The Fast Food Drive-Thru Change That Has Customers Fed Up

Ziga Plahutar/Getty Images

Whether you're in a rush, in the mood for some late night bites, or simply picking up dinner on the way home from work, the drive-thru at your favorite fast food joint always comes in clutch. But, as you may have noticed, the experience isn't quite what it used to be back in the days when you were in the backseat. Some updates, like AI advancements that show how fast drive-thru ordering could be, have improved things. But another change has many drive-thru customers miffed and just seems to make the process more tedious and confusing.

We are, of course, talking about the practice of pulling up to the second window or parking elsewhere after you've placed your order to wait for your food. As a frustrated customer bemoaned on Reddit, "Lived experience. McDonald's, Burger King, Bojangles, Arby's all make you pull up, or to a designated parking space once you pay and get to the window to receive your food. This doesn't make it go any faster. It just lets them manipulate the clock they have on the window." Their post was met with a chorus of similar complaints, with another commenter adding, "I still don't get it. Moving the end point of the line doesn't make it any faster to get through. Why can't we just wait at the window?" It turns out that this somewhat annoying policy might be all about efficiency — or, at least, the appearance of it.

Manassanant Pamai/Getty Images

The second-window request may make sense in some instances, like if you have a larger, more time-consuming order or if the line of cars starts winding into the street. However, according to some folks, the main reason fast food employees ask you to pull up at the drive-thru lately is that it improves their metrics. With the corporate entities of chain restaurants paying attention to efficiency data, it's on the often short-staffed fast food outposts to pump out impressive numbers. Many drive-thrus now feature sensors that time how fast employees are able to get cars moving — ostensibly, with their orders in hand, though that may not always be the case.

A Redditor who claimed to have experience in the fast food industry weighed in on the subject. "I ran a KFC for a number of years and I can tell you at that time Speed of Service was a metric that our particular franchisee gave bonuses for. The timer started when someone got to the box and ended when they left the window, so it wasn't unheard of to have customers pull forward just to simulate a faster experience," they explained.

As other former and current employees at fast food eateries have corroborated that claim on multiple platforms, including like TikTok (where one worker was seen hitting the drive-thru platform with a piece of wood). Drive-thru metrics are used to judge how well staff at these locations are performing, which puts pressure on them to keep you moving, even if your food isn't ready yet.