Work/Operations
Reducing drive-thru service times
McDonald's Pakistan wanted faster drive-thru service. The delay was not in the kitchen. Customers were spending too long at the menu board because it was not organised around what people actually ordered at that hour.
- Organisation
- McDonald's
- Region
- Pakistan, 70+ outlets
- Period
- 2018 to 2021
- Focus
- Demand forecasting, assortment design
Context
Drive-thru service times were running above target across the market. Operations had already reviewed kitchen throughput and staffing without finding the cause.
The time was going into ordering. Customers were reading a standing menu board that showed the same items in the same order all day, regardless of what people were likely to want at that point.
Mandate
Find the real constraint on drive-thru service time and address it without adding cost or headcount.
Approach
I analysed item-level order data across more than 70 outlets, split by time of day. This showed clear differences between what sold at breakfast, at lunch and late at night, and it showed how far the standing menu layout had drifted from those patterns.
I then forecast item-level demand for each daypart and used the forecasts to restructure the drive-thru assortment, so that the orders customers were most likely to place were the easiest to find.
The same forecasting work was passed to the supply chain team, who used it for stock and wastage planning.
Outcome
Average drive-thru service time fell by 40 seconds.
The demand forecasting also helped the supply chain team reduce average monthly wastage cost by 2%.