John Cletheroe's
USA and Canada Holiday Hints
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Fast Food Restaurants in the USA and Canada - Trends
Many of the fast food chains in the USA and Canada went through a phase a few years ago of trying to be all things to all men (and to all women, and most especially to all children). They tended to offer many product lines very similar in concept to those of their rivals, presumably in a bid to avoid the problem of one member of a party objecting to them as a choice of venue because they didn't have what that person wanted. More recently this trend seems to have eased somewhat, as evidenced by the rapid growth over the last few years of the Mexican fast food specialist chains such as Taco Bell.
Another recent trend is the move to "Express" mini-restaurants in gas stations and department stores. Most of the fast food chains have taken this approach, but to my mind this "brand stretching" is more like "brand diluting" and probably counter-productive in the long term. These outlets often operate with minimum staffing and as a result service is frequently unacceptably slow.
All McDonald's restaurants used to be built to exactly the same design. Nowadays there is much more variation in the architecture. Most of the other fast food chains still maintain their consistent building designs, however.
In recent years most of the fast food chains have tied in large scale promotions with the release of children's films. This seems to be easing somewhat over the last two years, perhaps with the realisation of how much it alienates older customers.
An increasing problem with many fast food restaurants throughout the USA and Canada is extremely slow service. This is due to a combination of causes, including the following:
- Insufficient staff due to ill-advised cost cutting by management. Reducing costs by offering an inferior service leads to a vicious circle of decline.
- The employment by some chains of poor quality staff paid minimum rates, with many younger staff appearing to be in a permanent semi-zombie state, possibly due to tiredness, hangovers, drugs or excessive use of mobile phones.
- Priority being given to the drive-through instead of customers eating inside. As a result, the number of eat-in customers has greatly reduced in many fast food restaurants.
- Very lengthy negotiations between customers and staff over the purchase of promotional items such as Beanie Babies.
- Items having to be cooked to order since with a large menu range and fewer customers items cannot be cooked in advance and kept warm.
In an attempt to reduce delays, a couple of years ago McDonald's experimented with a single queue system, customers being given an order number and that number being announced when it was ready. Unfortunately this change didn't seem to make much positive effect in terms of overall speed of service, although it did have the very considerable benefit of the food always being served freshly cooked and hot. It seems to have been largely abandoned now in favour of the traditional system.
The problem of slow service is one that the fast food industry needs to address rapidly and radically. For a lesson in how to do fast food properly they should perhaps observe how In-N-Out Burger (most of whose locations are in central and southern California) operate.
One thing never changes though - McDonald's tills are still as awkward for their employees to use as ever.
Restaurants
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As with all the other pages on this personal web site, all the information on this page is solely the opinion of the author, who has no connection whatsoever with any of the companies and organisations mentioned other than as an actual or potential customer.
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Most recently modified 31-Mar-02