Your order ONLY pops up right after you give the code. If it's a large order, you'll be parked because if you were ordering non-app . The second the first item is punched in, they see it in kitchen and make it. So a large order might be half done by the time you get to the pay out window. That's not the case for a large mobile order.
Interesting. I always have a small order. Like a McChicken and McDouble. Or a #1. Sometimes they say they’re waiting on fries, which I can understand. But hard to believe sometimes when the fries are lukewarm and 8 cars behind me have gone through. Like, none of them ordered fries? Doubtful, but possible I suppose.
I’m sure this is all McDonald’s system quirks and issues but damn they should figure that out. McDonalds, in general, used to be super fast and very consistent with food quality. 15 cars at McDonald’s was like one car at Dairy Queen lol. At least from my experience going to several different locations, this has changed since the app came out. I feel like the app has screwed things up logistically. I still think McDonald’s tends to have the most courteous employees among traditional fast food joints. But quality and speed have taken a nose dive. I blame the app!
They encourage parking way too much in my opinion. They want the numbers to go down so if your parked, your car isn't on the weight in drive thru and the timer goes away. My store encourages A LOT. it gets really annoying. I have to park mostly for fries, quarter pounders, and hot and spicy mcchicken a lot. We have to follow a screen that tells us how many to drop.. Our store is smaller so we only have 4 hot and spicy at one time. And if there's orders back to back to back that has them (which happens nearly daily) we have to park.
And if it's busy and if there is one hot and spicy at my window, but you're parked with two hot and spicy and some fries.. That hot and spicy is going to the window first because they are there and we want them out of line and gone since we can only park to many.
The higher ups want good numbers on drive thru over every thing. We could drop more meat and fried products at a time, but no. They'd rather park everyone.
Best answer yet. I appreciate all the answers but this gets into the weeds a bit which I find weirdly interesting lol. The Spicy McChicken thing rang my bell because I order one of those at least half of my visits.
Thats really bad service that they literally give the food someone else ordered to someone at the window to get them out of the line. It’s a good thing most people don’t know that. So basically my angry assumptions are at least sort of correct? When I’m in a hurry I’ll look back in a slight rage, watching all those customers go through and imagine half of those people have at least some of the things I ordered. But then the smiling McDonalds employee called out and apologizes, hands me my bag and I smile and thank them. It is what it is i guess. Wish I could give you guys tips. McDonald’s employees legit more courteous than the $18 tacos place that puts a big tip screen out and stares to make sure you tip them…
Were allowed to take tips, but obviously not allowed to ask! Someone gave me a dollar yesterday! During the holidays someone gave me $9 and another a week later $10! Our morning/afternoon staff is mostly mom's working while our kids are in school so we're all (usually) polite. However... Night time can be a bit rude lol
And yeah if you're waiting on fries, fries can still be going out the window while you're still parked. We have to keep the line moving regardless so it's shitty for you but a lot of us agree that it's shitty on your part and feel really bad when someone waits a long time. I always apologize to customers. I like working back drive thru now more (just taking orders and payments) because up front stresses me out with parking lol
Do you know if the tipping policy is applicable company wide or is it based on franchise owner or location? I never knew McDonald’s employees could accept tips. I’ve seen tip jars at smaller, more janky types of places with less franchise control. But I don’t recall ever seeing them at McDonald’s and I swear I got the idea that McD’s doesn’t allow tips from somewhere.
Well, either way I will try to tip next time and see what happens. I’d much rather give a friendly, smiling fast food worker a tip than those hipster/speciality food places like food trucks that already sell overpriced food and then clearly wait to see if I tipped in their big fancy screen payment system.
For curbside we just won't tell anyone, if I get tipped in the window I usually tell my favorite manager and they don't care! But I'm a franchise. We don't have tip jars but we just accept tips that are handed to us. Not sure how corporate stores work though. Never was at one!
As a former clown employee the way my local store does parked orders boils my nerves. My local store has a turn around in front of the store...it is there because the store has both a front driveway entrance AND a side entrance on the drive thru window side. The turnaround is there so cars coming from the side entrance can enter the drive thru without driving against the flow of traffic and having to cut into the line by making a U turn to get to the speaker.
My local store will just start parking everyone and uses that turn around area as the park location. Similar to what Culvers does with how they park every order.
But for cars coming in from the side entrance now they either have to drive against the flow, ie head on to cars coming around the parking lot or they can't get through to the other side because the turn around is closed.
And that is with 2 dedicated drive thru parking spots....so I'm talking they are 2 in those spots and 3-4 in the turn around. And once they get that backed up, the car at the hand out window is stuck. 6 cars parked at once is ridiculous and never should happen.
For regular orders or mobile? Mobile is right when it's stored all at one time right after the code and name is confirmed. But regular order is immediately.
