Comment by tracker1
6 months ago
I kind of like the approach that, I think it was Wendy's tried... which was having better trained, centralized order takers at computers to handle multiple drive-throughs at once. A well-versed, clear spoken, native language speaker with good menu/product knowledge taking orders for 3-4 locations as a sole task is imo a much better option.
Of course, the Wendy's nearest me seems to get something wrong with my order every single time. It's not the order taker either, the receipt is always what I ordered, just the person making it or otherwise getting it together just fails in one way or another.
On the plus side, between the disappointment and increased pricing, I now get fast food maybe once a month. The cost used to be roughly a wash between buying something at the store and making it myself... that's not nearly the case anymore. And while store pricing has gone up a lot, most of the most massive spikes in prices are junk foods I'm less inclined to keep in the house. win-win.
Is that even necessary? Is their menu so large that you can't just have a menu with a push-button next to each item?
Are fast food companies so mentally locked-in to replicating the old model of verbal order-taking that they can't see how cheap, fast, easy and accurate it would be to switch to photos and buttons?
We all manage to use a soda fountain, without needing a person (or AI) to take our drink order... and use vending machines.
Have you ever used a drive through? Yes, most fast food menus are too large for that to be a practical experience from inside a vehicle.
Orders are very complicated, far too complicated for buttons. Remember everything is customizable down to individual pieces or ingredients.
The reality is human are just very fast. A good fast food order taker can processes complex orders almost instantly. The muscle memory developed on the POS is very real.
> Is their menu so large that you can't just have a menu with a push-button next to each item?
Items can be modified, and there's not enough buttons for every combination.