How Drive-Thru Quick Service Restaurants are Managing in the Age of Social Distancing

Experts estimate that about 60-70% of a quick service restaurant’s sales come from the drive-thru, if they have one.

The rise of the current health crisis is forcing quick service restaurants to close their dining room and do 100% of business via drive-thru and curbside. Restaurant chains are rolling out new measures to ensure safety for their customers and employees, while keeping up worker productivity to manage the longer lines and wait times.

While drive-thru options have the ability to minimize contact there is still an exchange of personal items such as coupons, smartphones, and gift cards. Restaurateurs are accelerating their evaluation and deployment of dedicated secondary scanning devices to address this.

With a secondary scanning solution, the customer can simply hold out their personal item and the drive-thru cashier can use the barcode scanner to read the presented information without touching that personal item. This allows the customer and drive-thru cashier to minimize contact.

Without a secondary scanner, the employee would be forced to take the coupon or personal item and either hand-key or conduct an additional scan into the system leading to increased touch and wait times.