Hungry folks who speed into the drive-thru lane at fast-food restaurants may begin to notice that service hasn’t been that fast.
As the menus of different fast-food restaurants get more complex and the demand for cheaper, quicker food service continues to grow, the amount of time customers spend waiting in line at the drive-thru for their food has increased largely, according to the 2014 Drive-Thru Performance Study conducted by QSR Magazine, a fast-food industry trade publication.
According to the study, the average amount of time a typical consumer spends waiting in line has jumped nearly 40 seconds in a single year: from 180.83 in 2013 to 219.97 this year. It’s the longest average time that QSR has logged in the 17 years since the study was started.
In 2013, the survey was focused on only seven fast-food chains, but this year has since expanded to include at least 17 different restaurant brands, with 2,188 separate drive-thru trips throughout June, July, and August.
The study shows the overall importance of rapid service in a $200 billion-plus industry whose very name is fast food. Sixty to 70 percent of major fast food chain business is done in the drive-thru, and getting food out quickly has been the industry’s competitive edge for decades.
“Things are definitely slowing down,” Sam Oches, editor of QSR, said.“That’s the new normal.”
But he reports that the results are not all bad news.
For one thing, fast-food restaurants are making widespread efforts to have healthier products. But healthier premium items, such as the Cantina bowls at Taco Bell or McDonald’s new fruit smoothies, require extra time to make. At the same time, the restaurants are working harder to keep order accuracy at a high range of 87 percent or more, the highest the industry has posted, Oches said.
“The chains are more focused on serving fresh food and providing a good drive-thru experience with accurate orders,” he added.
In addition, “rush hour” times to avoid the fast-food line have changed. While noon lunch hour used to be the single busiest time, now the “snack” part of the day—usually from 2 to 5pm—is the busiest. The second busiest hour is breakfast. As a result, the fast-food industry has invested heavily in improving its breakfast and snack-meal offerings, adding diverse and cheap options to menus.
Even though the drive-thru lane has significantly slowed, QSR found that fewer cars have been utilizing it. This year, an average 1.7 cars waited in the drive-thru lane, versus 2.8 cars last year.
With improved restaurant images, access to Wi-Fi and better quality products, Oches explained that “people may be slightly more interested in going into a dining room.”
(With reports from USA Today)
