The burrito is wrapped so that it can be easily opened at the optimal consumption point Bryce Duffy
By Karl Taro Greenfeld(Corrects spelling of Blair Chancey's name.)
It must always be, "Hi, how are you today?" Never, "Hi, how are you?" "Hi, how's it going?" or "Welcome to Taco Bell." Never, "What will it be today?" or, even worse, "What do you want?" Every Taco Bell Service Champion memorizes the order script before his first shift. The folks who work the drive-thru windows at the Taco Bell here in Tustin, Calif., about 35 miles south of Los Angeles, and everywhere else, are called Service Champions. Those who work the food production line are called Food Champions.
You think you know it—"Hi, how are you today?" It seems easy enough. And you follow that with, "You can order when you're ready," never "Can I take your order?" The latter puts pressure on the driver, who might be a distracted teenager busy texting her BFF or a soccer mom with a half-dozen kids in the van. "They don't need the additional pressure of a disembodied voice demanding to know their order," explains Mike Harkins. Harkins, 49, is vice-president of One System Operations for Taco Bell (YUM), which means he spends all day, every day, thinking about the kitchen and the drive-thru.
He has been prepping me for my debut at the window. Getting ready, I wash my hands, scrubbing for the mandated 20 seconds; slide on rubber gloves; and don the three-channel headset that connects me to the ordering station out in the lot, as well as to my fellow Champions. I take my place at the window. I hear the ding indicating a customer has pulled into the loop around the restaurant, and I immediately ask, "Hi, how's it going?"
It gets worse from there. As a Service Champion, my job is to say my lines, input the order into the proprietary point of sale (POS) system, prepare and make drinks like Limeade Sparklers and Frutista Freezes, collect bills or credit cards, and make change. I input Beefy Crunch Burritos, Volcano Burritos, Chalupas, and Gorditas. My biggest worry is that someone will order a Crunchwrap Supreme, a fast-food marvel made up of two kinds of tortillas, beef, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, and sauces, all scooped, folded, and assembled into a hand-held, multiple-food-group package, which then gets grilled for 27 seconds. An order for a Crunchwrap Supreme, the most complex item on the menu, sometimes requires the Service Champion to take up position on the food production line to complete it in anything like the 164 seconds that Taco Bell averages for each customer, from driving up to the ordering station to pulling away from the pick-up window.
Drive-thru is the operational heart of the fast-food industry, as central to a brand like Taco Bell as the kitchen itself, maybe more so. According to the National Restaurant Assn., the fast-food industry will do $168 billion in sales for 2011, and about 70 percent of that will come in through drive-thru windows. The technology deployed at order stations and pick-up windows has evolved to meet that demand. Every step is measured, every movement calculated, every word scripted. Taco Bell, with more than 5,600 locations in the U.S., currently operates some of the fastest and most accurate drive-thru windows in the industry, at least according to QSR magazine's last survey, in 2009, though for years they lagged. The system is the result of a 15-year-plus focus on the window as the core of the business. Taco Bell's pride in moving from the bottom of the pack to near the top is also part of the reason it allowed a journalist, unsupervised by public relations staff, to work the line.
Above me on the wall, a flat-screen display shows the average time of the last five cars at either the order station or the pick-up window, depending on which is slowest. If the number is red, as it is now, that means one, or both, of the waits is exceeding 50 seconds, the target during peak periods. It now shows 53 seconds, on its way to 60, 70 ... and then I stop looking. The high-pitched ding that announces each new customer becomes steady, unrelenting, and dispiriting—85 cars will roll through over the peak lunch rush. And I keep blowing the order script.
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