Fast Food order taking

[Frank Drew]

Wendy's has started to replace the order takers in the drive through with a call center.

Oh, great, now even more people making phone calls while driving .

[Orion Henderson]

That would be the next step then-calling (or e-mailing, texting, etc) in the order before you get to Wendy's. This would work particularly well with McD's as you would be hard pressed to find someone who goes there ever and doesn't know exactly what they want without looking at the menu.

[Matt Meiser]

That would be the next step then-calling (or e-mailing, texting, etc) in the order before you get to Wendy's. This would work particularly well with McD's as you would be hard pressed to find someone who goes there ever and doesn't know exactly what they want without looking at the menu.

Chipotle already has an app for that.
http://itunes.apple.com/app/chipotle...327228455?mt=8

[Eric Pitts]

McDonald's has been doing this since around 2006 and what I can find online, it has been very successful. From what I can find, all of Hawaii is using that now.

http://consumerist.com/2008/06/mcdon...opularity.html

The big benefit of doing this for the restaurant is that people taking the orders are trained in suggestive selling so they sell more and they have a higher level of customer service. They can also have one person during slow times take orders for multiple restaurants.

It's definitely not all of Hawaii. It would be nice if it was. Sometimes I just give up and take what they give me.

[Ruhi Arslan]

Originally Posted by Mark Bolton
I agree 100%. We avoid home centers if at all possible but one day I had to pick something up at HD and got in an argument with the manager there as I was standing in the contractor line with maybe 1-2 people in front of me and she wanted to "teach me" how to check out myself using the automated deals. I told her unless HD is going to give me a 15% cash discount at the time of checkout for saving them a cashier's salary, insurance, vacation time, and so on, I am going to keep supporting a paid employee. She didnt like this at all and really took an attitude with me.

I hope you reported the incident to corporate.

So she can get promoted faster for pushing the corporate agenda...

... I have noticed a nice trend recently though. I'm seeing more and more older people, who actually seem to give a rat's patootie, work fast food counters recently.

I'm sure those nice old folks who give a rat's patootie [sic] working at "fast food" junk dispensers to bring some "civility" to the society not just because they cannot pay their prescriptions and their utility bills anymore with their pensions.

... rather than the young woman with the three inch fake nails, that never smiles, is slower than a tortoise, and speaks in some form of corrupted English that I can't understand. "Uona makedata medjium?" took me a bit to figure out!

This one deserves a big WOW!

[Belinda Barfield]

I'm sure those nice old folks who give a rat's patootie [sic] working at "fast food" junk dispensers to bring some "civility" to the society not just because they cannot pay their prescriptions and their utility bills anymore with their pensions.

Just for the record, Ruhi, please note that I said "older" not old. While I have noticed some nice "old folks", some of whom are certainly working to pay their utility bills, the older people I have interacted with are in their late 20s to early 30s. The majority of fast food employees in my area are in their late teens.

My comment regarding "corrupted English" also needs clarification. The young lady I referred to speaks English as her first language, she just chooses not to enunciate and runs all of her words together in a common form of butchering the language that is prevalent throughout the south. Many people have difficulty understanding was passes for English in the south. I know because I speak fluent "Southern".

[Gary Max]

Shoot---- I havn't ate fast food in years--- that stuff will kill you.
How's that for different???????????
Oh----- one of the side effects of getting older---- you want to get even older

[Bill Edwards(2)]

app2.jpg app1.jpg

[Zach England]

You probably have a higher chance of getting someone fluent in English.

Note: this is an observation and should in no way be construed as anything more.

I don't think I have eaten fast food in 15 years, and I am not that old.

[Zach England]

I don't know, it could work better if the order taker isn't in the store. They aren't trying to juggle taking orders, taking money, and gathering and handing out food. They'd just have one job. And they are communicating with the customer remotely anyway so what does it matter if they are 40' away on the other side of a brick wall or 400 miles away in a comfortable, quiet call center? I can see some problems, like if the shake machine is broken that has to be communicated to the call center instead of yelling to the drive thru worker. Of course the next step will be to put them in India.

I like those self checkouts unless I'm buying alcohol in which case sirens, bells and lights, start going off, the doors lock, and I'm pretty sure I saw the swat team go by one time. And they only give me an attitude if I remove the item from the bagging area. But the lines are shorter--maybe because a lot of people don't like them?

This happened to me while buying super glue from a grocery store. Apparently you have to be over a certain age to purchase it.

[Brian Elfert]

Oh, great, now even more people making phone calls while driving .

The customer isn't making a phone call. The speaker at the drive thru goes to a call center instead of a worker inside the store. The call center employee enters your order into a computer and the order pops up at the store.

[Orion Henderson]

Shoot---- I havn't ate fast food in years--- that stuff will kill you.
How's that for different???????????
Oh----- one of the side effects of getting older---- you want to get even older

As my Dad so eloquently said: "Which is better; the first cookie in the box or the last cookie in the box?"