Are you a fast food manager who has to reduce his speed of service? Of course you are; we all are. Everyone is under immense pressure from above to reduce service times. My latest series of posts has been over how to do just that. The sixth and final tip is the most obvious one: execute speedy procedures. This is a complex way of saying: MOVE FASTER.
Take a moment to watch what your crew is doing in the drive thru and other areas of the store that directly affect drive-thru. Are they moving as fast as they could? If not, then as their manager, it is up to you to move them along faster.
Start with how an order is taken. The greeting (if you don’t have an automatic greeter) should be quick and to the point. I favor “Hi, may I take your order?” Simple and direct. Of course, corporate may want you to advertise products in your greeting, so you may not have any control over what you say.
Second, does the cashier urge the customer along politely? If we let them, many of our customers would take all day to order. I had someone on Wednesday take ten minutes to order her food–no joke! Fortunately, that was at front register, but we can’t let our customers do a similar move in drive-thru. To that end, the cashier should be in control of the flow of the order, not the customer. For example, instead of, “What kind of drink would you like with your value meal?” ask “Would you like a Coke (or Pepsi) with that?” Close-ended questions help drive-thru speed while open-ended ones invite a lot of thought.
Always assume the medium size when none is specified. Learning that trick has saved me so many seconds in drive-thru it is unbelievable.
Third, is your kitchen listening to the order as it is being taken and reacting to the order? Menu items that are seldom ordered are not in easy reach. Is someone immediately setting those items up when they are ordered?
Fourth, is your drive-thru cashier multitasking? This is extremely important and can’t be stressed enough. No one is going to survive in drive-thru if they can’t get drinks at the same time as someone is talking. That is the minimum multitasking that someone must do. The really good ones will be able to take an order and talk to someone at the window at the same time. I have a cashier who can take an order, talk to a customer, get all of the drinks, and text her friends on her phone–all without missing a beat. That’s multitasking! You won’t find many like that, so hold on to the ones that you do find.
Fifth, is your cashier repeating the order back each time? This is a cardinal sin in the fast-paced world of drive-thru. Never repeat an order back unless there is some question of accuracy or the customer requests it. We all know that most of the time the customer doesn’t remember what he just ordered, so there is little point to repeating it unless he requests it. While multitasking, it is possible that something got missed, but usually the cashier has a gut feeling that is the case, and then should repeat back the order just to be sure. But repeating the order should be a rarity. If a cashier is repeating a majority of the orders back because of a question of accuracy, then that person isn’t a drive-thru cashier and should be moved.
Are your people moving as fast as they could be? Probably not. Diagnose the problems at each position and clear up the bottlenecks, and you’ll have a faster team and much lower drive-thru times.
1 Comment
January 24, 2009 at 10:22 am
Great Nice Post, Very Nice 6th Tip of Speed of Service…………