Question

Drive-through Service Time at McDonald’s When you are on the go and looking for a quick meal, where do you go? If you are like millions of people every day, you make a stop at McDonald’s. Known as “quick service restaurants” in the industry (not “fast food”), companies such as McDonald’s invest heavily to determine the most efficient and effective ways to provide fast, high quality service in all phases of their business. Drive-through operations play a vital role. It’s not surprising that attention is focused on the drive-through process. After all, over 60% of the individual restaurant revenues in the United States come from the drive-through operations. Yet understanding the process is more complex than just counting cars. Marla King, professor at the company’s international training center, Hamburger University, got her start 25 years ago working at a McDonald’s drive-through. She now coaches new restaurant owners and managers. “Our stated drive-through service time is 90 seconds or less. We train every manager and team member to understand that a quality customer experience at the drive-through depends on them,” says Marla. Some of the factors that affect a customers’ ability to complete their purchases with 90 seconds include restaurant staffing, equipment layout in the restaurant, training, and efficiency of the grill team, and frequency of customer arrivals to name a few. Customer order patterns also play a role. Some customers will just order drinks, while others seem to need enough food to feed an entire soccer team. And then there are the special orders. Obviously, there is plenty of room for variability here. Yet that doesn’t stop the company from using statistical techniques to better understand the drive-through action. In particular, McDonald’s utilizes numerical measures of the center (mean) and spread (variance) in the data and to help transform the data into useful information. In order for restaurant managers to achieve the goal in their own restaurants, they need training in proper restaurant and drive-through operations. Hamburger University, McDonald’s training center located near Chicago, Illinois, satisfies that need. In the mock-up restaurant service lab, managers go through a “before and after” training scenario. In the “before” scenario, they run the restaurant for thirty minutes as if they were back in their home restaurants. Managers in the training class are assigned to be crew, customers, drive-through cars, special needs guests (such as hearing impaired), or observers. Statistical data about the operations, revenues, and service times are collected and analyzed. Without the right training, the restaurant’s operation usually starts breaking down after 10-15 minutes. After debriefing and analyzing the data collected, the managers make suggestions for adjustments and head back to the service lab to try again. This time, the results usually come in well within standards. “When presented with the quantitative results, managers are pretty quick to make the connections between better operations, higher revenues, and happier customers,” Marla states. When managers return to their respective restaurants, the training results and techniques are shared with staff who are charged with implementing the ideas locally. The results of the training eventually are measured when McDonald’s conducts a restaurant operations improvement process study, or ROIP. The goal is simple: improved operations. When the ROIP review is completed, statistical analyses are performed and managers are given their results. Depending on the results, decisions might be made that require additional financial resources, building construction, staff training, or reconfiguring layouts. Yet one thing is clear: Statistics drive the decisions behind McDonald’s drive-through service operations.

