After six long years of endlessly long waits, McDonald’s finally got the message from customers and had made a significant announcement. On Monday, McDonald’s announced that they planned to invest millions of dollars, in an effort to encourage their franchisees to step up up their game when it comes to the drive-thrus.
This recent announcement comes on the heels of their previous statement in March. In a reportedly $300 million deal, the world-famous food franchise acquired Dynamic Yield. With the acquisition, the plan is to add AI capabilities to their drive-thrus.
As anyone who has been to their local restaurant, the wait times at their drive-thru keeps getting longer and longer. Because customers keep commenting on the long wait times, Mickey D’s is now investing millions of dollars in an attempt to reverse this ever-increasing trends.
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In its annual study on Drive-Thru Performance, QSR stated that drive-thru times across the industry as a whole had increased as much as 20 seconds. This parlayed into most customers seeing a wait time from speaker to order window of 255 seconds.
When comparing last year’s drive-thru times to those measured in this year’s study, the average time spent in a McDonald’s drive-thru was 284 seconds—almost a whole five minutes—having gone up an estimated 11 seconds over last years reported times.
McDonald’s corporate is encouraging that those franchises with only one lane, to consider opening a second lane, commonly referred to as tandem lanes. In previous years, for the franchises to quality for a tandem lane, they were required to clock 90 vehicles during their peak hours. Under the new program, corporate has lowered the number to 70 cars during peak hours.
Although McDonald’s has announced the specifics of the new plans, the commitment letter as well ad implementation details have not as of yet been finalized, or sent out to the franchises.