Your worth as a store/ an employee is not only tied to drive times.

Also compare your labor and customer connections.

Drive times only tell part of the story.

Found it here you go:

I work at a drive thru only store.

Drive thru is very centered on speed. My DM and SM and shifts are extremely worried about our drive thru times. There are two times to worry about, one way more than the other. The first is the time it takes to order. We are much less worried about this time because there are too many variables to consider such as customers making big orders, customers not having any idea what they want, customers asking questions, etc. The second is the time it takes from the moment the customer pulls up to the window to the moment they leave with his or her order. This time is extremely important. At my store we have a goal to keep it at 48 seconds or under. We usually average 41-42 and lead our district (but we SHOULD, after all we are drive thru only).

On weekends especially the times get closer to 48 to 52 seconds because it’s not as busy and when it is everyone and their daughter wants to order Frappuccinos.

You should have a drive thru display screen. The times will go from green to yellow to red depending on the wait. You generally want both the ordering time and window time to be in the green.

On drive thru one thing you have to learn to do is stall. Again, a customer ordering can be a while that’s fine. But a customer waiting over a minute at the window waiting for that spinach feta wrap to be warmed is not fine. Trust me whether they know it or not, psychologically speaking, a customer would much rather be waiting at the order screen to have their order confirmed than at the window to wait for their actual order.

Therefore at my store we do things like this:

Customer: Give me a caramel macchiato and a bacon Gouda sandwich. Me: One moment on that bacon Gouda, I’m just going to have someone check the fridge to make sure we have one. Is that caramel macchiato hot or iced, and what size is it? Customer: okay. Let me get it iced and medium. Me: okay great! One grande iced caramel macchiato. And it looks like we do have that bacon Gouda and we are heating it up for you right now! Would you like anything else today? Customer: no that’ll be it. Me: wonderful. One grande iced caramel Macchiato and one bacon gouda. Your total will be xx.xx.

I always repeat the whole order at the end with the price. It buys those extra precious few seconds and prepares the customer for their payment so that with hope they aren’t fumbling around or asking how much it is. That stalling buys you those ten to fifteen seconds for a partner to open the fridge, take out the sandwich, put it on the warming sheet, and throw it in the oven.

We do a lot of other things to stall or anticipate. If a customer is rattling off drinks or tells me they need a moment before they order, I do my best to ask, “will you be having anything to eat today?”. When someone orders food and I tell them I’m going to have someone look for it I will often add, “will there be any other food for the car while we look for this sandwich?” I’ve even done a full on scene where I have said “looks like we don’t have any tomato and mozzarella paninis in our front fridge but let me please check the back fridge quickly for you” cut to five seconds later: “brandon do we have it?” Brandon: “yes, Ben we got it” meanwhile Brandon pulled the panini out of the wrapper making sure to keep the barcode intact, threw the wrapper with the barcode to me to have it ready to scan, put the panini on a warming sheet and in the oven, and the things already been cooking for fifteen seconds.

Are there drawbacks sometimes? Sure...the worst is when someone changes their mind after they say they want a bacon Gouda for example and my partner has already unsheathed it and threw it in the oven and the customer says “no wait on second thought let me get the double smoked bacon”. This is slightly unethical but if we are super busy I will lie and say “oh sorry we are all out of the double smoked bacon but we have the bacon Gouda ready to go”. And I’ve never had a customer give me an issue as they will always say “okay no problem I’ll go with the Gouda then”. If it’s not busy or I feel bad I will mark out the Gouda in good faith under my partner discount and have the partner get the sandwich the customer really wants.

At my store drive thru time is everything. Maybe it won’t be as stressful at your store.

Everyone wears a headset so that by the time an order has been received we are already done with the drink.

As soon as we hear the “BING” on our headsets we are pulling shots in anticipation.

Do we throw out old shots more often than a regular store? Inevitably. Do we serve venti iced americanos to the window before the car gets there at peak rush? You bet your butt. It’s why customers love us. We get their order right, but most importantly super fast.

my store used to have the worst dt time in our district. But the bosses (Sm, Dm, and whomever is the boss of my DM, recently made some changes to our store.
Which is having two ovens dedicated to drive thru only, Not only that we finally figured out not to fun our break during our peak, and having a dedicated cold bar person.
We got into a bad habit of running out breaks during peak since our store was one of those stores that has been opened since the start of covid. I’ve worked the entire time as well i really miss the extra pay. ;-;

But we are now 3rd in our district for drive thru times. Our drive they times now average between 38-45s on them good days. On days when our team is little exhausted we just aim for a 50-55s.

Something we were told by our higher-ups was. that our DM & SM said something along the lines of a lower drive thru times = more sales & more sales = how much labor we get.

The only downside to all this is that i hate how corporate still lacks on what goes on a busy day at starbucks & how it impacts its workers.

Overall, it also really comes down to how your partners work together, and knowing where a partner is strongest in each position & of course the amount of labor you actually have!!

Anyways best of luck!!

I wrote a whole little mini-guide on reducing dto times. Let me find it and paste it here for you.

I thought this was satire.