Customer	Customer waiting time (seconds)	Time of Day (1 = Breakfast, 2 = Lunch, 3 = Dinner)
1	85	1
2	74	1
3	64	1
4	90	1
5	93	1
6	102	1
7	72	1
8	96	1
9	79	1
10	91	1
11	89	1
12	75	1
13	75	1
14	96	1
15	82	1
16	87	1
17	76	1
18	92	1
19	81	1
20	76	1
21	64	1
22	94	1
23	87	1
24	82	1
25	101	1
26	82	1
27	76	1
28	73	1
29	56	1
30	73	1
31	84	1
32	69	1
33	102	1
34	74	1
35	75	1
36	78	1
37	93	1
38	81	1
39	82	1
40	86	1
41	72	1
42	89	1
43	91	1
44	95	1
45	86	1
46	98	1
47	108	1
48	77	1
49	78	1
50	96	1
51	87	1
52	87	1
53	91	1
54	99	1
55	65	1
56	109	1
57	87	1
58	101	1
59	73	1
60	94	1
61	82	1
62	79	1
63	89	1
64	105	1
65	92	1
66	78	1
67	101	1
68	86	1
69	105	1
70	86	1
71	89	1
72	76	1
73	81	1
74	99	1
75	95	1
76	77	1
77	90	1
78	74	1
79	360	1
80	96	1
81	98	1
82	75	1
83	83	1
84	98	1
85	87	1
86	95	1
87	73	1
88	83	1
89	105	1
90	83	1
91	68	1
92	94	1
93	107	1
94	84	1
95	93	1
96	75	1
97	73	1
98	86	1
99	100	1
100	96	1
101	91	1
102	68	1
103	90	1
104	85	1
105	77	1
106	72	1
107	87	1
108	87	1
109	96	1
110	76	1
111	67	1
112	94	1
113	76	1
114	78	1
115	85	1
116	93	1
117	79	1
118	82	1
119	66	1
120	86	1
121	96	2
122	84	2
123	68	2
124	60	2
125	92	2
126	85	2
127	80	2
128	92	2
129	86	2
130	98	2
131	77	2
132	83	2
133	85	2
134	110	2
135	85	2
136	79	2
137	87	2
138	87	2
139	78	2
140	102	2
141	85	2
142	75	2
143	64	2
144	97	2
145	84	2
146	116	2
147	105	2
148	84	2
149	77	2
150	85	2
151	86	2
152	85	2
153	68	2
154	108	2
155	73	2
156	90	2
157	91	2
158	102	2
159	95	2
160	71	2
161	143	2
162	70	2
163	98	2
164	102	2
165	66	2
166	99	2
167	103	2
168	76	2
169	72	2
170	93	2
171	78	2
172	85	2
173	76	2
174	105	2
175	99	2
176	92	2
177	87	2
178	68	2
179	87	2
180	93	2
181	75	2
182	70	2
183	103	2
184	73	2
185	78	2
186	62	2
187	82	2
188	74	2
189	83	2
190	98	2
191	98	2
192	106	2
193	77	2
194	92	2
195	82	2
196	82	2
197	78	2
198	93	2
199	88	2
200	112	2
201	85	2
202	103	2
203	76	2
204	91	2
205	73	2
206	77	2
207	73	2
208	72	2
209	95	2
210	59	2
211	98	2
212	81	2
213	102	2
214	73	2
215	83	2
216	99	2
217	88	2
218	101	2
219	109	2
220	102	2
221	70	2
222	62	2
223	84	2
224	79	2
225	94	2
226	78	3
227	98	3
228	78	3
229	85	3
230	108	3
231	67	3
232	95	3
233	106	3
234	78	3
235	83	3
236	61	3
237	90	3
238	72	3
239	72	3
240	80	3
241	90	3
242	82	3
243	75	3
244	72	3
245	94	3
246	65	3
247	88	3
248	68	3
249	114	3
250	110	3
251	101	3
252	81	3
253	83	3
254	102	3
255	85	3
256	87	3
257	75	3
258	71	3
259	94	3
260	87	3
261	92	3
262	90	3
263	91	3
264	79	3
265	81	3
266	65	3
267	89	3
268	72	3
269	86	3
270	144	3
271	58	3
272	92	3
273	76	3
274	79	3
275	97	3
276	61	3
277	73	3
278	98	3
279	111	3
280	81	3
281	88	3
282	71	3
283	82	3
284	72	3
285	67	3
286	105	3
287	98	3
288	87	3
289	70	3
290	76	3
291	107	3
292	300	3
293	95	3
294	66	3
295	95	3
296	82	3
297	85	3
298	86	3
299	106	3
300	93	3
301	102	3
302	80	3
303	84	3
304	101	3
305	82	3
306	78	3
307	103	3
308	102	3
309	85	3
310	98	3
311	100	3
312	71	3
313	98	3
314	100	3
315	98	3
316	99	3
317	93	3
318	107	3
319	75	3
320	77	3
321	75	3
322	100	3
323	91	3

Questions:

1. After returning from the training session at Hamburger University, a McDonald’s store owner
selected a random sample of 323 drive-through customers and carefully measured the time it took
from when a customer entered the McDonald’s property until the customer had received the order at
the drive-through window.
These data are provided, using Excel spreadsheet. Note that the owner
selected some customers during the breakfast period, others during lunch or dinner time. For the
overall sample, compute the key measures of the central tendency and variation.
Based on these measures, what conclusion might the owner reach with respect to how well his store is
doing in meeting the 90 second customer service goal? Support your argument with appropriate
hypothesis testing.

2. Compute the key measures of central tendency and variation for drive-through times broken down by
breakfast, lunch, and dinner time periods. Based on these calculations, does it appear that the store is
doing better at one of these time periods than the others in providing shorter drive-through waiting
times? Support your argument with appropriate hypothesis testing.

3. Determine if there are any outliers in the sample data. Discuss.

show the steps of doing it in excel when answering it please

Answer 1

We need to put the data in excel and find the statistic as shown below

We carry out the hypothesis test for each of the case. as shown below

We calculate the t statistic and p value using the following formula

The using the t statistic, we need to find p value using the tables. The degree of freedom is found by using the formula (no. observation - 1) . Refer to excel snapshot show earlier.

The result for each as shown below

As can be seen , based on the entire data, the mean customer waiting time is not less than 90 seconds, as we reject the null hypothesis in the first case as shown above.

In each of the period, that is

During breakfast and dinner the waiting time is less than 90 seconds.

But at lunch the waiting time is not less than 90 seconds

To check for outlier we need to plot the data in excel using the graph. Highlight the data and click on the graph option. The graph below will be generated.

From the graph we see that, the 79th (waiting time = 360 seconds), and 292th (waiting time = 300 seconds) have exceptional high waiting time for the customer.

These points must be checked.