The Question
Case study · Quick-service restaurants · New concept drive-thru
Client's brief · reconstructed excerpt · values held in confidence
(withheld) is developing a new quick-service concept, open from breakfast through dinner, taking orders at the drive-thru, the counter, curbside, and online with pickup lockers. The drive-thru is still a drawing. Three options are on the table: full side-by-side lanes, a single lane, or side-by-side merging into one, plus how many pull-forward spots to build. There is no sales history to test against, and every order the drive-thru takes in is one the kitchen has to make.
Bars cover values SimWell holds and is not releasing. The released figures stand as printed.
§ 1
A second ordering lane takes orders faster, which sends them to the kitchen faster. If the kitchen can't keep pace, cars back up at the present window and the extra lane buys nothing. Pull-forward spots keep the lane moving, but each one adds walking for the crew carrying orders out. Lane, kitchen, and crew have to be sized together.
The industry is working the same problem. Chains are replacing single-lane, single-window designs with side-by-side and mobile-order lanes; Chick-fil-A added Mobile Thru pickup lanes at more than 300 restaurants. Getting food to the second lane is the hard part, and McDonald's and Burger King have both considered conveyor belts to do it.
§ 2
Every channel, from the street to food in hand. SimWell built a data-driven discrete-event simulation of the drive-thru, kitchen, and dining room. Cars stop at the order point, wait at the present window, and move to a pull-forward spot when an order runs long. Order takers walk out to cars in the order zone, and presenters carry orders back out. Each menu item carries its recipe, steps, equipment, crew position, and times, so every order the drive-thru accepts shows up as work in the kitchen. Inside, walk-in and dine-in guests order and wait, and online customers collect from lockers.
§ 3
Everything in the input file, without touching the model: lane configuration, the number of pull-forward spots and when to use them, order mix and size, arrival rates by hour (peaks, weekends, holidays, off-peak), crew by zone and time of day, the staffing guide that sets each position's duties, and equipment counts. Two scenarios run side by side to compare experience time by channel and find the bottleneck.
Cleared for release
With no history to lean on, the team used the model as its benchmark. It settled the drive-thru and kitchen layout together, set crew size against the expected order rate and the experience-time target, and set the equipment count the kitchen needs to keep up with the lane. The 3D animation of cars, crew, and guests let the team show stakeholders how the restaurant would run before it was built.
SimWell helps operators make better decisions under uncertainty. We build simulation and optimization models that reflect operational reality, test scenarios before committing resources, and transfer capability so teams can run decisions independently.
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