The Wendy’s Experience

I ate lunch today at my local Wendy’s restaurant. I do that from time to time, even though too often the experience falls short of satisfactory. Nevertheless, as I’ve done many times, I decided to give the place another chance.

I was the first and only person in line — for a while. Then customers began queuing up behind me. I waited for what seemed like ten minutes to place my order. It always takes me a while to place an order at Wendy’s, but today the wait seemed longer than usual. Finally the manager asked me if I had been waited on. I shook my head, and he yelled at someone to take my order.

A young woman appeared and asked, “For here or to go?”

I answered, “For here.”

The young woman took my order and I swiped my card. She placed the register tape on the counter for the next person to process. Then she asked me again, “For here or to go?” Again I answered, “For here.” She placed a tray on the counter.

The next worker looked at the tape and, with the tray right in front of her, asked me a third time, “For here or to go?” I tapped the counter and said, “This order is for inside.” A few minutes later I got my order.

I had ordered the spicy chicken sandwich and value fries. The fries looked different than the usual Wendy’s fries. I remembered Wendy’s fries as being thicker than usual fast-food fries, which is one of the things I liked about them. But these were skinny fries.

I went to the condiments counter to get ketchup. Instead of putting out packets of ketchup, Wendy’s uses a pump-machine; each time you press the pump handle, the machine squirts a little ketchup into a plastic cup. The machine was empty of ketchup, which did not surprise me. An empty ketchup machine is not unusual for that restaurant.

I assumed the kitchen workers had ketchup packets for to-go orders. I returned to the order-pickup counter and asked for ketchup. It took a minute or so to get their attention, but I finally got my ketchup.

I sat down at a table and prepared to eat my lunch. I tried a French fry. It wasn’t hot. Also, the fries had no salt on them. I stood up, walked to the condiments counter, got my salt, and returned to my table and sat down again.

I unwrapped the spicy chicken sandwich. It contained a piece of deep-fried breaded chicken floating in mayo inside a bun. It was tasty, but it was hard to keep the sandwich together because the mayo lubricated the bun so well that the bun slid around on the chicken.

At a table about 8 feet away sat a young couple with two small boys who may have been about 5 and 6 years old. Throughout my meal, the boys were constantly jumping up from their table to go running around the restaurant whooping and hollering. The man and woman ignored them. I guess they felt the boys were too young to be taught manners. I felt like I was at a children’s playground.

I ate half the fries, which after a couple minutes were cold and unappetizing. (Thin fries cool faster than thicker fries.) I also made a mental note that I should probably carry toothpicks with me to pin together slippery foods like bread and sandwich innards. Once again, I left Wendy’s feeling less than satisfied with the experience. This time, I probably won’t return.

I mention these things not because they are unusual but because they are so usual. I no longer eat at Burger King, even though I like their Whopper sandwich, for precisely the same reasons: food not hot, fries not salted, drink machine out of what I want, icemaker broken, kitchen slow. That BK doesn’t have a lot of business. The local Wendy’s isn’t usually busy, either. You know who has a ton of business every day? The local McDonald’s. The problem with McDonald’s is too many customers. Even so, the McDonald’s order-taking process and kitchen always seem to run efficiently. I have never left a McDonald’s restaurant vowing never to return.

My opinion is that the problems are partly related to the system the stores have in place (the work-flow from order-entry to delivery) and partly related to lack of effective management. For example, ordering food and paying can be a bottleneck, so McDonald’s runs multiple registers when they’re busy. Wendy’s runs one register.

Also, many young workers apparently fail to understand the importance of customer service and how it relates to their paychecks. Some hustle, while others amble about. Some greet you with a smile, while others act like waiting on you is a bother.

Wendy’s and other fast-food chains appear to give priority to the drive-through. People have told me, “If you want quick service at a fast-food place, use the drive-through.” What I see inside the store bears that out. My order-taker kept me (and all those in line behind me) waiting while she attended to the drive-through customers.

To be fair, fast-food restaurants are only as good as their manager and staff. Staff turnover is high and not all managers are effective managers. So the quality of the dining experience can rise and fall over time.

But the bottom line is: these are fixable problems. If one franchise can make it work, others can too. But instead, stores will tinker with the menu and run various specials in an effort to lure in customers, when what customers want is simple food delivered hot and quick. It just doesn’t seem like rocket science, yet so many fast-food restaurants drop the ball. As a result, they get enough low-expectation customers to remain in business, but not enough customers to flourish. The store fails to thrive and customers are dissatisfied. It’s lose-lose.