McDonald’s Adding A Third Window To Drive-Thru To Push Orders Through Faster

McDonald’s reputation as the slow, lumbering fast food dinosaur who’s nowhere near the lead in the drive-thru race is apparently bothering it enough to redesign its ordering system. Instead of the usual two windows — one for ordering, one for pick-up — there will now be a third window to send cars to if their orders are clogging up the works.

It even has a fancy name: The Fast Forward Drive-Thru. It’ll start showing up in new and rebuilt Mickey D’s next year reports Bloomberg.

“It enables customers to pull forward to receive orders at a third window when their order is not yet ready,” a spokeswoman said. It “will enable us to better serve more customers quickly.”

Getting people through the line quickly is a major thing for McDonald’s as 70% of its sales are generated by drive-thru orders. The more people you can scoot through that line, the more money there is to be made.

It seems it could work, as one franchisee added a third window to one of his seven locations and says he saw service speed up. He’s planning on adding a third window to an additional store next year.

“The slowest function is delivering the food,” he said. With the third window, “we’ve been able to more quickly take care of our guests.”

As always, the more complicated the order is, the longer time it will take to get you your food. So if you want it really fast, keep it simple. Or just be patient.

Third Window a Charm as McDonald’s Patrons Twitter Grief [Bloomberg]

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