For the owner or manager of a quick service restaurant, your drive-thru is your lifeline, because that’s typically where upwards of two-thirds of your revenue comes from. 
Any lack of efficiency will slow down your throughput and have an immediate and negative effect on your bottom line. A breakdown will not only completely throttle your most important revenue flow, but it will essentially force your otherwise loyal customers to visit the competition. So, it’s important to keep both the human and mechanical parts of this most important system running properly.
Basic Maintenance. Your drive-thru equipment is tough because it was specifically designed to work outdoors in all weather. If you are using them, speaker posts and headsets can be particularly problematic. It’s vital that these critical components be up to their purpose because if you can’t understand your customer, it’s pretty hard to sell him anything. The maintenance these devices require isn’t difficult or time-consuming, but neglecting to do it will cause problems.
Assign you’re A-Team to the drive-thru. The most critical part of your operation needs your best employees. Choose employees who always keep cool and get along well as group and make them the core of your all-star team.
You’ve got to encourage electronic payments, such as credit and debit cards because it’s so much faster than handling cash. To speed it up a bit further, you can integrate an order confirmation board directly to your POS system to eliminate the hassles caused by miscommunications between your customers and staff.
The mobile revolution is well underway, so consider investing in the technology to accept payments via your customers’ smartphones. And, there are many, many pathways to enable your menu to appear on your customers’ smartphones, and they can complete the entire ordering process, from perusing the menu to payment before they’ve even entered your drive-thru. And better yet, there are no interactions with staff other than picking up their meal.
If you do decide to get deeply into digital, a side benefit will be a large influx of Gen Z customers. Members of that age group basically live on their smartphones, and that’s the way they prefer to buy things – including meals.
Origin Display Group | originmenuboards.com | origindigitalsignage.com | 888-235-2579
Gary Elinoff
