Waiting in the drive-thru lane at a fast-food eatery is on nobody’s daily to-do list.
But it's the price people pay for a burger and a shake when their schedules are too tight for a leisurely in-house dining experience.
Just as sure, fast-food customers likely don’t break out their stopwatches to check the minutes spent in the drive-thru lane.
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That’s OK, since one industry analyst is doing the job for them.
The 2023 Quick-Serve-Restaurant Drive-Thru Report by QSR Magazine shines a hot oven light on the time it takes to order, pay and receive orders via the drive-thru windows at eateries like McDonalds, Chick-fil-A, Taco Bell, and Burger King (QSR) -), among many others.
Driving 25 times through a new high-end Defy Taco Bell in Brooklyn, Minn., a McDonald’s (MCD) -) in Fort Worth, Texas, and a Chick-fil-A in Alpharetta, Ga., QSR compared fast-food-delivery wait times.
The mobile-friendly high-tech Taco Bell location did what it’s designed to do, getting customers through the drive-thru lane in fairly record time.
“In the 25 trips, the average Taco Bell wait time (from arrival to order) for mystery shoppers was 24.24 seconds,” QSR reported. “The service time (from order taken to order received) was 151.96 seconds. The total time was 176.20 seconds,” or less than three minutes.
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Compare that with the McDonald’s location, which sported a total customer waiting time of 315.8 seconds, more than five minutes, and the Chick-fil-A location, which tracked 310.76 seconds.
A broader look at fast-food drive-thru times
Pulling back the lens further, QSR also took an expanded look at all the major fast-food chain restaurants to see which had the fastest and slowest drive-thru wait times.
Its 2023 QSR Drive-Thru Report speed-of-service category lists Taco Bell (YUM) -) as the fastest, with customers waiting an average of 205.3 seconds, with Wendy’s (WEN) -) in second place with an average wait time of 229.9 seconds and Yum's KFC in third-place at 230 seconds.
Chick-fil-A has the longest total drive-thru wait times, with an average wait of 312.3 seconds. That’s behind the next slowest fast-food drive-thru wait time of 295.5 seconds, at the Hardee’s chain of closely held CKE Restaurants.
On the upside, the industry is getting much faster in getting meals to auto-bound consumers.
“The overall total time in the industry this year was 29 seconds faster than 2022 at 5 minutes and 43 seconds," QSR reported.
There’s also an interesting wrinkle to Chick-fil-A listed as the fast-food chain with the longest drive-thru waiting experience. Customers don’t seem to mind.
“As usual, there are a few levers at work,” QSR stated. “Chick-fil-A takes a guest’s order via tablet in-line and then conducts hospitality checks throughout the process. So from a perception standpoint, customers don’t feel unattended to or like they’re stagnating, despite how lengthy the line might get.”
“The other, less nuanced fact is Chick-fil-A simply has a lot more cars stacked than the rest of the industry,” QSR noted.
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