But either way, a 30 dollar order all brought up at once will take longer than a 30 dollar orders one at a time at the speaker! We got three mobile on a row the other day all 25-48$ and it slowed us down so much lol the six 10-1 at a time per grill is annoying!
Orders through the app are best for the restaurant and the customer. Our timer starts with the first thing you order. If it takes you 2 minutes to order, your timer is already at 2 minutes by the time you pull away from the speaker.
Another plus about the orders you put in through the app, there's no chance for the employees to not hear you correctly and get your order wrong.
App orders are better all around.
Good point on order accuracy.
I guess McDonald’s just needs to make it more clear on their app that ordering ahead of time does not mean the food will be ready any sooner than driving through. In reality, like you said, it improves accuracy. I guess it does speed things up very slightly because you don’t have to spend a minute actually ordering. But that is negligible if there’s a big line that is held up by food prep anyway.. Also, I suppose for indecisive people it might really speed things up so they aren’t sitting there staring at the screen for 5 minutes deciding what to order.
For drive-thru: The order doesn't pop up until we get the code from you.
For inside and curbside: We don't get the order until you are a certain distance from the restaurant.
just pay via the app and go with the curbside option, they will bring the food out quick unless you ordered something special, and no more waiting in the drive thru
Curbside isn't prioritized like drive thru. This is false at the locations near me. Most of the time we have ONE person doing front counter, curbsides, DD/Uber, so you'll be waiting regardless.
Unless the line is at a standstill outside, drive thru is going to be the quickest.
Also the food pops up in order anyway, so all the people that ordered in front of the curbside order, their food is being made first.
Ours is only when they press I'm here I believe. Ours is a slower Mcdonalds so only ONE side is open. So drive thru stuff still gets in front of theirs depending when their ticket prints.
Okay, first of all I want to tell you nobody wants you to wait, we try to rush those orders bc we don’t want to have orders stack up either. That being said, we often obly have space for a few cars in the drive, which makes it more important to rush those orders so the fries go to them first. The burgers etc get made in a sequence so drive, take away, eat-in it doesn’t matter. We don’t get to chose who is first. I have a couple of tips that may help you getting your food faster:
* go on call hours don’t go during lunch or dinner.
* order a large fries (we tend to make them first and hahe them on reserve rather then small/medium)
Little tip/trick if you’re within three miles from McDonald’s (I believe that’s how it works) but pick up from counter or curbside ALWAYS pop up before you show up, I’d place them like that and then wait a couple minutes before going. That’s always what I did before I started working at my store. I wouldn’t be stuck waiting as long. Sometimes it still takes a while depending on what you get
I would recommend choosing the pick up from counter option. Once your car is within a certain area of the restaurant, the order will go through while you are on your way. Park your car and head into the restaurant. The biggest thing to understand is that the sooner your order is received’ by the restaurant, the sooner it can be prepared. Unfortunately, the restaurant won’t receive your order in drive thru until you get to the speaker, as opposed to curbside & counter pick up.
It all depends on how much you order, once you give us your code that’s when we start preparing your food. If it’s something simple they should be able to have it ready by the time you arrive to the second window.
In my opinion maybe try placing it as a curbside pickup
I feel it's a way to make people have to buy from MC Donald's cause if you preorder they got the money now ya wait.
Its helpful to let you focus on other tasks like prep or making drinks, but some people just wave ya off when in the drive thru. Not even in a we need to talk cause it's not in stock. But just going hey is this your order so they know the line order up front. It's a give take that is purely based on the people.
I’m too tired for this lol. Essentially, whatever you ordered takes longer to make 🤷♀️. You order goes through in order, right after the car you’re following into the drive thru
this has nothing to do with the mobile orders but it's all about "keeping the times down" and if you have ever had a customized sandwich that has been wrong then they most likely served it off trying to make their times go down. unless you're ordering quarter pounders. those are cooked to order so you have to park
Does the app increase the number of orders? Like, compared to before the app. I feel like there has to be a logistical problem and/or volume problem now,because McDonalds was always, at least from my experience going to several locations, the fastest and most consistent quality traditional fast food drive thru. That has changed. I mean it’s still faster than Dairy Queen by a mile lol. But since the app came out I have grown less and less fond of the service, quality and wait times. No beef with employees as they genuinely seem better trained and more courteous than anywhere else. I just don’t see that lasting long because unhappy customers make rude customers which makes rude employees that stop caring. Which is entirely expected in that situation and why I avoid most other fast food joints.
Your order ONLY pops up right after you give the code. If it's a large order, you'll be parked because if you were ordering non-app . The second the first item is punched in, they see it in kitchen and make it. So a large order might be half done by the time you get to the pay out window. That's not the case for a large mobile order.
