Sunday, January 11, 2009

fast-food


Nice chicken


I am sure almost everybody patronised KFC for dinner before, and many would have the frustrating experience of waiting for a long time to order and collect their food. I went to KFC to takeaway dinner for my family today, and experienced this problem. McDonalds' then came to my mind. They used to have this system too, where the cashier have to double up to serve the customers food. This system is still effective at non-peak hours, where the crowd is not as large, and customers need not endure a long waiting time to get their food. But during peak hours like dinnertime, the plethora of customers would overwhelm the paucity of workers, leading to longer waiting time. Some workers might even panic and commit mistakes, like dropping the food or shortchanging the customer, which would not be good for the company. The former did happen to me

Evidently, their supply chain is failing them. For a start, they could adopt McDonalds' approach, where there is a cashier, and another co-worker packing the food for the customers. This could reduce the waiting time to make an order. The McDonalds' system do have some flaws. The supply of burgers to the worker packing the food is slower than the worker packing the food, hence resulting in a delay. This problem might not happen with KFC, where the workers would just pick up the fried chicken/burger/whatever from this heating shelf. This is a system where KFC can implement to better effect than McDonalds'.

Why is the shortening of queue time important to McDonalds', KFC or any fast food chain? They are labelled fast-food restaurants, and literally, are expected to deliver their food fast(but thats not the case). Decreasing the queue time could net potential customers, who were possibly put off by the long time spent queuing and as a result not patronising.

This is not a full-proof solution for the long queue time at fast-food outlets. Additional points to consider would be the pool of workers to carry out the suggested system, and the infrastructure in place in these restaurants, and the cost of implementing these 2 points. But the benefit of a better dining experience for customers and higher revenue for the firm would outweigh the cost. Customers would take some time to get use to any new system, as evident in the case of McDonalds'.

iduntellu at 8:47 PM

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