• Wendy's has the fastest drive-thru, study says

    Terry Gilliam / AP

    Full speed ahead. Wendy's drive-thru came in first in a survey of the fastest, fast-food restaurants.

    By Ben Popken, TODAY contributor
    Quick: you already wasted 10 minutes on your lunch break listening to Debby complain about her new neighbors and not only do you need to do fast food, you need the fastest fast food. Which restaurant do you pick?
     
    Go with Wendy's, says the 2012 QSR Drive-Thru Study, which ranked the chain's drive-thru the service the fastest at 129.75 seconds.
     
    Burger King came in last, with a whopping 201.33 seconds. Taco Bell got second place at 149.69, Bojangles' third at 171.61, Krystal fourth at 175.94, McDonald's fifth at 188.83, and Chick-fil-A sixth at 190.06.
     
    However, speed is not really the main measure driving customer satisfaction, Brian Baker, whose firm Insula Research conducts the study, told NBC News. Not anymore. "When drive-thru's first came along, we were very impressed," he said. "Now it's become what we expect."
     
    And it's about maintaining those expectations. So customers probably won't notice much if McDonald's shaves another millisecond off its overall average turnaround time, but they will notice if it starts to lag.
     
    The annually published survey armed secret researchers across the country with stopwatches and clipboards and sent them through the drive-thru's at the nations top quick service restaurants, performing 2,053 different visits and 4,071 time studies.
     
    The study critiqued six "benchmark chains" and one regional chain, on a battery of factors, including service time, order accuracy, speaker clarity, upselling, and customer service. Rankings are closely watched by the chains; each year before the results come out, "I get a lot of phone calls from chains asking 'How did we do? Anything we should know about?'" said Baker.
     
    For instance, It can be pretty annoying if they forget your fries or give you the wrong drink, so order accuracy is another key metric to check out. There, Wendy's came out on top again, followed by Chik-fil-A, Taco Bell, and Krystal.
     
    Grit your teeth every time you're asked "Do you want fries with that?" or "Would you like to add a hot apple pie to your order?" Then look for the drive-thru with the longest line. The study found the "suggestive selling" dropped from 37 percent of the time when there were 0-2 cars in line, to only 25 percent when there were six or more cars.
     
    For the friendliest service, go to Chick-fil-A. They ranked first in the "very friendly" quotient at 57.4 percent. Burger King, on the other other hand, had the highest amount of "Rude" service (although it was only 2.8 percent of the time).
     
    What's in store for the future of fast-food drive-thru as the arms race for who can flip their burgers and fries the fastest continues to heat up? Patties delivered to your iPhone? Waiters coming out to your car on hoverboards?
    Nothing so futuristic, said Baker. Instead, expect more chains to add lane-splitting to their drive thrus where cars go can go off in two different directions to make their order from one of two speakers, then remerge back into one lane for order pickup.
     

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  • Taco Bell jumps into the breakfast market

    AP

    This product image provided by Taco Bell Corp., shows Taco Bell's new Johnsonville sausage and egg wrap, one of the items the fast-food chain will be offering on its new breakfast menu which debuts Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012.

    By Marisa Taylor

    It's getting a little crowded in the breakfast nook.

    Fast food chain Taco Bell announced Thursday that it's entering the breakfast fray. It joins larger rivals such as McDonald's, Wendy's and Subway in a market saturated with breakfast options including specialty coffees to lure in addicts who’ll buy a breakfast sandwich along with that daily cup of joe.

    Irvine, Calif.-based Taco Bell, which is known for its low price points and late night hours, is introducing a breakfast menu at nearly 800 restaurants across 10 Western states, including California and Arizona.

    “This is a very important launch for our brand,” said Brian Niccol, Taco Bell’s chief marketing and innovation officer, in a statement. “While we're beginning in the West, where people grew up with breakfast burritos, we plan to reach a national audience in the future, becoming a part of their morning routine, and truly opening people's minds and taste buds as they begin to open their eyes and take on the day."

    Notably, Taco Bell’s breakfast offerings include well-known brands like Tropicana, Cinnabon, and Seattle’s Best Coffee, which may serve to alleviate customer concerns about food quality following a 2011 lawsuit in which the contents of Taco Bell’s beef were called into question. 

    “It helps with one of the issues that they need to content with, which is quality,” said David Morris, an analyst for consumer goods research firm Packaged Facts. “That’s a smart move.” 

    The chain plans to open its drive-through locations an hour earlier than normal for breakfast, generally around 8 a.m. or 9 a.m., and will offer breakfast until 11 a.m. It aims to roll out its breakfast menu on the East Coast in 2013, and will begin experimenting with offering breakfast foods during late-night hours in late 2012.

    Fast food breakfast has turned into one of the swiftest growing areas in the entire restaurant industry, and Taco Bell competitors like McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Subway have already successfully rolled out breakfast menus. A 2010 report from NPD Group found that breakfast accounted for 60 percent of the restaurant industry’s growth over the last five years, with breakfast traffic increasing by an average of 2 percent per year. Lunch traffic, was largely flat, while dinner traffic decreased by an average of 2 percent per year during the same five-year period. 

    Despite the already-crowded market for breakfast, Taco Bell’s low price points and its Mexican food-tinged variation on the traditional breakfast offering should serve it well in the battle over breakfast, experts say.

    “Taco Bell has done a great job at being an industry leader in that category,” said Darren Tristano, executive vice president of Technomic, a food and beverage industry research firm. “If you have a good coffee offering like many of the successful chains have, you can then provide a differentiated product because of the Mexican food offering.”

    He added, “Younger Americans, specifically millenials, are looking for not only spiciness at breakfast, but also the cheaper price point.”

    Taco Bell has some catching up to do, however. McDonald’s is already raking in a hefty 27 percent of its $33 billion in annual sales at breakfast, according to Tristano.

    It could serve as a slightly cheaper alternative to some of its competitors. Among Taco Bell’s new breakfast offerings are sausage or bacon and egg burritos for $1.49, grand skillet burritos for $2.79, and $3.99 combo meals containing a breakfast item with a drink and hash browns. That’s slightly less than breakfast combo meals elsewhere, which tend to approach $5 and up.

    Another plus for Taco Bell that stands to help it capture part of the breakfast market is its already-established drive-thru presence, as well as its decision to sell Seattle's Best Coffee, which Packaged Facts’ Morris says is one of the major reasons for the growth of sales in the breakfast category. “The magic of coffee is that it’s been one of the few products that people have been willing to pay more for both before the recession and after,” he said.

    Taco Bell later opening hours versus competitors could be a problem, though. “A coffee drinker is going to go elsewhere if they [Taco Bell] don’t open early enough,” Morris said. “They’ll need to contend with that in order to compete with more established limited-service breakfast players.”