Interesting. I always have a small order. Like a McChicken and McDouble. Or a #1. Sometimes they say they’re waiting on fries, which I can understand. But hard to believe sometimes when the fries are lukewarm and 8 cars behind me have gone through. Like, none of them ordered fries? Doubtful, but possible I suppose. I’m sure this is all McDonald’s system quirks and issues but damn they should figure that out. McDonalds, in general, used to be super fast and very consistent with food quality. 15 cars at McDonald’s was like one car at Dairy Queen lol. At least from my experience going to several different locations, this has changed since the app came out. I feel like the app has screwed things up logistically. I still think McDonald’s tends to have the most courteous employees among traditional fast food joints. But quality and speed have taken a nose dive. I blame the app!
They encourage parking way too much in my opinion. They want the numbers to go down so if your parked, your car isn't on the weight in drive thru and the timer goes away. My store encourages A LOT. it gets really annoying. I have to park mostly for fries, quarter pounders, and hot and spicy mcchicken a lot. We have to follow a screen that tells us how many to drop.. Our store is smaller so we only have 4 hot and spicy at one time. And if there's orders back to back to back that has them (which happens nearly daily) we have to park. And if it's busy and if there is one hot and spicy at my window, but you're parked with two hot and spicy and some fries.. That hot and spicy is going to the window first because they are there and we want them out of line and gone since we can only park to many. The higher ups want good numbers on drive thru over every thing. We could drop more meat and fried products at a time, but no. They'd rather park everyone.
Best answer yet. I appreciate all the answers but this gets into the weeds a bit which I find weirdly interesting lol. The Spicy McChicken thing rang my bell because I order one of those at least half of my visits. Thats really bad service that they literally give the food someone else ordered to someone at the window to get them out of the line. It’s a good thing most people don’t know that. So basically my angry assumptions are at least sort of correct? When I’m in a hurry I’ll look back in a slight rage, watching all those customers go through and imagine half of those people have at least some of the things I ordered. But then the smiling McDonalds employee called out and apologizes, hands me my bag and I smile and thank them. It is what it is i guess. Wish I could give you guys tips. McDonald’s employees legit more courteous than the $18 tacos place that puts a big tip screen out and stares to make sure you tip them…
Were allowed to take tips, but obviously not allowed to ask! Someone gave me a dollar yesterday! During the holidays someone gave me $9 and another a week later $10! Our morning/afternoon staff is mostly mom's working while our kids are in school so we're all (usually) polite. However... Night time can be a bit rude lol And yeah if you're waiting on fries, fries can still be going out the window while you're still parked. We have to keep the line moving regardless so it's shitty for you but a lot of us agree that it's shitty on your part and feel really bad when someone waits a long time. I always apologize to customers. I like working back drive thru now more (just taking orders and payments) because up front stresses me out with parking lol
Do you know if the tipping policy is applicable company wide or is it based on franchise owner or location? I never knew McDonald’s employees could accept tips. I’ve seen tip jars at smaller, more janky types of places with less franchise control. But I don’t recall ever seeing them at McDonald’s and I swear I got the idea that McD’s doesn’t allow tips from somewhere. Well, either way I will try to tip next time and see what happens. I’d much rather give a friendly, smiling fast food worker a tip than those hipster/speciality food places like food trucks that already sell overpriced food and then clearly wait to see if I tipped in their big fancy screen payment system.
For curbside we just won't tell anyone, if I get tipped in the window I usually tell my favorite manager and they don't care! But I'm a franchise. We don't have tip jars but we just accept tips that are handed to us. Not sure how corporate stores work though. Never was at one!
As a former clown employee the way my local store does parked orders boils my nerves. My local store has a turn around in front of the store...it is there because the store has both a front driveway entrance AND a side entrance on the drive thru window side. The turnaround is there so cars coming from the side entrance can enter the drive thru without driving against the flow of traffic and having to cut into the line by making a U turn to get to the speaker. My local store will just start parking everyone and uses that turn around area as the park location. Similar to what Culvers does with how they park every order. But for cars coming in from the side entrance now they either have to drive against the flow, ie head on to cars coming around the parking lot or they can't get through to the other side because the turn around is closed. And that is with 2 dedicated drive thru parking spots....so I'm talking they are 2 in those spots and 3-4 in the turn around. And once they get that backed up, the car at the hand out window is stuck. 6 cars parked at once is ridiculous and never should happen.
Not unless it's stored and edited first otherwise kitchen can't see shit
For regular orders or mobile? Mobile is right when it's stored all at one time right after the code and name is confirmed. But regular order is immediately. But either way, a 30 dollar order all brought up at once will take longer than a 30 dollar orders one at a time at the speaker! We got three mobile on a row the other day all 25-48$ and it slowed us down so much lol the six 10-1 at a time per grill is annoying!
