Drive-Thru: Using Your Head

Digital headsets enable McDonald's to hear customers better, eliminating mistakes and speeding up the drive-thru.

By Mary Boltz Chapman, Editor-in-Chief -- Chain Leader, 10/1/2007

Eva Farr has been working at McDonald’s for 24 years, about 20 of those using headsets at the drive-thru.

Two or three years ago, the store she manages, a franchised unit owned by Stan Fiddelke in El Cajon, Calif., began using digital headsets, a transformation she equates to going from the noise of a first-generation cell phone to a clear land line. “Clarity and accuracy improves,” she says. “You can hear the customer. It’s like talking on the phone to the customer.”

Can You Hear Me Now?

Older headsets picked up interference from police scanners, CB radios and pranksters, and noise from lawnmowers, traffic and even wind. Advances allow clear communication between customer and order-taker, leading to fewer instances of needing to repeat orders and fewer mistakes.

“You don’t know you’ve messed an order up until the customer’s already dissatisfied,” Farr explains. “At that time, they’ve either already left the drive-thru or they’re at the second window. You present that order to them and it’s not what they thought. So they sit there, we remake their food, and all the customers behind them continue to wait, too.

“If we can get it right on the accuracy piece, it makes a huge difference in speed and how many customers you can drive through during that peak time,” she adds.

Farr says McDonald’s likes the units to have at least five headsets per store. In her unit, the order-taker, person presenting the order, shift manager and a grill person each wear one; the fifth is used by a third worker at the drive-thru at peak times, or as a backup.

Ahead of Schedule

The worker on the grill can begin the cooking process as soon as he or she hears the order. Farr says the few seconds here and there quickly add up. In non-peak times, the griller doesn’t have to pay attention to the screen, giving him or her the freedom to do other tasks in the kitchen.

Farr also appreciates that the newer headsets are wireless, hands-free and sturdy enough to stand up in a fast-food environment. She says they make staff feel secure when they have to leave the building to go to the dumpster, knowing they are connected.

“Other stores will say, ‘Well it costs more for the digital system,’ and I say, ‘You know, you’re going to make that money back so much in the ease of operation,’” Farr explains.

Looking Ahead

Farr says Poway, Calif.-based HM Electronics, the vendor that supplies the headsets, asks the El Cajon unit to try new advancements it’s working on. “They’re trying to use the headsets for even more things,” she says.

“When I first got a job at McDonald’s, we didn’t have headsets,” Farr recalls. We had that speaker system and you wrote down the orders on a little write-on, wipe-off board, and then you’d yell the orders back to the grill area. Things in 20 years have changed so much, I imagine 20 years from now we won’t even recognize it. It’s changing really quick in fast food.”

To measure success at the drive-thru, all McDonald’s stores use timers on its sophisticated touch-screen registers that begin when an order is entered. The unit Farr works in also uses a timer hooked to loop detectors in the drive-thru. When a customer’s wheels stop, the timer begins. The timer is hooked to a display that changes colors from green to red when customers wait too long. “We like the visual,” Farr says. “We want to get out of the red”

The system, also by HM Electronics, records the times, so management can look at them by hour, daypart or day, and determine trends.

Chains and manufacturers are also working to speed up the drive-thru using timers integrated with POS systems; cameras; remote ordering, where order-takers talk with customers and input the order using voice over Internet protocol; payment using swipeless credit-card readers, key fobs and even fingerprints; and smart operating systems that tell how much food needs to be cooked based on the number of cars in the lane.

“We’re going to see more things developed to be faster,” Farr concludes. “We’ve got to stay ahead of the curve.”

Tim Horton’s uses digital signs at the drive-thru to entertain and inform customers while helping to sell specials. Read Signed and Delivered.