How can a fast food restaurant improve its "order accuracy"?

Question

I'm a shift manager at a White Castle and I'm supposed to come up with a creative way to improve our order accuracy. Can you guys help me? Thanx in advance and any ideas will be appreciated.

Answer 1

Require all employees to be literate. If they are not, assign them to mopping floors and taking out trash.

Answer 2

A McDonalds Franchise owner who had quite a few restaurants had a brilliant idea. He has a call center in Colorado. Each of his restaurants takes a digital photo of the customer and sneds it to Colorado, and the call center takes the order through the squak box. To insure the food matches the customer, the call center digitially transmits back to the restaurant the picture and the order. This way, when the customer drives up to the window to get their food, the worker can validate their giving the food to the right person with a look at the picture they have in hand. As the customer drives away, they drop the picture into a shredder.

I'm sure this model will soon be pushed to India instead of Colorado. After all, if quality can go up an costs come down, it must be a good idea. Ah yeah. Well, I'm not to keen on offshoring but it is the wave. The cool thing about the call center is you can have people that speak different languages so when you need other languages, you could route the call to a person equipped to converse with the customer. This too will help accuracy.

Answer 3

Never ate at a White Castle but the biggest way is to not make any mistakes with the order to begin with. If someone says no onions, hold the onions. If they order a small drink, give them a small drink. If they ask for extra ketchup, give them extra ketchup.

Also, what I was trained to do when I worked at McDonald's was to repeat the order back to the customer to verify the order. I very rarely get this but do ask occassionally with more complicated orders (I get strange looks). But one of the best ways to get order accuracy is to repeat the order back and that way mistakes are caught before they are made.

Answer 4

simple either get smarter employees or smarter customers and b4 anyone starts screaming at me how many people who have worked in a drive-thru have heard people say its to go!

At Arby`s we had too repeat the order back to the customer but at Tim Hortons emphasis is on speed of service more than accuracy, But if I`m not sure of an order i will repeat it back too the customer!

Paying more doesn't always work where i work we pay $2 above the minimum wage + full benefits and we still cant get anyone! We also have winters down too -50C though!

Answer 5

We all make mistakes and as fast as you expect the workers to work you can't expect them to remember everything. Fast food does not pay enough to keep employees for a long while who will know what they are doing and to do it well. Pay factor is probable a big thing. They have to deal with a lot of different speaking people and I don't think that will ever be perfect. Your probable expecting to much. You can't expect fast and perfect.

Answer 6

Have every order taker repeat the order back to the customer. I would, as a customer, appreciate it more if I had to give the order twice than spend twice as much time in line trying to exchange food because my order was incorrect.

Answer 7

ok I hate it when this happens because I feel like I have to eat it or wait for a new meal. I think you should make the cook read it out loud (I reckon it sticks in your head) and the waitress before serving it has to tick everything off on the order form before serving the meal.

Answer 8

Do that thing where when the person says their order it comes up on the screen with the price next to it. Then if the order is wrong they can correct you and it will save you time.

Answer 9

DO a double check one just before it's made and one before it"s served or delivered.

Answer 10

repeating the order and not like a robot either..