quickly adapt to changing conditions, improving the speed of service, and providing a promising return on investment. (Industry News, 2008)
About Business Sound and Communications
HME has come up with a gaming solution, ZOOM Nitro. It provides actionable drive-thru performance insights in real-time. It also displays results on the Nitro Leader board in store so employees and managers can map their performance daily. It allows for competitive activity between restaurants in different areas or zones.
In addition to displaying real-time metrics, ZOOM Nitro breaks down drive-thru performance by highlighting those metrics in green or red. For example, when one metric turns red, such as cashier time, managers know where to look for and address bottlenecks so that the drive-thru speed can improve immediately. Because the leader board also compares performance among restaurant locations, operators can help foster friendly competition between stores to ensure each team is making significant improvements.
Increasing Car Counts Has Never Been This Much Fun!
The new ZOOM Nitro Gamification is designed specially to make drive-thru performance more exciting. Game-based engagement makes work more enjoyable through instant rewards, fun contests, gratification, and real-time feedback. With its ability to create comments feature, stores can message each other with pre-selected messages to boast, challenge, or congratulate other locations.
Works Cited
Carouthers, P. (2019, November 14). How Real-Time Data Helps Restaurants Improve Drive-Thru Performance. Retrieved September 02, 2020, from https://www.qsrmagazine.com/sponsored/how-real-time-data-helps-restaurants-improve-drive-thru-performance
Industry News, Q. (2008, June 11). Study Quantifies Timer Impact on Drive-Thru. Retrieved September 02, 2020, from https://www.qsrmagazine.com/news/study-quantifies-timer-impact-drive-thru
HME Website, C. (2020). ZOOM Nitro™ Drive-Thru Optimization System. Retrieved September 02, 2020, from https://www.hme.com/qsr/zoom-nitro/
