I had just dropped my son off at his football game an hour before kickoff, as instructed by the coach. It was cold, and with plenty of time to kill before the game started, I thought I would have plenty of time to grab a latte at the nearest Starbucks.
The front of the coffeehouse seemed normal enough. There was a decent-sized line, but it was moving swiftly. I did begin to notice that there was a large crowd of people congregating around the pickup counter, but I thought nothing of it. The store just had a bit of a mid-morning rush. Everything would be fine.
But after I ordered and moved to the pickup area myself, I saw a huge pile of unclaimed orders: coffees, teas, pastries, and sandwiches all piled up, seemingly unwanted. The employees behind the counter were frantically heating food and mixing drinks, but the crowd of people waiting for their orders continued to grow. It seemed that for every order completed for someone inside the store, two more orders were added to the giant unclaimed pile.
Five minutes became 10, and 10 became 20, before I began to worry I might have to abandon my drink if I wanted to make it back in time for the start of the game. Eventually, my name was called, and I made it back to the field just in time. But the store had only grown more chaotic since I first arrived.
Not that I’m in Leesburg, Virginia, that often, but I’m never going to that Starbucks again.
It happened again at a Freddy’s in Fairfax, Virginia, months later. This time, I was with my two oldest children, one of whom had a Boy Scout meeting later that night. Again, ordering was fine, but after I paid and we all sat down, we began to notice that no one in the restaurant had food. They were all waiting at their tables, hungry, like us. This time, our food did not come in time, and we had to leave hungry in order to make our prior engagement. Although I love a good chili dog and turtle sundae, I have not been back to that Freddy’s either.
Apparently, these are not isolated incidents. Fast-food restaurants around the country are prioritizing digital orders at the expense of dine-in customers. “It’s like being ripped into two,” a Chipotle worker in New York told Business Insider last year.
Industry analyst Patronix Systems Inc. estimates that digital orders now make up one-third of total restaurant food orders, up from 12% before the pandemic. According to Bar & Restaurant, “When executed well, mobile ordering can reduce strain on kitchens by spreading out orders over time, increase spend up to 20% more per transaction,” and even “offer valuable data on your customers and their spending habits.”
That all sounds great for fast-food companies, but the phrase “when executed well” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Lots of people are spending far more time alone and far less time with friends in public places such as restaurants. It would be a huge loss if the fast-food industry abandoned the dine-in experience entirely to pursue a digital-only model.
