Food Theory: STOP Using the Drive-Thru!

Sir, this is a Wendy

MatPat is just speed running theories that include large quantities of fast food while he can still use lunch as a tax write off

I work in fast food and I can add some insight. I think the issue is not necessarily with comprehension [although there is some of that], it's with points of potential failure. Think of it like a tube. A long single tube can pass water through with only points of failure at either end. A segmented tube connected at regular intervals has many more points of failure at each connecting point on top of having the issue at both ends. Fast food places are similar. They usually have 3 people putting the food together for efficiency; One person toasting buns, one dressing the burger, one putting meat in the burger. One person cooking the meat, another entirely for chicken. One person putting together fries. Two or three people collecting the food and putting it in the bag. Usually staff are doing this in tandem with doing other jobs. Someone collecting drinks may be taking orders, or making ice cream/shakes. Another person who's working the line may need to leave to get out fries or other stock. As a result you have too many people interacting with an otherwise simple process with multiple different people acting as multiple points of failure. Lack of communication, unclear communication, tiredness from working inconsistent shift patterns and working on a hot grill/fry station all results in a recipe for failure. The easiest solution is to slow the process down by enforcing double checking at each stage to make sure things are correct. However, this would slow down the process which customers wouldnt be happy about and neither would the company as it would affect their bottom line. Through internal metrics workers are incentivised and business owners penalised for working slower, even if it ends up more accurate. There is a time limit on how long someone can be in a drive through, how long you should spend making an order and these time limits are reinforced with obfuscation of information. For example, if an order is off the screen - it is pending. Which if it goes to 6+ is stressful. rather than allowing employees see the orders and make the easier orders to get them out quicker, some businesses have intentionally sabotaged this information by only allowing 2 orders to appear on screen. This means that employees are completely unable to see a single cheese burger order because there are 2 orders ahead of it that may be 4+ items long. This same obfuscation applies for if an order is waiting for a specific ingredient. If you hold the order it blocks a slot of visibility. If you serve the order, you can no longer see what items were on the order unless you recall it which again blocks other orders.

The fast-food restaurants' "Chefs" You sir paid some major respect here.

This is a pretty solid video. However, an extremely important variable (im a fast food employee) that was not mentioned in this video is the fact that employees are on a TIMER for every single order. Corporate expects employees to get their drive-thru orders out around 3 minutes or less, any longer, and you're in the red zone. Now, 3 minutes is doable for sure, but when Suzy Q comes and orders 5 combos for her family, all with modifications, employees are going to rush to get the order out on time. Rushing is where the mistakes really come in. It's hard to make food quicky while reading an order that takes up an entire screen with modifications all in tiny, unorganized fonts. Because of this, it's incredibly easy to miss a modification. Personally, I despise the timer system because it expects employees to work under pressure while maintaining the highest quality, no matter how complicated the order may be. I honestly wouldn't mind waiting 5 minutes if my food came out correctly, but corporations see that as a huge nono.

I don't really eat fast food anymore but I always used to just check the contents of the bag before driving away from the window. There's no law that says you have to leave immediately.

Ever since the kiosks were introduced, I've only used them when ordering fast food. We have them in McDonald's (obviously), our local fast food chain Hesburger and a few other chains. They're great!

I work at a fast food restaurant, orders are always wrong because we’re in such a rush to get things out quickly, we basically get punished for double checking. Corporate wants no mistakes but puts more pressure on the bosses of the stores to get their drive through times better, and less about order accuracy. At my restaurant they want from the moment the customer enters the drive through, orders and leaves to take under 2:30… which is near impossible

Ex burgerking worker here. I remember in our establishment we had this big TV that displayed every burgerking in the entire country, and we were all competing against each other on who had the fastest drive thru, counter service, etc. We all ended up making dumb mistakes even duringquiet hours just because we were the fastest restaurant in the competition and didn't wanna lose our lead. The customers were getting their orders wrong just because the workers were doing a race. (I think it was a trip abroad or something for the fastest restaurant)

As a worker at a McDonald's a huge part of the incorrect orders is the pressure placed on us by corporate to stay under a certain time limit, as well as having to deal with kiosk, mobile, door dash, front counter, and parked orders all at once.

i’ve always used the kiosks because i hate talking to people and i can’t bother with telling them every customisation, and theres only been one mistake so far, when i was ordering with friends. never rlly understood why people were complaining until now

In the UK, McDonald’s orders should be more accurate in the drive through as there should be a “checker”, but a lot of the time this is the first position to be dismissed when there’s not enough staff

As a fast food worker there are a few things I've noticed, firstly a lot of places are reducing the amount of workers on the floor. This means that there is more stress on those in the building, even our drive through often only has one person working it, both taking orders and tendering them out. Second, a lot of people are just trained on it for a couple days, and left to do it on their own with almost no supervision, again because there is less workers on the floor. A lot of times its the newer employees making the mistakes, and a lot of new employees haven't always had the greatest work ethic, and so just get cycled through like crazy. Sometimes its almost twice a week I see new names on the schedule, and within a few weeks they're gone, oftentimes without me having ever even seen them. Basically its just a constant flow of the above issues. :\

That "6 MatPat theories remain" is scarier than all FNaF jumpscares combined

I worked at McDonald's in the 80's. I was a team leader for the drive through. We had the fastest drive through in the state. Our lunch rush window timer was never more than 20 seconds and we never "parked" anyone. Most orders were complete in less than a minute, from pull up to the speaker to departure. In any given week, we would have one or maybe two errors at the drive through. So what was different? First, we all made 150% of minimum wage. Second, we had food ready to serve, in the warmer bin. Food wasn't made to order. It was still fresh, because anything more than 10 minutes old got discarded. We were very good at anticipating demand and having popular items ready to go. Third, the ordering culture has changed. It was rare to get custom orders back then. Now, everyone wants it their way. Fourth, we all spoke English. There was no communication breakdown.

the automated kiosks are the main reason for me to go to a fast food place like this. no stress, no social interaction and also allways knowing how much it will cost and what seasonal special they currently have.