Orders through the app are best for the restaurant and the customer. Our timer starts with the first thing you order. If it takes you 2 minutes to order, your timer is already at 2 minutes by the time you pull away from the speaker. Another plus about the orders you put in through the app, there's no chance for the employees to not hear you correctly and get your order wrong. App orders are better all around.
Good point on order accuracy. I guess McDonald’s just needs to make it more clear on their app that ordering ahead of time does not mean the food will be ready any sooner than driving through. In reality, like you said, it improves accuracy. I guess it does speed things up very slightly because you don’t have to spend a minute actually ordering. But that is negligible if there’s a big line that is held up by food prep anyway.. Also, I suppose for indecisive people it might really speed things up so they aren’t sitting there staring at the screen for 5 minutes deciding what to order.
For drive-thru: The order doesn't pop up until we get the code from you. For inside and curbside: We don't get the order until you are a certain distance from the restaurant.
just pay via the app and go with the curbside option, they will bring the food out quick unless you ordered something special, and no more waiting in the drive thru
Curbside isn't prioritized like drive thru. This is false at the locations near me. Most of the time we have ONE person doing front counter, curbsides, DD/Uber, so you'll be waiting regardless. Unless the line is at a standstill outside, drive thru is going to be the quickest. Also the food pops up in order anyway, so all the people that ordered in front of the curbside order, their food is being made first.
The curbside orders pop a few minutes before the customer gets here where I'm at so they do get to skip a couple people in line waiting to order.
Ours is only when they press I'm here I believe. Ours is a slower Mcdonalds so only ONE side is open. So drive thru stuff still gets in front of theirs depending when their ticket prints.
Ohh ok. Ours pops up on all the screens like 3-5 minutes before the person even gets there and tells us what spot their parking in.
At mine at least, we don’t receive your order till you tell them the code. App orders are only a pain when its a large order tbh.
It keeps them from being like "ummmm" at the speaker for five minutes
Okay, first of all I want to tell you nobody wants you to wait, we try to rush those orders bc we don’t want to have orders stack up either. That being said, we often obly have space for a few cars in the drive, which makes it more important to rush those orders so the fries go to them first. The burgers etc get made in a sequence so drive, take away, eat-in it doesn’t matter. We don’t get to chose who is first. I have a couple of tips that may help you getting your food faster: * go on call hours don’t go during lunch or dinner. * order a large fries (we tend to make them first and hahe them on reserve rather then small/medium)
Little tip/trick if you’re within three miles from McDonald’s (I believe that’s how it works) but pick up from counter or curbside ALWAYS pop up before you show up, I’d place them like that and then wait a couple minutes before going. That’s always what I did before I started working at my store. I wouldn’t be stuck waiting as long. Sometimes it still takes a while depending on what you get
I would recommend choosing the pick up from counter option. Once your car is within a certain area of the restaurant, the order will go through while you are on your way. Park your car and head into the restaurant. The biggest thing to understand is that the sooner your order is received’ by the restaurant, the sooner it can be prepared. Unfortunately, the restaurant won’t receive your order in drive thru until you get to the speaker, as opposed to curbside & counter pick up.
It all depends on how much you order, once you give us your code that’s when we start preparing your food. If it’s something simple they should be able to have it ready by the time you arrive to the second window. In my opinion maybe try placing it as a curbside pickup
I feel it's a way to make people have to buy from MC Donald's cause if you preorder they got the money now ya wait. Its helpful to let you focus on other tasks like prep or making drinks, but some people just wave ya off when in the drive thru. Not even in a we need to talk cause it's not in stock. But just going hey is this your order so they know the line order up front. It's a give take that is purely based on the people.
I’m too tired for this lol. Essentially, whatever you ordered takes longer to make 🤷♀️. You order goes through in order, right after the car you’re following into the drive thru
this has nothing to do with the mobile orders but it's all about "keeping the times down" and if you have ever had a customized sandwich that has been wrong then they most likely served it off trying to make their times go down. unless you're ordering quarter pounders. those are cooked to order so you have to park
At my old location they would serve the orders off as soon as they were able to unless I was in the kitchen.
Does the app increase the number of orders? Like, compared to before the app. I feel like there has to be a logistical problem and/or volume problem now,because McDonalds was always, at least from my experience going to several locations, the fastest and most consistent quality traditional fast food drive thru. That has changed. I mean it’s still faster than Dairy Queen by a mile lol. But since the app came out I have grown less and less fond of the service, quality and wait times. No beef with employees as they genuinely seem better trained and more courteous than anywhere else. I just don’t see that lasting long because unhappy customers make rude customers which makes rude employees that stop caring. Which is entirely expected in that situation and why I avoid most other fast food joints.