5:17 That was 100% some employee thinking "I don't get paid enough for this." And bitterly just chucked that together to spite whoever ordered it.

I work at an Arby’s and I can say for a fact that it’s not that getting the orders right everytime is hard to do. It’s just that everybody is simultaneously doing 50 things at once because if you don’t the manager will call u lazy and tell you to get your sh-t together. Not only or are you a server but you’re also the dishwasher, the janitor, the sandwich maker, the person at the fry station while you’re taking orders and send them out. Loved the video btw❤

If you've never worked this type of job, then you have no idea how difficult it actually is. It's an INCREDIBLE convenience to just be able to sit in your car, drive around a building, and within a few minutes have a meal prepared for you, and given to you through a window. For the convenience, you have to accept that it will often be wrong...whenever you make something more convenient on one side (customer), you're making it that much less convenient and difficult on the other side (workers). By definition, more speed will=less accuracy. Imagine at your job, if your boss made you rush and do it as fast as you possibly can, all the time..how many mistakes would you make?

I really wish Mat would've spoken about "drive-through time goals." I'm pretty sure every "fast food" establishment has them, which is most likely the reason orders are wrong or improperly made. Speaking from years of experience in fast food, these time goals are usually set way too low. For example, Taco Bell has a 3:30 or under "time goal," which yes, keeps the drive-thru moving quickly. However, it causes massive strain on the employees to get orders out in that time and is also 100% accurate every time. Although it is not impossible, it can be extremely difficult to do so if you don't cut some corners. For example, at Taco Bell, each and every tortilla used for an order needs to be heated for at least 5–10 seconds. For smaller orders, this isn't too troublesome. Also, we aren't supposed to stack two or more tortillas on top of each other to save time, since both sides of each tortilla should be equally warm. We pretty much have to disregard that "rule" if they want us to reach that goal. Also, each crunch wrap and quesadilla we make. The tortilla has to be warmed for 5–10 seconds, put together (quesadillas must be steamed, which takes about another 5–10 seconds), and finally thrown on the grill. Which has a 17-second timer that you have to wait for. As you can probably see by now, for larger orders, that 3:30 seconds runs out quick, just on mandated time allotment for certain food items. Also, keep in mind that the people making your food have to read from a usually very clustered screen. With not only your food and your modifications to it, but the next person's order as well. These screens that we read from are usually small enough to fit comfortably in front of us without disrupting our workflow. Which comes with a few caveats, like a relatively small font and an even smaller font underneath that shows your modifications. The modifications (at least for Taco Bell) are color-coded. Either RED for something removed or GREEN for something added. A lot of the time, we're staring at a Christmas tree of an order, trying to make sense of it all while also making the food, rushing to hit a time goal that was set for us by people that aren't even in the building. Heck, they barely ever even visit to get any sort of real feedback from their employees. Let me get back on topic. Let's say you order a party pack of 12 tacos, which is probably one of our best deals. Each of those 12 tortillas needs to be warmed up for at least 5–10 seconds; it should be closer to 10 since I'm guessing you want at least warm food. So, 12 times 10 seconds would be, if my math is mathing, 120 seconds (2 minutes). Plus, don't forget we still have to put the food in the tacos and wrap each one properly. Let's say decent line work can make a regular taco start to finish in about 10–20 seconds. Again, this is on top of the time already spent just to warm up the tortillas. Which again is 2 minutes if you are doing it by the book. Let's say it takes 15 seconds on average to finish each taco, which is 15 seconds times 12 = 180 seconds, or 3 minutes. So adding that all up for that one party pack of 12 regular tacos is 2 minutes for the warm-up plus approximately 3 minutes to actually make and wrap the taco. You get... About 5 minutes, if we are doing it by the book. Obviously, some workers are faster than others. For the average employee trying to do their job 100% accurately, according to the book, that 3:30 time goal is pretty much impossible if we don't cut corners by stacking tortillas or by pulling things off the grill a few seconds early. Remember, that was just for that one party pack? People can and will order more on top of that sometimes, which makes that time goal even harder to achieve. So please, when you're at a drive-thru, be patient. We are trying our best, or at least the ones of us who actually care about the service we provide for you. Also, when we hand you your order, please pull up to a parking space to check your food if something is wrong. Please, come in. As long as you keep your receipt, we have to fix whatever mistake was made. If you sit at the drive-thru window, the sensor that tracks cars and our times is still being tripped by your car, and our times will continue to go up if you do not move. There have been countless times where we serve food under 3:30, but people decide to check their bags at the window, which causes us to cross that 3:30 threshold. That one car may be the decider between a 3:30 or a 3:31 day, which not only looks bad on us but could get us reprimanded, or even worse, fired. Even if we weren't the actual reason for that happening, that is what it looks like to the higher-ups, who just look at the numbers and aren't actually in the store witnessing what is happening with each order. Anyway, if anyone actually reads all of this, I really appreciate you, and I hope you have a fantastic life. I also hope this puts "fast food" into perspective for you. It's so stressful knowing one car could potentially be the reason you are fired or reprimanded. So please be patient with us, because we have to be patient with you. Much love; peace out.